The Oklahoma City Thunder and the Golden State Warriors weren’t the only winners of this year’s NBA tip-off. Airing its first NBA games since 2002, NBC and Peacock earned a strong audience of 5.6 million average viewers for its broadcast of both games on Tuesday night.

That number, based on linear measurement from Nielsen and digital data from Adobe Analytics, is not only an 87% improvement from last year’s NBA tip-off, which hit 3 million viewers on TNT, but the biggest audience the doubleheader has seen in more than 10 years. No season opener has reached those heights since 2012 — or 2010 if you exclude 2011’s unusual Christmas Day tip-off. And given that the 2010 games included LeBron James’ debut with the Miami Heat, it’s impressive that NBC’s telecast came so close to that record

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