Thanks to NBA, Jimmy Kimmel gets first-ever win over Jimmy Fallon

Guess you might say that Jimmy Kimmel really cramped Jimmy Fallon’s style on Thursday night.

OK, we’ll stop now with the dreadful puns. But thanks to an assist from LeBron James, ABC’s Kimmel scored a first-ever ratings win over the usually dominant Fallon and his “Tonight Show” on NBC.

ABC telecast the Heats-Spurs NBA Finals Game 1, which easily won the night with an average of 12.6 million total viewers tuning in between 9 and 11 p.m. on the East Coast, according to Nielsen.

However, much of the post-game commentary was dominated by talk about the cramping that led mega-star Heat forward LeBron James to miss the final minutes (the Heat ended up losing, 110-95.)

Enter Kimmel, who taps the corporate synergy and builds his show around the NBA Finals. He kicked off the night with a pre-game show (6.3 million) then came back with his late-night “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” which outscored Fallon for the first time in both households and the key adults aged 18 to 49 demographic.

Those were Kimmel’s best ratings since he moved his talk show to 11:35 p.m. in January 2013.

As for LeBron, he told a press conference on Friday that he expects to be “100%” for Sunday’s Game 2.