Some TV executives are comparing Michael Jordan’s last game with the Chicago Bulls with unassailable records like Bob Beamon’s world-record-setting long jump in 1968, which lasted for nearly 23 years, and the 1972 Dolphins, who remain the only undefeated team in NFL history.
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LeBron James and Kevin Love rule the NBA but are third on list of most-watched games.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
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Jordan’s final Bulls game was a Game 6 NBA Finals win over the Utah Jazz in 1998 that averaged 35.9 million viewers — a figure that stands as the top NBA audience of all time.
This year’s Game 7 audience on ABC came close. The Cleveland Cavaliers-Golden State Warriors’ 31 million viewer average finished as the third-biggest TV audience in NBA history.
The morning after Game 7, I spoke with David Neal, who produced that 1998 game for NBC. Neal, who is now an executive producer at Fox Sports, wasn’t popping champagne corks, like some players on the ’72 Dolphins team do each year when the NFL’s last undefeated team loses. But he did reference that team and made it clear that he is proud of his role in producing that record-setting 1998 game.
| YEAR |
FINALS GAME |
MATCHUP |
AVG. # OF VIEWERS |
NETWORK |
| 1998 |
Game 6 |
Bulls-Jazz |
35.9M |
NBC |
| 1993 |
Game 6 |
Bulls-Suns |
32.1M |
NBC |
| 2016 |
Game 7 |
Cavaliers-Warriors |
31.0M |
ABC |
“I felt like the 1972 Miami Dolphins this morning, happy to know that the rating for the game I produced for the NBA on NBC in 1998 is safe for another year,” he said. “I think that number is going to hold up for a while.”
Neal said that he has an appreciation for a Warriors team that set an NBA regular-season record for wins and just missed out on winning back-to-back titles. He drew some parallels between this year’s Warriors and the Bulls teams he covered in the mid-’90s.
“Obviously, seeing Steve Kerr on the sidelines starts you thinking about the similarities,” Neal said of the Warriors coach, who also played for the 1998 Bulls. “Just the way the Warriors played and the records they set during the year, there’s no question there are parallels.”
— John Ourand
