The NBA restart on Thursday was a big success for TNT.

TNT's doubleheader Thursday doubled its average viewership for a regular-season telecast. The New Orleans Pelicans and Utah Jazz played each other in the first game.

The Los Angeles Clippers and Los Angeles Lakers game peaked with an average of 4.1 million viewers, while Inside the NBA had its best viewership since the opening week of the 2018-19 season.

This shouldn't come as much of a surprise. NBA fans have been itching to watch competitive basketball for almost four months and a game featuring LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Kawhi Leonard and Paul George is always going to draw millions of viewers. It's why most basketball pundits are rooting for the Lakers and Clippers to meet in the 2020 Western Conference Finals since TV ratings would be out of this world.

Before the 2019-20 season was suspended in March, TV ratings were actually down since the NBA gave the Pelicans a bunch of nationally televised games early in the campaign. But rookie Zion Williamson missed the beginning of his career recovering from knee surgery. As a result, all the national TV games the Pelicans were featured in didn't do too well sans Williamson.

NBA TV ratings should be at an all-time high moving forward since sports fans are going to be glued to TNT and ESPN. During the seeding games, there are going to be NBA games on TV pretty much all day long.