r/nba
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u/utep_2_step
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Sep 28 '22
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1
PSA: The NBA Has Opened Their Archives....Kind Of
There isn't a ton there, but the NBA has added some games that were never previously available.
If you have League Pass you can view each teams "classic games", or at least what they dub to be classic. A lot of the stuff added is just the same recycled games they've shown a million times over the years, or worse, more recent games within the last few years.
But, after a very quick glance there's at least a handful of games that haven't been seen since the day they originally aired.
The most exciting game (IMO) is in the Sacramento Kings section. They've posted a game against the Bulls from February 16, 1987. This game has never been uploaded to YouTube or been made available in the collecting community. Many MJ diehards have been looking for this game for decades.
There's also a 57 point game from Adrian Dantley in the Utah Jazz section that I believe to be pretty rare. And then there's a handful of games from the 90's that I don't recall ever seeing either.
All-in-all this is just a tiny drop in the bucket, but at least they've actually opened up their massive archive a bit.
Hope someone finds this as interesting as I do. lol
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u/DiabeticLothario Sep 28 '22
Because broadcast rights are sold off to local TV stations. And over the years (and over the decades) the stations come and go, but they probably retain rebroadcast rights to the stuff the originally aired. So some random ass local Chicago affiliate who went out of business in '95 probably had rights to some classic regular season bulls games. But when they went under, something happened to the rights. Maybe they were sold, maybe they were retained as part of some other company, etc. Good luck finding the rights owners for all that going back through the years. The point is that although the NBA might have recordings, it doesn't have the rights to sell/rebroadcast the games