Reasons the nba has recent ratings problems….
- load management and ****ing with fans with injury designations
- Analytics leading to shot chucking
- Coaches sucking drive out of players by refusing to let them compete
- No young marketable superstars of LeBron or mj caliber
- NIL losing players to G- and international leagues
- greedy scheduling which just creates more pressure on load management making many






At a distant last place
- race
- players as a whole are lazy
- social beliefs alienating fans who weren’t watching anyway

The NBA's biggest problem, same with MLB, is there's too ****ing much of it

If the games don't matter to the players they definitely aren't going to matter to fans when there's a ton of other shit to watch

There's obviously more factors like lack of marketable stars, chucking up a million 3s, lack of player continuity, and who tf watches TNT like ever?, but the the biggest factor is trying to draw out something people barely care about to start with over 9 months or however long the NBA season is

People used to rock Hardaway Magic jerseys and now people are surprised there's still a team in Orlando

My team and the NBA needs to move on from dinosaurs like LeFraud and promote the young players and teams. That era is over. He needs to retire and get the F off of my team and most of all, please take his delusional ass fans with him. When my Lakers take their organization back from unClutch sports, then I will be back in.

I understand creative dunks were never sustainable but what casual sports fan can name the slam dunk contest winners over the last decade plus

Used to be must watch tv and now no can even tell you who's even in it

When the most exciting thing you offer falls short of Bravo's Below Deck you've got marketability and exposure problems

That is so wrong. Lots of lazy white players in the NBA to.

Yup Yup. They need to cut the season down to 42 games, start on Christmas and teams only play a couple of times a week, preferably all on the same days. Have an NBA show like NFL redzone to drive interest while all the games are going on at once.

Next CBA insitute a hard cap and no guaranteed contracts. If you have to lockout do it.

LET GO OF THE PAST. LePED is the past.

But who? Shai is a joy to watch but he’s boring. Jokic and Luka and Giannis are excellent players but maybe too European to be American superstars. They’re trying with wemby but I just don’t see it. Nobody is gonna latch onto Tatum, Brunson or Embiid. The best bet is Ant and hes being way too misused to be relevant.

Ride it out until the next guy emerges. Nothing else they can really do.

I think the thread has posed some issues that you can do to at least help clean things up before that guy arrives.

Is the season too long
How can you cut down extreme shot chucking
How can you cut down all the load management
Do they really need a million playoff spots
How do you clean up the messy tv arrangements

Even with a superstar you will still run into these problems

What were 90s NBA tv ratings?

Out of anyone in the NBA, Shai probably plays stylistically most like Jordan did. Edwards is closest in athletic profile but he is more of a shooter and less og a playmaker as Jordan. It isn't like Shai is a bad athlete but obv not as athletic as Jordan but just as smooth.

That was before old white men trashed the NBA for two decades without ever watching the product.

Eventually something becomes believed if people keep saying it.

Kind of how people pile on Nickelback. While not the best band hardly the worst.

Would never happen but I'd love a Christmas season tipoff

If players are calling for load management by Christmas then just shorten the season, but apparently there's a revenue stream somewhere because these contracts for players are absurd so follow the money

I'm a casual NBA fan and still won't bother learning Giannis's name. He's got zero star power and is a multiple season MVP and a finals MVP

I really love Shais game. Especially in a league where superstars are all 3 point shot chuckers. But he doesn’t have anything close to superstar charisma unfortunately.

The other guy I forgot to throw in as Ja. Stunning to watch on the court, but like watching a car crash off the court.

The lakers and Celtics put their entire teams as questionable for Christmas games including injury management tags. Seriously wtf are we doing here.

I'm just here so I won't get fined

I’ve been monitoring Suns/Nuggets tix for tomorrow night since it’s the late game after the early Chiefs game but likely won’t touch it outside of being nearly free

Remember when Stern’s NBA fined Pop for resting his stars on the Spurs on back to backs about a decade or so ago?

Adam Silver let it get to this point. Worst commissioner in sports.

Yeah there is something to be said about being disliked as a commissioner. That's kind of part of the job. Silver is the most liked commissioner of many but he let everyone have an inch and it turned into a mile.

