[11][12][13] Among the criticisms included CBS playing too much loud music, the lack of stability with the announcers,[14] regionalizing telecasts (thus fragmenting the ratings even further), billing games as being between star players[15] instead of teams, and devoting too much attention to the slam dunk in instant replays.

Other adjustments that CBS made in hopes of improving its coverage included hiring reporter Sonny Hill to cover the league on a full-time basis.

Finally, CBS introduced a halftime segment called Red Auerbach on Roundball, featuring the Hall of Fame Boston Celtics coach.

In a Red on Roundball halftime segment that appeared on CBS' NBA telecasts in the 1973–74 season, Auerbach and referee Mendy Rudolph discussed and demonstrated the practice of flopping with obvious disapproval.

During the 1976–77 season, the NBA's first after the ABA–NBA merger brought four American Basketball Association teams into the league, CBS held a slam dunk contest that ran during halftime of the Game of the Week telecasts.

32 players, including Rick Barry, Pete Maravich, George Gervin, JoJo White, Doug Collins, Paul Westphal and Bob McAdoo, competed in a round-robin single-elimination tournament each week.

However, Maravich was injured and unavailable, so CBS instead had Westphal shoot a free-throw against "Bag-Man" (who was Rick Barry, who was on the announcing team, wearing a paper sack over his head).

Ironically, toward the end of the NBA's partnership with CBS, the Charlotte Hornets would make their debut, citing the sport's popularity in the Carolinas as a reason for expansion.

The 1976 NBA Finals had three straight off days between the Sunday afternoon opener and Game 2 the following Thursday night due to CBS' concern with low ratings for professional basketball.

CBS wanted the NBA to start Game 6 of the Finals at 10:30 local time on Sunday morning to accommodate a golf telecast of the Kemper Open (similar to 1976).

By this time, the network had eliminated its regional coverage and only used two play-by-play announcers (Brent Musburger and Gary Bender) and three color commentators (Bill Russell and Rod Hundley, who teamed with Musburger and Rick Barry, who teamed with Bender); CBS felt that showing an NBA Finals game was not worth pre-empting their Friday night lineup (the smash hit Dallas in particular) during May sweeps (although the iconic episode in which J.R. Ewing was shot aired on March 21, 1980, and Dallas was already in summer reruns).

If the affiliate chose to air the game later that night, then the prime schedule would consist of reruns of The Incredible Hulk, The Dukes of Hazzard and Dallas (CBS, NBC and ABC ended the 1979–80 seasons in late March and early April in anticipation of a strike by the Screen Actors Guild, which came to fruition in July 1980).

This left two teams located in the Central Time Zone, the Houston Rockets and Kansas City Kings (both with 40–42 regular season records), to play in the Western Conference finals.

Notably, Game 5 of the 1989 playoff series between the Chicago Bulls and Cleveland Cavaliers (featuring Michael Jordan's now famous game-winning, last-second shot over Craig Ehlo) was not nationally televised.

The CBS-affiliated stations in Virginia (WTKR in Norfolk, WTVR-TV in Richmond and WDBJ in Roanoke) elected to show the first game of a second round series between Seattle and the Lakers.

During this period, CBS' NBA coverage was the beneficiary of a new era in the league that would forever link two of the game's greatest players, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.

In its place, CBS sold the marquee players and teams (for example, "Julius Erving and the Philadelphia 76ers", "Larry Bird and the Boston Celtics" or "Magic Johnson and the Los Angeles Lakers") for a "Game of the Week" broadcast.

During its tenure as the NBA's broadcast network partner, CBS aired notable Finals series between the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics, as well as both championships won by the "Bad Boy"-era Detroit Pistons.

[76] Additionally, CBS had recently signed deals with Major League Baseball and the Winter Olympics, making it even more difficult to accommodate the NBA's request for more over the air telecasts.

[77] Before the closing montage, CBS's final NBA game broadcast ended with this sign-off by Dick Stockton: Well, I guess now the time has come.

For every member of our broadcast team and I mean technicians, and cameramen, production people, the terrifically talented folks in the truck, where it all happens, and of course...the commentators, this has been an extraordinary experience.

[86] On April 22, 2019, CBS Sports Network signed a deal with the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) to televise 40 regular season games.

From 1975 to 1980, Musburger worked with a variety of analysts for regular season games (including Billy Cunningham, Mendy Rudolph, Hot Rod Hundley, Oscar Robertson, Steve Jones, Tom Heinsohn and Rick Barry).

With the latter role, Musburger worked alongside Kevin Loughery (1983–1984), Hubie Brown (1985), Billy Cunningham (1986–1987), Tom Heinsohn (1988) and Bill Raftery(1989), and called the other conference final not assigned to Dick Stockton's team on CBS from 1983 to 1989.

Working with Tom Heinsohn (who was criticized[90] by the media and viewers for being too biased to the Boston Celtics, a team he once played for and later coached) from 1983 to 1987, Stockton called some of the most memorable NBA Finals in league history.

Tom Heinsohn, Billy Cunningham,[96] and Hubie Brown all worked NCAA Regional rounds during years when they also served as the lead NBA analyst for CBS.

In 1988 and 1989, Pat O'Brien filled-in for Brent Musburger (who was busy covering the College World Series for CBS) as the NBA Finals anchor for Game 2.

In 1980, CBS used rotoscoped animation in silhouette of one player shooting a jumpshot and the ball in mid-air rolling all the NBA teams as it spun in the air, set to disco–pop–moog music.

By the 1983 NBA Finals, the opening sequence was set in a primitive computer-generated montage of basketball action inside a virtual arena that was similar in resemblance to the Boston Garden.

[103] This opening melody (mostly consisting of an uptempo series of four notes and three bars each) from 1983 to 1988 was composed by Allyson Bellink[104] and is generally considered to be the most familiar theme music that The NBA on CBS used.