Home>News Center>Sports | ||
Heat-Lakers game sets new ratings mark for ABC
The much-heralded Christmas Day matchup between Kobe Bryant's Los Angeles Lakers and Shaquille O'Neal's Miami Heat was the highest-rated regular season basketball game on television in nearly seven years, broadcaster ABC said on Monday.
The game drew an 8 rating in metered markets, where each ratings point represents 1 percent of the 109.6 million homes with television sets nationwide.
Bryant and O'Neal had a turbulent relationship during the years when O'Neal starred with the Lakers. Saturday's game marked O'Neal's return to Los Angeles and the first matchup between him and Bryant since he was traded to the Heat.
Fans expected sparks after O'Neal described himself as a brick wall and said Bryant was a Corvette, and suggested the inevitable conclusion when one hits the other.
The game was relatively incident-free, though, and the Heat won 104-102 in overtime.
ABC is a unit of the Walt Disney Co.
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||