There’s plenty of good news heading into the weekend’s NBA All-Star Game. The league sports a group of great young stars. The game itself is in Los Angeles, which makes everything better. And the ratings continue to be strong.

According to Sports Media Watch, “ABC earned a 3.4 final rating and 5.163 million viewers for Miami’s loss to the Celtics Sunday afternoon. The game drew the highest rating for an early afternoon NBA game (start time prior to 3 PM ET) since Christmas Day 2005, and the highest for a non-Christmas early game since February 2002.”

In fact, “five of the 20 highest rated regular season games on ABC since ’02 have taken place this season alone.”

The NBA is posting excellent numbers on TNT as well.

David Stern can’t touch the success of the NFL, of course, but he has to be pleased with the direction of his league. Well, until the lockout comes, that is.