ESPN is not concerned with the NBA's concentration of stars in the Pacific Time Zone, which creates many late night games for viewers on the East Coast.

TNT's coverage of Thunder at Warriors on opening night ended at 1:21 AM Eastern.

“To me, it’s not a big concern,” said ESPN’s vice president for programming and scheduling, Burke Magnus. “Everybody understands how time zones work and the sports fan knows where and when to find the Lakers. There are plenty of good stories in the East which will lead into the second half of the doubleheader.”

NBA data suggests that the league’s young fan base is willing to stay up. “The best way to talk about it is to look at Twitter,” NBA executive vice president for digital media Melissa Brenner says. “Over the course of an 8:30 game and a 10:30 game, we see an almost identical volume of tweets. There’s no material difference.”