Spurs Fined $250,000 for Resting 4 Regulars

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By Howard Beck
Nov. 30, 2012
When the San Antonio Spurs held out four regulars Thursday night, Coach Gregg Popovich framed it as an investment in the future: Resting Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and Danny Green now will presumably pay dividends next spring.

That investment just cost the Spurs a whopping $250,000.

Commissioner David Stern announced the penalty Friday evening, citing an obscure league policy intended to discourage teams from resting players “in a manner contrary to the best interests of the N.B.A.”

Teams occasionally rest players, without much scrutiny, but the Spurs’ decision stood out under the circumstances. They were playing in Miami, in a nationally televised game, against the defending champions. The marquee matchup lost its luster when Popovich announced before the game that he had sent the four players back to San Antonio.

In a statement, Stern said the penalty was “dictated by the totality of the facts in this case.”

“The Spurs decided to make four of their top players unavailable for an early-season game that was the team’s only regular-season visit to Miami,” Stern said. “The team also did this without informing the Heat, the media, or the league office in a timely way. Under these circumstances, I have concluded that the Spurs did a disservice to the league and our fans.”

Manfred is easily the worst. But silver is giving him a run for his money.

Manfred has at least been improving MLB for the better with all their changes, Silver didn’t even acknowledge his league has a problem until a few days ago.

Nah, manfred completely botched the cheating scandal. This is an isolated incident for silver and to a large extent, not easy ones to solve. Manfred does stupid shit every single year. Like when he created rules midseason around using sticky substances and pitchers were blowing their arms out left and right. And the mlb has problems of their own with way too many strikeouts and lack of offense. But long term manfreds desire for NY/LA media markets is going to destroy the game. The way LA has built a superteam off deferred contracts is gonna be really bad for the game for a while.

My 5 year old is loving the Disney NBA game. Pregame so far.

Cheating scandal? Who cares? I just assume most of the organizations are cheating or bending the rules in some way anyway.

There’s also nothing he’s gonna do that is gonna prevent major markets from dominating baseball as long as there is no salary cap (and there won’t be considering the power of the MLBPA).

I’m mainly worried about the watchability of that sport and he’s taken significant steps to fix it.

Mickey Mouse was robbed.

They made sure Minnie won. They have been pushing her hard the past few years.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">LEBRON JAMES ON CHRISTMAS DAY:<br><br>31 POINTS<br>10 ASSISTS<br>4 REBOUNDS<br>2 STEALS<br>12/22 FG<br><br>ALMOST 40… INSANE 🤯 (via <a href="https://twitter.com/realapp_?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realapp_</a>) <a href="https://t.co/eXIA5xkgy8">pic.twitter.com/eXIA5xkgy8</a></p>&mdash; Legion Hoops (@LegionHoops) <a href="https://twitter.com/LegionHoops/status/1872123896159420610?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 26, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Washed, eh?

What a player. The GOAT.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">LeBron to the NFL: <a href="https://t.co/6rvo5OncTt">pic.twitter.com/6rvo5OncTt</a></p>&mdash; Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) <a href="https://twitter.com/AdamSchefter/status/1872124706675105823?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 26, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

And America disagrees.

Andrew Wiggins is a bum and a waste.

Those NFL games were uncompetitive trash today compared to that Lakers/Warriors game (and likely always will be if the NFL keeps doing them on weekdays) but I have no doubt the ratings will be there.

Basically always was outside of a Finals run where he was the MVP of your washed team when they beat the Celtics. You should be grateful to him.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The NBA delivered its most-watched Christmas Day in five years, with viewership up 84% vs. last year across ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, Disney+ and ESPN+. The NBA on Christmas Day averaged 5.25 million viewers per game in the U.S.<br><br>The matchup between the <a href="https://twitter.com/Lakers?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Lakers</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/warriors?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Warriors</a> – the… <a href="https://t.co/VjfjL8XQSU">pic.twitter.com/VjfjL8XQSU</a></p>&mdash; NBA Communications (@NBAPR) <a href="https://twitter.com/NBAPR/status/1872386930928648333?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 26, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

When two NFL blowouts on Netflix crush the NBA…which was on ABC/ESPN… LeBum will be silent.

