As part of the league's outreach to make the regular season more entertaining, the NBA is having their teams play in rivals week. Many teams will be playing against their historical rivals including the Lakers facing off against the Clipper to start the week off. Other interesting games include the Sixers facing off against the Nuggets and the Celtics facing off against the Heat.
Like the in-season tournament, this is something that they try to do to make sure fans are interested in the regular season. The NBA has a long 82-game season where it is hard for non-die-hards to keep up with all of the games. To combat this problem, the NBA created the Rivals Week last season and will continue to do this season.
Will fans find the rivalry games make people tune-in more to the NBA games?
With the program being in its early stages, it's hard to tell whether the rivalry games will make more people watch games. It is a great idea for the NBA to get more fans involved as the league will try new ideas to ensure people are interested. A way to get fans more involved might be to allow pop-up stands with free gear to give out to people in the area.
The League could promote the rivalry with the other team by having fun little gear that talks a bit of smack to the other team. Of course, the language of this has to be appropriate for a league event but it could be a fun thing to do. Another thing that the league could do is have free streams of playoff games between the two rival teams in the past.
They could do this by posting free highlights and full games videos on these games on youtube and other mediums.
