the Finals, and Rashad declined to join Hannah Storm on the post-game show carried by CNBC. 2001: NBC studio host Hannah Storm did not anchor the NBA Finals due to her being on maternity leave, so Ahmad Rashad replaced her. She returned to cover the NBA Finals in 2002, but as postgame host. 1990s Notes The retirement of Michael Jordan set in motion the decline in NBA ratings which continued for several years. Ratings for the 1999 NBA Finals (which in fairness, came after a lockout shortened season) were down significantly from the previous year, from an 18.7 to an 11.3. Primetime regular season games, which had become fairly routine (and highly rated) during the Jordan years, set record lows for NBC once Jordan retired. With the rise of the Los Angeles Lakers in the early part of the 2000s (decade), ratings improved, but never to the level of the 1980s or 1990s. The highest NBA Finals ratings on NBC after Jordan left was the 2001 Finals, which featured the dominant and then-defending champion Lakers with Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant versus the polarizing Allen Iverson and the underdog Philadelphia 76ers. The ratings for that series were a 12.1, still down 35 percent from 1998. NBC's last Finals, in 2002, came after a resurgence in playoff ratings (including a 14.2 rating for Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals). However, the Finals itself registered the lowest ratings the event had seen since 1981, topping out at a 10.2 average. 1998: The Finals between the Chicago Bulls and the Utah Jazz was the highest rated NBA Finals ever (18.7 percent rating over six games). Game 6 registered a 22.3 Nielsen rating with a 38 share and attracted 72 million viewers and became the highest rated game in the history of the NBA. The previous record was a 21.2 rating and 37 share for Game 7 of the 1988 NBA Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and Detroit Pistons. During the 1997 NBA Finals, Hannah Storm became the first woman to serve as pre-game host of the NBA Finals after serving as a sideline reporter for NBC in the past four years, but she wasn't the first female broadcaster to cover the NBA Finals (that honor goes to Lesley Visser). 1994: During Game 5 (June 17, 1994) most NBC affiliates (except for the network's New York and Los Angeles owned-and-operated stations (the