Best-bets for June 1: basketball, “Blacklist,” comedies

1) Basketball finals, 8:30 p.m. ET, ABC (with pre-game at 8) and ESPN2. At first, this hinted at a classic rematch: The Lakers and Celtics – each with 17 championships – reached the conference finals. The Lakers, however, were swept by the Denver Nuggets; the Celtics were almost swept by the Miami Heat; they bounced back with three straight wins, but lost the seventh-and-final game. Now the Nuggets (shown here) face the Heat, in the start of a best-of-seven series. Read more…

1) Basketball finals, 8:30 p.m. ET, ABC (with pre-game at 8) and ESPN2. At first, this hinted at a classic rematch: The Lakers and Celtics – each with 17 championships – reached the conference finals. The Lakers, however, were swept by the Denver Nuggets; the Celtics were almost swept by the Miami Heat; they bounced back with three straight wins, but lost the seventh-and-final game. Now the Nuggets (shown here) face the Heat, in the start of a best-of-seven series.

2) “The Blacklist,” 8 and 9 p.m., NBC. After starting the season late, this smart series has eight new episodes left in its 10th and final season. Now it moves to Thursdays, and starts by airing two of them. First, Red gives the task force three cases that are deeper than they appear. Then he probes a corrupt lawyer and her work on corporate cover-ups. Wrapping through both hours is a congressman’s effort to shut down the task force.

3) “Young Sheldon,” 8 p.m., CBS. Sheldon considers dropping out of college, to focus on the database he’s creating. Also in this rerun, his dad fumes when someone else gets credit for his coaching ideas. That’s followed by “Ghosts,” with Thorfinn and Flower having their wobbly first date.

4) “Animal Control,” 9 and 9:30 p.m., Fox. Winding through both half-hours is the fact that Emily (the terrific Vella Lovell) is smitten with Shred, the ex-snowboarder who’s one of her new underlings. That shows up quietly in the first rerun, then sparks a funny moment at the start of the second. That first one is OK, but the second has bigger laughs and an age-old question: What do you do with a very large (and very smelly) dead fish?

5) Also: As June begins, there are plenty of movies streaming, from Tobey Maguire’s three “Spider-Man” films on Netflix to 10 “Star Trek” films on Paramount+. We’re also between key dates – the final “Ted Lasso” episode arrived Wednesday on Apple TV+; the second half of the final “Manifest” season reaches Netflix on Friday. Also arriving today are two music films – the “Muscle Shoals” documentary on Amazon Prime and the Danish “A Beautiful Life” on Netflix.
— Mike Hughes, TV America

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