TV ratings don’t tell Lakers’ picture

Lakers fans, if all you’re hearing is LeBron, LeBron, LeBron, Celtics, LeBron, LeBron’s elbow, Phoenix, San Antonio, LeBron, don’t be insulted, be proud.

Or, as TNT’s Kenny Smith says, “Chill out, Lakers fans, and don’t get worked up. It’s a compliment if we’re not talking about the Lakers. It just means we don’t expect the Utah series to be too tough.”

The Lakers lead the series, 2-0, with Game 3 set for Saturday night in Utah. And as Smith suggests, there’s a different feel to these second-round playoff games.

In the first round, when the Lakers were tussling with the young, energetic, talented and fearless Oklahoma City Thunder and its newly nationally respected scoring champion Kevin Durant, the Lakers ruled the television ratings. That series was the most-watched, on average, of any first-round series, and Game 6, when the Lakers clinched their conference semifinals spot by winning in Oklahoma City, became the most-watched NBA first-round game on cable since 2004.

At first glance, the conference semifinals’ Cavaliers-Celtics series seems to be a bigger ratings hit than the Lakers-Jazz. In comparable games, where TNT was the carrier, Cleveland and Boston averaged 5.7 million viewers for Game 1 and 5.5 million for Game 2 while the Lakers-Jazz Game 2 attracted 4.7 million viewers.

Not all is as it seems.

Yes, viewers have tuned in to see Cleveland, with all the hubbub about James’ being the most valuable player and having a bad elbow and wondering whether each game might be his last as a Cavalier, and Boston, which has a large national following just by being a historically great franchise.

But Stephen Master, vice president of Nielsen Sports, said it shouldn’t be forgotten that the Lakers-Jazz games on TNT have started about 10:45 p.m. in the East. “Really, the numbers are almost even,” Master said, “But the starting time is a big advantage [for Cleveland and Boston]. You lose a lot of the East Coast fans, unless they are really hard-core, at that time. In my opinion, the Lakers are still carrying the day. They are still an incredible ratings draw.”

He notes that Sunday’s Lakers-Utah Game 1 on ABC drew 5,955,000 — up 23.4% from a year ago.

In the first round, there was no question. The Thunder and Lakers averaged 4.32 million viewers nationally with a 2.8 national household penetration, and Cavaliers against the Chicago Bulls was second with 4.05 million viewers and a 2.7 penetration.

And Game 6 of the Lakers and Thunder was the most-viewed first-round playoff game in ESPN’s history with 4,833,000 viewers. It surpassed another Lakers game — against the Houston Rockets in Game 3 in 2004 — which goes to show that it still can be all about the Lakers.

Master said the Lakers’ television performance in the Oklahoma City series, against a team that has a relatively small television market, was “a pretty good barometer of the strength of the Lakers’ reach.”

“You had the Lakers, and yes, Oklahoma City got some interest with Kevin Durant, but it’s the smallest market, against Cleveland and LeBron James against big-market Chicago, which is still associated with the Michael Jordan pedigree, and the Lakers outdrew them.

“That boded pretty well for the popularity of the team,” he says. “The Lakers are a huge draw, however you look at it.”

Still, L.A. fans may need to stand down for a few more days because the Cleveland-Boston and San Antonio-Phoenix series have been drawing the interest of television analysts and many of the sports talk shows.

And although Game 3 of the Lakers-Jazz series is scheduled for Saturday night on ABC rather than the traditionally popular Sunday afternoon slot, Doug White, director of programming for ESPN, says this was not a knock on the Lakers or an editorial judgment that Boston and Cleveland or San Antonio and Phoenix was more compelling — as some might suspect.

White says that once the Lakers clinched the first-round series April 30 and opened the conference semifinals Sunday, it meant that the Lakers would fall to the prime-time Saturday window.

“Despite rumors to the contrary,” White says, “scheduling is a very complicated process. A lot of things are taken into consideration, things like teams who share buildings with NHL teams, things like concerts that may be taking place, when a previous series finishes. It’s a huge jigsaw puzzle the league has to get into place and taking that all into consideration, things don’t always work out how we’d like.”

ESPN analyst Tim Legler says Lakers-Jazz is not the series to watch this round.

“I’m interested to see if Boston has it in them to make another run, and it’s also interesting to me to see how complete a team Cleveland has or do the Cavs have some flaws that make them vulnerable?” he says.

“And in the West, to me it looks like this is the best chance Phoenix might have for a while to get to the [conference] finals. San Antonio, I didn’t expect them to make this kind of run. But when you look at the Lakers-Utah, nobody honestly believes Utah can win, so, yeah, this series loses a little bit of luster.”

Jalen Rose, another ESPN analyst, says Lakers fans should be cool with the idea that they’re not a hot national topic right now.

“They should rather their team be playing a Utah Jazz team with injuries rather than a Denver Nuggets team a lot of people felt would push the Lakers or a Dallas team that made a trade that people thought was made to push the Lakers,” Rose says.

As for Lakers fans?

“They should just look at this as a lull,” he says. “They’re playing for a bigger goal, the Western Conference final, the opportunity to defend a title. Would you rather be playing in prime-time games in the second round? I’ll bet they’d rather be playing the NBA Finals in prime time.”

diane.pucin@latimes.com

twitter.com/mepucin

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