The weird irony is that the nfl games, which on paper should have been great games, were blowouts. NBA games which are almost always blowouts were actually all good games

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Lakers vs Warriors was the most watched NBA regular season game in the last 5 years 😳🤯 <a href="https://t.co/FqpWJC73UE">pic.twitter.com/FqpWJC73UE</a></p>&mdash; LakeShowYo (@LakeShowYo) <a href="https://twitter.com/LakeShowYo/status/1872391217516048464?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 26, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Precisely. People care about Steph and LeBron. They don't care about Luka and Jokic.

America first.

It's a shame Shai is Canadian or it could be Ant vs Shai for many years to come. Now the NBA has to hope Holmgren becomes that teams best player which isn't happening but him being a star could be helpful.

It's also a shame people don't seem to like Tatum. I myself am a big fan but I can see why he's kinda boring.

Let’s see how the viewership #’s compare to the NFL games.

Two blowout NFL games on a streaming service.

Still think these numbers are overrated.

People are gathered with families and there’s nothing else on worth watching.

It’s nearly the same as cnn at airports.

My family at least my moms side cares so little about sports it is amazing. They didn't watch any NFL or any NBA on XMas and the only player they even knew from either league was Michael Jordan, Mahomes and Kelce. Had no effing clue about anything. I kind of admire it. They just spend hours talking about cars and motor oil though.

Only Jordan could come possibly close to competing with the NFL

Jordan drew 15 million Christmas Day in 93 which would be about 25 million today based of the percentage of the world’s population then and now.
But hey, congrats to Curry and LeBron on getting 20% of the way there.

You’re not seriously comparing TV ratings from 1993 to now, right?

The top network shows averaged 20-30M viewers an episode back then. Bit of a different media landscape 30 years ago LMAO

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">NFL and NBA viewership numbers for their Christmas games: <br><br>NFL (Netflix):<br>- Chiefs-Steelers: 24.1M <br>- Ravens-Texans: 24.3M <br><br>NBA:<br>- Knicks-Spurs: 4.9M <br>- Celtics-76ers: 5.1M <br>- Timberwolves-Mavs: 4.3M <br>- Lakers-Warriors: 7.7M <br>- Nuggets-Suns: 3.8M <br><br>Numbers weren’t… <a href="https://t.co/xx7DUkcTt4">pic.twitter.com/xx7DUkcTt4</a></p>&mdash; Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) <a href="https://twitter.com/MySportsUpdate/status/1872445231771025841?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 27, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

I’m comparing the amount of people that watched. What’s wrong with that?

Hong Kong LeBron will never admit being wrong.

The NFL owns Christmas Day now.

The distinct media landscape now compared to 1993 making it an apples to oranges comparison?

I'm not sure what you are getting at. NBA ratings suck compared to years past. Every other sport is up. What's your point?

You can't grasp that network television ratings are way down across the board from 30 years ago for reasons that have nothing to do with which NBA players are playing?

https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/nba...lion%20viewers.

Yeah, definitely gotta be a LeBron-Steph issue there.

Haven't you been shitting on the NBA and the ratings all the way up until the last Lebron post?

I shit on the NBA product when I think it is lacking, yes.

I don't make bogus comparisons to TV ratings from 30 years ago as if people are watching television the same way they did in the 1993 anymore.

I guess I'm not still following.

The 2024 NBA Finals, featuring the Dallas Mavericks and the Boston Celtics, averaged 11.3 million viewers across both TV and streaming platform. The 96 NBA finals averaged 29 million per game and we have added a few billion people to the worldwide population since then.

Almost like the rise of streaming and decline in network/cable television completely changed viewership trends across the board. Amazing how that worked.

I’m trying to figure out what you are saying. People quit watching sports because of AOL?

Yes? Viewership is down significantly on literally every form of televised media from what it was 30 years ago. How are you not aware of this?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crgm9z1dpkpo

This is another reason why the NFL is getting involved with Netflix right now. Young people aren't even watching television anymore.

Interesting since we just had the highest rated SB ever but the NBA finals are down 62% from the MJ era.

