While Ethan Sherwood Strauss of The Athletic published a controversial piece on Monday indicating how NBA ratings were down dramatically compared to the 11-12 season and opined that politics could be one of the factors, the number of people who have tuned in to games over the 12 days since play resumed is 49 percent higher than the first 12 days of the season, according to Nielsen.

The number of people who have tuned in is 47.2 million compared to 31.7 million last October.

While the prime time games on TNT and ESPN have been even with pre-pandemic levels, they have had a larger share of the TV audience than before the season was suspended.

There have been days when sports viewing in total has been up 100 percent to 150 percent over comparable dates last year.