In the 1987 season, Nielsen Company had not yet started to track ratings for the NBA's Christmas battle.
But this year, during the CBS television broadcast of the Christmas battle, the cost for advertising slots increased by two hundred percent compared to usual.
In this way, a large number of companies still participated in the competition for commercial times during halftime and timeouts, hoping to get a piece of the action during this basketball feast.
In fact, the Trail Blazers and the Bulls were quite mismatched in strength, and from the first minute of the game, the Trail Blazers were playing high and pressing down on the Bulls, who were struggling under Jordan's leadership.
Previously, games with such a large disparity in strength hardly captured the wide attention of basketball fans; only die-hard, local fans would be interested.