I think it's that, and that a Thunder/Westbrook matchup against the Warriors/Durant would be catnip for them.
Westbrook is the culmination of 11 years of narrative that had 3 MVPs scattered to the wind. Any story about him has Harden, Durant and George as major satellites, and Dame as a direct contrast. It is pretty compelling. Sucks the Blazers are an afterthought, but they'll be relevant longer.
Colin Cowherd is the king of this. It was all Lebron all the time, and now it's Westbrook ad naseum. Why? Those guys capture eyeballs, having a foil makes for drama, and that again equals ratings and money. Dame is a sweet story, but not dramatic.
OKC is in the heartland(it’s close anyways) and most of America doesn’t even know where Portland is. East coast is only an hour later to watch their games, 3 hrs for ours.
Shit, it's not just ESPN. I listened to national sports talk radio most of the day yesterday and every show was basically the same. Whenever our series came up they would talk at length about Westbrick and OKC and how they were blowing it. Then the last 5 seconds a co-host or caller would add "oh but the Blazers are also playing well" and the host would agree and that would be that. The only guy I heard go out of his way to praise us was Chris Haynes on Doug Gottlieb's show. He said that Dame has been controlling the series and itemized some of what Dame is doing well. In response Gottlieb basically said yeah yeah yeah, but what do you think about Westbrick?
The picture quality is especially better compared to NBCSNW on league pass. TNT in particular looks freaking amazing.
I listen to Calabro and Hurd all the time, and I'm not particularly attached to them. Sometimes I want to hear what the national guys are saying about us, or to at least hear what the rest of the country is being told about us during the game, even though most of the time it's wrong and annoys me.
Agreed. I like to hear the national perspective, so I watch until I get too annoyed, then switch over to the Trail Blazers broadcast. Also during the breaks, local broadcasts have League Pass promotions and highlights, whereas the national broadcast show all the stadium activities, halfcourt shots, cheerleaders, etc.
way back when, we used to have a 40" Sony CRT. IIRC, the damn thing weighed 260 lbs, but it had a real fine picture and great speakers. You didn't want to drop it on your foot though