The Super Bowl still being a ratings behemoth doesn't change the underlying point.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">This is how long LeBron has been dominating the league <a href="https://t.co/otShma4t0P">pic.twitter.com/otShma4t0P</a></p>&mdash; LeBron History 🏀 (@bronhistory) <a href="https://twitter.com/bronhistory/status/1873095250170003770?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 28, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Turns 40 today.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Breaking records like a broken record. LeBron James passes Michael Jordan for MOST 30+ point games in NBA history. <a href="https://t.co/dkrGtuNnR3">pic.twitter.com/dkrGtuNnR3</a></p>&mdash; Los Angeles Lakers (@Lakers) <a href="https://twitter.com/Lakers/status/1875416464540496372?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 4, 2025</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

What about shrinking the diameter of the basket a bit? I don't know how much that would impact the number of 3's to 2's taken but just a thought.

Watch a game on YouTube from 1998.

Now go watch a OKC Thunder game from 2024.

I have no clue. None. Why anyone would prefer the 1998 play.

It's a lazy narrative created by people who don't even watch the NBA and have not for decades.

Bullshit. I’ve watched the NBA recently and it’s trickled down to even the lower levels and that shit is hard to watch to. You see 3’s, layups and free throws. That’s about it. I get the math says that’s the smart play but it’s boring as hell.

One of the great things about watching MJ was his work in the post which is non existent amongst players today.

More dunks in todays game. More explosive plays. Yes more threes too but who really likes watching back to the basket basketball? I've watched my share of Bill Self ball which is much more like late 90s ball than anything any NBA coaches do and it makes my eyes bleed. I watch OKC and the ball movement, the shooting, the spacing, passing and guys actually getting to display their athleticism. Its beautiful.

I love watching guys operate in the posts. It’s also something different. . Every game at every level looks the same. Space out, drive for a layup, kick out three or a lob at the bucket for a big. Same shit every game. Whoever wins the 3 point contest wins the game.

People do realize that SGA is doing all the things people are claiming they want to see nightly, no? He'll shoot an occasional 3, but that's not really his game. I understand that people like to whine in generalities, but let's at least pretend to be grounded in reality a bit.

Absolutely right. As Ive said before in the thread if there is any player in the NBA that stylistically plays like Jordan it is SGA. NBA should market as such but they don't.

NFL protects the shield and their product. Never saying a bad word. NBA broadcast partners, even Chuck who is funny, throw alot of NBA guys under the bus and question their toughness etc which doesn't help the narrative. Instead of propping up your day give some of the new guys their due. There has never, ever been more talent in the NBA.

The Lakers are on a roll. Better coach this season, and they are now tied for fourth in the Western Conference.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Still can&#39;t get over this<a href="https://twitter.com/memgrizz?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@memgrizz</a> <a href="https://t.co/oTkwVq8DSE">pic.twitter.com/oTkwVq8DSE</a></p>&mdash; Grizzlies On FanDuel Sports Network (@FDSN_Grizzlies) <a href="https://twitter.com/FDSN_Grizzlies/status/1879734038015218137?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 16, 2025</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Dunk was after the whistle, but still fun to watch!

This is hilarious. Sharpe knowing the answer but can’t bring himself to admit it like KCC.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1Dh...ibextid=wwXIfr

Mahomes is a mix of the two

Only LeBron Stan's think otherwise.

That was pretty funny.

An NBA comp is hard to find. Not many guys had the MVPs and multiple championships right away like this.

1 Super Bowl is worth more than 1 NBA Championship, which makes it even harder to find something on this level.

Yeah, Mahomes is on his own level completely in the NFL

LeBron and MJ are 1A and 1B in the NBA (with LeBron obviously being A)

I’ve always said Mahomes will get a farewell tour Lombardi. All the greats get one more at the end of their careers it seems. Likely the result of the team going all in since they know a rebuild is coming anyway.

Complete this 3-peat, and 5 Lombardis is the floor for Mahomes. Hard to imagine saying that and not exaggerating.

Can he find 2 more in between now and the farewell tour? Doesn’t sound ridiculous. Just finish this 3-peat. Please.

Lol another player fixing games. How do you all take this shit seriously

Do you think the NFL is somehow more immune than the NBA to fixing or something?