While a league like the NFL might thrive on parity and team focus, the NBA thrives on individual stardom and compelling rivalries. Several teams have young stars that make for must see television. And a lot of these stars have a very strong social media presence which creates drama for what would be lackluster games. You're either tuning in to root for someone, or because you hate them and want to see them fail. Heck, a lot of us on this board are watching the games to see Houston succeed and OKC to fail.
Pace and space playing style, new generation of talent, many improved teams... The NBA has been great fun. Now, if they could make the whole spectacle last under two hours...
And the NFL has no parity and the game has devolved into "who has the best QB", literally every other sport except for the NFL's ratings have gone up
I dont think the NBA thrives on stardom as much as some want to believe. The hard core NBA fans thrive on star players, but these are the same people who thought OKC would be #2 in the league and were pretty much unstoppable. What the passive NBA fan wants to see is competition. They dont want to know the NBA champ before the season even starts. Unfortunately that is the way its been for most of the last decade. While more high caliber players have stacked up, they are at least now forming some competition. We now have 3-5 competitive teams with the rest of the league being very mediocre compare to before where the rest of the league wasn't as mediocre but the competitive teams were only fighting for second place. Fans want competition for first place, not second place.
I really don't believe this at all. The San Antonio/Detroit finals was one of the most competitive finals in a long time, but had incredibly low ratings. The finals for years before that series were laughers, either sweeps or 4-1, but no one tuned in to watch games 6 and 7. People just found those teams boring. Ratings are incredibly star driven, and driven towards charismatic stars at that. Not many people tune into Kawhi Leonard because he's quiet, but they'll watch Westbrook because they either hate him or love him. The NBA doesn't seem any more competitive this year than usual. There are always 3-5 elite teams and this year Golden State continues to stand out due to their stacked roster. What drives people to watch are narratives and rivalries. The Embiid/Drummond feud draws ratings, not the competitiveness of either team. The biggest games are star driven: Lebron vs Kyrie, KD vs Westbrook are must watch television. If you aren't caught up in the history of each player the games can actually be quite vanilla. I've tried to get friends into the NBA and even if they know basketball they have a hard time getting into it unless I explain that so and so used to be on this team, these guys used to be teammates, these teams played each other in last year's finals, etc.
i think it's because the league has so many watchable players now. from the established superstars (lebron, harden, kyrie, durant, curry, westbrook), to the emerging stars (embiid, simmons, porzingis, giannis), to the pretty good but not quite super duper stars (lillard, wall, kemba), etc. even the crap teams have interesting players like donovan mitchell or dennis smith jr or devin booker. on top of that, the interesting storylines like lonzo ball's struggles, seems like the "middle" is even more competitive with teams like the pistons or magic not being pushovers. it's really only a small handful of complete unwatchable teams for the hardcore fan and the casual fan has more than enough material as well.
Lonzo Ball FG % = 32% NBA Viewership up 32%. Coincidence? I think not. Paging @RocketsTruth Per NBA.com http://www.nba.com/players/lonzo/ball/1628366
I also think a big reason is bc the season started 2 weeks earlier. There are less games on per week. It makes me feel like I’m watching nba less. So im more likely to put aside time twice a week to watch a game rather than 3-4 times a week. I wouldn’t think of it as a big deal if I missed a game. It feels more playoff like that we play twice a week. It takes time to get used to but I like it. NFL gets more viewership bc that one game during the week is hyped to the max. If nba plays twice a week. We have more time to hype up our games and get more viewership. The spacing in schedule is good
People want to watch sports and don’t want to watch the NFL. Getting their fix with MLB and NBA. NFL product is awful and over saturated. Like when you used to go to a killer restaurant with scratch tortillas then started buying them from Fiesta and preheated their fajitas instead of cooking them fresh. Coughchuyscough
The protest thing really took a toll on the NFL. I know a couple of hardcore football fans that stopped watching due to it.
It helps that the new young stars are all characters, on and off the court. Porzingis, Giannis, Embiid...all have their own kind of charisma, fun to watch. Embiid's social media is genius, and he even manages to get the best out of other players too. Like when he trashtalked Whiteside and Whiteside called him embiideclipse. Classic.
The empirical evidence suggests otherwise. NBA viewership and how competitive the finals are are nearly correlated. While this suggests that parity among all teams on an aggregate level is fairly irrelevant, it also appears that competition at the top is even more important than star players. When the league has one team that is unquestionably better than the others, the NBA product suffers. It operates best when talent is concentrated among the top 4-6 teams. The league having “story lines,” is an artifact of this type of competition. They don’t need to be invented a la Westbrook last year or Kyrie this year if they actually develop on their own.
I'll watch any good basketball matchup (whether it is rivals, individual players, personal storylines, etc) whereas I would never watch and NFL of MLB game that doesn't involve my team. The lack of parity is a good thing for the NBA imo. It creates cycles of villains that everyone roots against (Warriors, Lebron), rewards truly well run organizations, and long game team building is key.
