1) NBA draft, 8 p.m. ET, ABC and ESPN. The football draft ia a ratings hit, so basketball gets its primetime moment. ABC will have the first round, with San Antonio choosing first and expected to take the 7-foot-4 Victor Wembanyama (shown here, blocking a shot despite resistance); ESPN has both rounds. That’s part of this week’s sports surge, which also has football: The USFL semi-finals are 8 p.m ET Saturday on NBC and 7 p.m. ET Sunday on Fox.
2) “The Bear,” 8 p.m., Hulu. Last June, this came out of nowhere. An indie-looking comedy-drama about a Chicago restaurant, it dropped all eight episodes in one day and drew praise. The American Film Insititute gave it one of its 10 show-of-the-year awards; the Golden Globes nominated it for best comedy. Jeremy Allen White won awards from the Globes, Screen Actors Guild and Critics Choice. Now it goes further – a 10-episode season arrives today.
3) “Young Sheldon,” 8 p.m., CBS. After being sidelined for a week (when CBS was doubling up on “Ghosts”), TV’s top-rated comedy is back. In this rerun, Sheldon finds that the university plans to go ahead with the database idea … without Sheldon, who thought of the idea, That’s followed by a “Ghosts” rerun, with Pete hoping his daughter will havve her wedding at the manor.
4) “The Blacklist,” 8 p.m., NBC. When Red tries to mediate a meeting between crime families, things take a deadly turn. Soon, the task force is racing to save him and the others. That’s followed by reruns of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (an abusive EMT) and “Magnum P.I.” (a missing CEO).
5) “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” 10 p.m., FX. At times, this show is wildly, crazily hilarious; at other times, it’s merely wild and crazy. This is the latter, with stories going so far off the rail that they’re only milely funny. One has Dennis teaching colleagues how to catch a guy; the other – pushing suspension of disbelief to the breaking point – has Frank using trickery in a chess tournament.