Did you know that the Milwaukee Bucks have won 14 straight games? I just learned that they where on that long of a winning streak when they beat the Los Angeles Clippers 119-91 last night for that 14th straight win.
Now you would think a team on this kind of a run would be highlighted, but as I was checking the top NBA stories on the ESPN website the Bucks weren’t even listed as a top story. Of course I wasn’t surprised at all when there was a story about LeBron James listed as a top story.
You have to wonder if this is part of the reason that the NBA ratings are in the tank. I’m not a huge basketball fan; so all I do is look at the final scores and see who’s winning. If it would’ve been pointed out to me that the Bucks where on this type of winning streak I would’ve taken the time to watch a little bit of their game. Instead they’ve won 14 games in a row and I haven’t seen a minute of any of those games.
People might also be surprised to know tat the Bucks have the same record 20-3 as the Los Angeles Lakers even tough you’d think that the Lakers might be the only team that is in the NBA. While the Lakers are a good team there are fans of other teams and they’re not going to care what the Lakers are doing; so they’re not going to tune into those games.
Now I get that the Lakers are a good team; with quite a bit of help from tampering and the NBA they’ve found their way back into the limelight and apparently ESPN thought that this would be good enough to bring the ratings back up. If you remember everyone was under the impression that the television ratings where down because the Lakers weren’t a playoff team. Now the Lakers are clearly the best team in the Western Conference are the ratings are lower now than they where last season.
It does seem that the NBA itself might’ve realized that something is going on with their television ratings as there has been some talk about making changes. Would a mid-season tournament help the ratings? Would a shorter regular season get fans more interested in watching? How about expanding the playoffs; would that help regular season ratings? I don’t think that any of these changes would make that big of a difference in the ratings, but a mid-season tournament could be of some interest. Of course I would have to see how they lay things out and if all of the teams where involved.
The problem with the NBA might not be the way it’s formatted for television, but the actual on court product. The game has really become focused on the 3-point shot. How many times during a game do you see a player pounding his dribble at the top of the key trying to either get a 3-point shot for himself or to beat his defender off the dribble. Now if he does beat that defender and drives to the hoop that player is rarely looking to score in today’s game. In most cases that player is going to kick it out to one of his four teammates who have been standing out at the 3-point line while he’s been dribbling. How exciting is this to watch? NBA players are all fantastic athletes and fans don’t want to watch players stand at the 3-point line and catch and shoot the basketball unless it All-Star weekend and they’re competing to win the 3-point shooting contest.
Another part of he problem is that the league may just be too top heavy. Even though the Dallas Mavericks and the Denver Nuggets are off to good starts to the season; do you believe either one of those teams will represent the Western Conference in the NBA Finals? It’s been pretty clear since Anthony Davis was traded to the Lakers and the Clippers signed Kawhi Leonard and traded for Paul George that one of the team from Los Angeles will be the Western Conference team that’s in the NBA Finals. Now normally we’d throw the Golden State Warriors into this conversation, but injuries have decimated their team and instead of playing for a championship this season they’ll be headed into the draft lottery.
Now the Eastern Conference is a little more wide open. Milwaukee has established itself right now as the top team, but there are challengers. It’s possible that the Boston Celtics, Miami Heat, Philadelphia 76ers and even the defending champion Toronto Raptors could all compete for the Eastern Conference title.
You would think that competitive Eastern Conference would be good for television ratings and maybe it will come playoff time, but for some reason fans just don’t seem to have a lot of interest in the NBA regular season. Maybe as the season goes on and it’s gets closer to the playoffs fans will be interested in regular season games to see which team gets the top seed in the Eastern Conference.
Of course this also brings me back to my point of how the league is televised. Will they take the focus off of LeBron James and actually give some television time to an Eastern Conference team. We’re talking about a 30 team league that just seems to just try and focus on a few teams and players. It’s clear that this approach isn’t working and they’ll have to try and do something else, but will they? It’s generally and older generation that runs television and you have to wonder if they will be able to understand that or how things need to be changed.
Now I have heard that there are people who dislike the game because of the officiating and I can understand being upset about some of the calls and on-calls. I mean just this week the referees missed a clear dunk by James Harden in a game that the Houston Rockets ended up losing by 2 points. They also miss James taking 3 1/2 steps with the basketball without dribbling while a referee was looking right at him. I’m not sure why that referee didn’t call traveling, but I bet it had something to do with the fact that it was James that had the basketball and not some unknown player. I don’t think that poor officiating is a cause for poor ratings, but it might turn a few people away that the NBA might want back.
What do you think of the NBA game right now?
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