Bad? There's bad, then there's 50 feet of ****, then there's the Jazz.
All Star Weekend from San Francisco: Rising Stars, 3-point Contest, Dunk Contest, All Star Game
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Bad? There's bad, then there's 50 feet of ****, then there's the Jazz.
Schrödinger's Gerbil
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I'm not convinced teams still won't load manage, even with a shortened season. It's become a pretty ingrained aspect of the NBA landscape. Plus, I keep hearing and reading from podcasters and pundits that the regular season doesn't matter: it's all about the playoffs. Is that mindset going to change lopping off 15 or so games from the regular season? I suppose there's diminishing returns to this argument the more games are reduced, but I don't see the NBA lopping off too many games. After all, fewer games means less revenue and thus less bargaining power for higher salaries. NBA players may gripe about the length of the season, but I suspect they'd be less wild about lopping off 1/3 or so of their salaries.
Tremendous Upside
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They'd be losing massive amounts of money with that approach.
Like it or not, the young generation of fans doesn't care about the full games. No attention span. They care about the things you listed – online gossip, beefs, what players are wearing in the tunnel, shoe deals, all the draft BS, highlight packages, trolling other teams' fans on Instagram.
You can yell at clouds all you want, but the experience of "pure NBA basketball" is never coming back. The game is not the main product anymore, and that's 100% by design.
Two hours of continuous basketball doesn't fit in the blink-and-you-miss-it world where the need to concentrate on something is seen as frightening and alien.
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Highly doubt that. The NFL markets their league around the game of football and it’s great. The biggest sport in the world, soccer markets itself in the sport. The NBA is struggling, there’s no doubt about that. Slop isn’t saving them, a better product will.
The NBA makes the majority of its money from broadcast rights, not instagram likes. Viewership is down and that’s a reflection of the product which is nationally televised games. If you’re talking about twitter likes, viral podcast clips, or general sports media you might be into something. But that’s not what makes the NBA and the owner of its broadcast rights money.
Money is still going up regardless of viewership dropping, but that doesn’t mean more money could be made with more viewership. The NBA and its broadcast partners have adopted this approach of promoting the slop, and people love the slop, but nobody wants to watch the games. If the slop resulted in more viewership aka the way they make more money that would be one thing, but the opposite is true.
Schrödinger's Gerbil
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Which makes the NBA's insistence of fielding TV commentators who constantly trash the current NBA product puzzling. Is there any other sport in which prominent TV commentators routinely trash the on-field/court/ice/etc. product?
Saw someone mention something on another board, but it might be worth thinking about an Elam-type threshold, but instead of points you do it by steals or assists or something that encourages winning/competitive basketball. So, maybe still a traditional 4 quarters, unless one team reaches 15 steals or 30 assists then they win the game.
LogGrad98
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The Jazz Wonderbra
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If you had to write checks for $50 million dollars a year for an elite player... would you risk putting them in harms way on a weekend that means nothing to satisfy a bunch of bored viewers? Nah.
If you made $50,000,000 every year would you risk your career for an All Star game weekend to be slightly more competitive? Nah...
If you want competition, you need players who arent extremely valuable assets to themselves and their teams.
If you made $50,000,000 every year would you risk your career for an All Star game weekend to be slightly more competitive? Nah...
If you want competition, you need players who arent extremely valuable assets to themselves and their teams.
The Jazz Wonderbra
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If the all star weekend were to include a showcase of young talent trying to make the league, that might be fun.
Say, International vs US up and coming players? Kind of like the McDonalds game.
All the draft gurus would love it. It would be cool if the league invited U18 guys expected to be drafted in the lottery to showcase themselves.
It runs the same risk of being a risk averse game... except there is money to be gained by standing out. That would increase competition.
At the least fans would get a peak in to the next generation and with scouts and gms watching, it would be hard not to compete their hardest to show what they can do.
Say, International vs US up and coming players? Kind of like the McDonalds game.
All the draft gurus would love it. It would be cool if the league invited U18 guys expected to be drafted in the lottery to showcase themselves.
It runs the same risk of being a risk averse game... except there is money to be gained by standing out. That would increase competition.
At the least fans would get a peak in to the next generation and with scouts and gms watching, it would be hard not to compete their hardest to show what they can do.
Agreed, like I get the existence of a Skip Bayless/Stephen A Smith. The entire point of their show is to be slop and it gets people to watch their 30 minute show or like their tweet or whatever.
But why the hell does TNT and ESPN have people working their games that actively saying the game is **** and also don’t care about the game? It’s like the NBA saw Kendrick Perkins getting lots of retweets for ragebaits on twitter and thought that would work well on TV.
There are really good broadcasters out there and they are the ones who actively care about the game that is going on. The thing about these “hater” types is that they really just like the sound of their own voice. It could be the greatest game going on, but they would be more interested into turning it into their own podcast segment.
I think a large problem is that the individuals who say this stuff….they themselves benefit. You have Mike Breen going viral every now and then for saying “Bang!” And those are great moments. But for everyone one of those moments, you have a million other viral moments of “X hates on NBA”. The individual who provides the slop benefits, but the product suffers as a whole.
Handlogten's Heros
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Perkins at least is kinda the bumbling idiot. Draymond is the guy who's like "basketball is boring and this format is stupid, also eff these kids and the warriors are winning the title". Just some serious main character stuff.
In both cases those two are there to make it their own podcast. IMO, this really started with JVG when he started to outright ignore the game and go viral with his rants/monologues. From time to time that is OK, but please get somebody in there who is actually interested in the game and making the game interesting to a viewer. I really think the NBA sees Perk/Dray's social media engagement after saying some dumb **** and think that is good....it's awful. Makes the broadcast unbearable and it encourages everyone in the NBA media to act the same.
The most important thing on any given night needs to be the game that's happening in front of you. You don't have to go full CHO pbp guy, but if he can make Hornets basketball exciting we should be able to find someone who can make the all star game exciting. Instead, we got people calling the actual NBA finals who are using it as an opportunity to go viral and make it a podcast.
We had Reggie and Shaq talking about Bol Bol during the very limited basketball we got between ads. Are you ****ing kidding me!!!!