Back in the NBA bubble, basketblogger Ethan Strauss wrote a super hot take about the NBA and viewership numbers. The thrust of it was that the league had errored in being a bit too culturally progressive (among other things) and the declining NBA ratings over the last decade would seriously hinder the league in its new TV negotiations.
The above was one of my favorite responses to this point.
I was reminded about it because of this tweet above from Richard Deitsch. If you are curious, the best and most detailed response to that sentiment was this from Defector’s Dan McQuade
Across the decades the supposed causes of the NBA’s decline have varied, but the blame is rarely if ever assigned to the league itself, just the black players, and for not doing more to appease racists. The arguments have become more reliant on coded language over time, but the underlying sentiment hasn’t changed at all.
Last night I sort of half-watched the game against the Thunder. When I was a kid, the road games for the Spurs were broadcast, and the home games were on PPV or something. It was not until the rise of regional sports networks like our current Fox Sports Net (before that it was named like three other things and I remember it showed some random stuff like indoor soccer) after the lockout that the league started showing the home games.
There are a lot of entertainment options. Too many, probably. Netflix has hundreds of thousands of hours of shows and documentaries that you can enjoy and not watch a fairly forgettable Spurs-Thunder matchup. The league and the sport were conceived of as in-person draws. Spectacles. When you see an NBA game in the arena up close it is hard to ignore. The players are giants and the game is fast.
People get used to anything, unfortunately. It is part of our ability to adapt. If you had to make your living in the beautiful Great West of the United States, it did not behoove you to be overly captivated by nature’s wonders. You had to go about your business.
It used to be that you could watch your team and the occasional national game. Now, you can see clips and highlights of the game’s best. Maybe when you tune back in to your local squad full of young up-and-comers (the not-quite-readies) they look terrible in comparison.
Again, I half-watched the game. I was doing real, food-on-the-table work. I have made a point to make sure I read to my children before bed so by the time I came back and saw the Spurs had kept that little 5-to-10 point lead on the Thunder to the end I moved on.
I wrote on the old version of this thing (archived locally, maybe I will unarchive it and put it up on like, my personal site or something) how some of the best plays I have seen Manu make were in “forgettable” games in seasons that did not end with any titles. One of my favorite moments watching Kahwi was seeing him develop the post-up game and put it on display against the Clippers in 2015. The Spurs did not win the title.
Maybe I am getting older and more wistful, or maybe I am getting older and more cranky. Whatever the cause, I find myself annoyed at the casual dismissal of good shit on display. DeMar DeRozan is not the best player in the league (or the 82nd) but he is fun to watch. To fully appreciate it requires some investment. For me, that has always been doing the thing. I played basketball in HS (poorly) so it is a little easier to see how this from CJ McCollum is awesome. If you have not hooped before, perhaps you have tried to improve some skill. You know what it is like to spend the time to get good at a thing, and then add to it. McCollum has added pieces to his game. It is hard work. It requires lots of training and then mental adjustments and all that. DeRozan shooting threes is not just him standing elsewhere and firing them up. It is an adjustment in his game, and mindset. There is drama and narrative to all that. And I love it.