How to watch the NBA and NHL Playoffs

Spring has sprung and Major League Baseball is in full swing, with the second full week coming to an end. At the same time the NBA and NHL, the sports of winter are heating up with their two-month playoff marathons. With so much going on, the question is how do you follow it all and keep up with all three sports often having games at the same time. Baseball is easy you can flip and follow your team throughout the season, and going well into the summer. Some games get out of hand early and allow you to move on the playoffs, but what do you do if you want to watch both the NBA and NHL playoffs.

Television ratings indicate that most have decided to focus on the NBA Playoffs. However, this is because the league is more popular to the casual fan since it knows how to market its stars, and does not put their biggest games on a cable channel that nobody knows how to find. A true sports connoisseur knows that the Stanley Cup Playoffs are by far superior to the NBA postseason.

Anything can happen in hockey, as the goalie is the great equalizer. In the NBA, the best team wins nine out of ten times, and upsets are few and far between. Think of the last time when a team that did not finish in the top two or three teams in their conference winning a NBA Championship. The only exception was in 1995 when the Houston Rockets won the NBA Championship as the sixth seed in the West. That team itself was an exception as they were no an ordinary six seed, having won the championship in 1994, as a more traditional second seed.  The NHL meanwhile has seen an eight seed win the Stanley Cup, as any team that gets hot at the right time can win, guaranteeing a more entertaining format.

Just go game by game and the NHL playoffs are far superior to the NBA. Is there anything better than sudden death overtime in the playoffs? Teams skating back and forth with near misses, pucks hitting cross bars, great saves and tiring teams playing late in the night desperately looking to break through. When do you ever see that in the NBA? Even in last year’s unforgettable NBA Finals most games were not close. It was not until Game 7 that you had a true thriller, with the game tied for much of the final four minutes before Kyrie Irving’s three-pointer. This included LeBron James classic block on Andre Iguodala, which may be the biggest play that LeBron ever made in his career.

The play that LeBron made was in the final two minutes, which is where this piece of advice comes from. If you want to follow both the NBA and NHL playoffs, you simply watch the NHL games and turn to the NBA during the commercials. If the NBA game is close in the finally two minutes you can settle on and watch the game get decided. If the basketball game is not close, you simply turn back on the hockey game, because at any moment a NHL game can change, a fluke goal can decide overtime or flip the momentum of an entire series. The NBA is a series of runs, three point bombs and dunks, a game that can be watched condescended or via highlights in the postgame show. This one area where the NBA has it over the NHL, personalities. The NHL television coverage on NBC Sports Net with Mike Milbury is rather dry, and the highlight package is nothing to get excited about, while the NBA when on TNT gives you Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, Shaquille O’Neal, and Ernie Johnson is often better than the game itself.

So buckle up watch the dramatic shots and saves in the NHL, and wait for the NBA to get close then tune into the postgame, so we can see who is going fishing after their team is eliminated.

Frank Fleming is the creator of Sportsecyclopedia.com