NBA PLAYOFF COVERAGE IN THE UK
04/14/2009

NBA FANS in the UK will again get to watch the Finals live on Channel Five and will also get the opportunity to watch every game of the playoffs live or repeated online.

Five will also continue with one playoff game a week on Tuesday evenings.

NBA spokesman Alex Mills said: "I can confirm that a playoff game will be shown live on Five every Tuesday evening at 1am.

"Unfortunately, at this time we do not know what games are going to be shown.

"All the Finals games will be shown live on Five, and again we won't have full details until the end of the Playoffs.

"All the playoffs and Finals games (can be watched) online at NBA League Pass Broadband at http://ilp.nba.com/ - currently £18.43 for all the games."

In a pre-playoff press interview, NBA commissioner David Stern hailed the "golden age" of basketball.

He added: "We're looking forward to an exciting and possibly unpredictable playoffs, or maybe totally predictable, and that's the beauty of playoffs.

"I know the number of people watching the playoffs outside the United States will likely be around 400 or 500 million people.

"And the interesting thing for us is they start out being interested because of their hometown or home country player, but very quickly they move on or up to just looking at that player as well as others who they're known to.

"After a while, we found out that Yao's uniform sales in China took third place to Allen Iverson and Kobe, and then to LeBron, and kept moving down.

"It's amazing how quickly they turn on to the whole league and it's very exciting for us."

By Tom Rubashow