TNT’s coverage of the 2025 NBA Playoffs has already featured two Game 7s in the first round. But out of the two, one stood leaps and bounds ahead of the other in terms of viewership in the respective finales.
On Saturday, the Denver Nuggets easily took care of the Los Angeles Clippers in their Game 7 matchup in a 120-101 victory to advance to a second-round matchup against the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Perhaps understandably given the margin of victory in favor of the Nuggets, this game only averaged 4.21 million viewers on TNT and truTV, according to Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch.
Sunday’s Game 7 matchup between the Golden State Warriors and the Houston Rockets was a much different story, with an average of 6.63 million viewers tuning in on TNT and truTV to watch the Warriors 103-89 victory.
This marks the highest number of viewers for a first-round playoff game for TNT since Game 7 between the Chicago Bulls and Boston Celtics in 2009, which averaged 6.99 million viewers. Though Sunday’s broadcast is still just the third-highest viewership for a game this postseason, with the other two coming on ABC broadcasts.
One of the biggest storylines around the NBA this season has been about the dip in viewership and whether this was a potentially worrying trend for the league.
But after a slow start for the league from a viewership perspective that caused overblown hysteria from many media members, things largely balanced out on national broadcasts, which were down just two percent year-over-year from last regular season.
Meanwhile, viewership in the postseason through the first round is actually up 4% year-over-year across ABC, ESPN, TNT, and NBA TV from last year.
It will be interesting to see whether these ratings will continue to trend upward across all networks in the second round. Notably, the second round is being held without some of the league’s biggest stars.
Losing the Los Angeles Lakers, led by LeBron James and Luka Dončić, is obviously a bit of a blow. And while the Warriors, led by Stephen Curry, did make it to the second round, Curry is set to miss at least a portion of their second-round series against the Minnesota Timberwolves due to a strained hamstring suffered in their Game 1 win on Tuesday night.