I’m not a huge fan of the rounded white box for the game clock, it doesn’t really match with the rest of the package, but otherwise it looks pretty nice. Unlike 7’s AFL graphics, these will change colours depending on the uniforms that the teams are wearing which will be good.
They also have a new theme song, which is a complete downgrade from the previous one:
Not a fan of that theme in isolation - although I guess it sorta fits in with the NBA kind of vibe, and we’ll see how they’ll use whatever incidental cuts they would have commissioned for it. They used a more uptempo cut in the opening of Lakers/T-Wolves and it didn’t sound too horrible in that context - keeping in mind that they generally talk all over it anyway, so you only need about 3-5 seconds of crescendo at the start.
As sort of an example of how NZ may look a little different, Sky tried to show the timeouts/fouls count (for one team) in the last minute of the game, and it looked like this:
Which doesn’t quite seem right (eg. it looks like the score typeface is being repeated below the foul count).
(There’s good question about whether the timeout count actually looks big enough on either version… I struggle to see it on a 27" screen. *squint*)
It all kinda depends on what gets hooked up into it. A lot of cheaper graphics (such as those used in the NBL Blitz and NBL1, and were used by the NBL itself up until the rebranding) are just run off the FIBA LiveStats data that they use to record the play-by-play - by itself it won’t give you things like counting down in tenths of a second and that sort of thing. But since that would record things as a 2-point shot properly (as it’d go into the play-by-play data), the score increasing is fine.
So it sounds like they’re not linking the graphics to that locally, or at least getting all the data out of it; and I’m not sure they have since the NBL moved out of Basketball Australia’s grasp and got rebranded (I looked at a 2019/20 game, it did the same thing). Sky may still do that type of thing in NZ but it’s hard to know. It also shows that there was no interest to change from the “looking like a close knock-off” situation after two years or so, given we haven’t had games in NZ due to Covid for a while.
I’m reminded of similar things that happened in Super League (as in rugby league), where the graphics provided by the French host broadcaster for Catalans Dragons games tried to be close to the Sky UK graphics but weren’t quite (although it has improved over the years). Similar deal here - it’s close enough I guess; only ppl like me who end up obsessing about minutae like this would care as opposed to watching the actual football or in this case, basketball. 🤷♂
Same for Sky Sport’s A-League graphics.
7’s AFL Graphics does match what the team is wearing - well like 80-90% of the time.
I guess it’s a lot more important in the NBA due to the large number of alternate jerseys they use, with “City Edition” jerseys - the “Miami Vice” tribute the Heat used for a while sticks in my mind well - as well as throwbacks and other alternates. (Woo, merchandising! - and also to keep things interesting in an 82-game season where they play every other day…)
I’m pretty sure ESPN had done this with the previous NBA graphics too, as from memory the logos in them would also change if they were using a City Edition jersey that used a different logo to the usual, for instance.
They did match most of the time? But they never had the white background they will have with the new thing
Looks like all the problems with the score graphics have been fixed.
•Colours matching what teams are wearing
•Scores moving by 2 or 3 instead of 1 by 1
•Using the black area to show upcoming game & player stats
ESPN are showing a baseball doco instead of the 2nd half of Perth/Melbourne.
Back to the game with 6.03 to go of the 3 qtr
Oops. Was the game delayed?
So far this around all games had the colours matching the jumpers, EXCEPT tonight South East vs NZ.
SE who are in black has green while NZ in blue has pink.
In the last 2 weeks they had NZ in blue when they wore pink, this time when they are wearing blue, they have pink 
With today’s World Series game postponed until tomorrow, ESPN AU/NZ is running the Manningcast version of Monday Night Football in its place on ESPN, and leaving the main game broadcast on ESPN2 as scheduled.
This puts ESPN AU/NZ in the unusual position of running these broadcasts on the opposite channels to ESPN US.
What happened?
Rain.
This morning ESPN AU/NZ will show game 5 of the World Series between Astros and Phillies on ESPN, with the Texans-Eagles NFL clash on ESPN2 at the same time.
