re: The NBA: Is it Dying?

Ghey

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No its not. The Cavs have been a part of Cleveland since 1971 and moving the team has never really been an option...That equates to supporting the team. Many places have lost teams since 1971.

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Not at all, if it was so you're saying the Browns left b/c of attendance then? The Sonics?

This is a really good question.

The NBA is losing money. Last year the league put on this image to the public that everything was going fine, but in actuality the NBA lost a lot of money last year. I heard the league lost $400 mill last year? Don’t know if that’s accurate.
This is the NBA’s biggest problem and it remains something the league has neglected for years. The NBA, in my opinion, has a bigger generational gap than any other professional league. I feel with the NFL, young or old, you watch it because you like football. Sure you might like different teams, but at the end of the day you watch the NFL because you like football. With the NBA it’s more tricky.

My dad loves basketball. Played it his entire life. He and his buddies may watch a couple NBA Final games, but never a regular season game. Certain teams have a tendency of having one guy do the work on offense, while the remaining four just stand around. That’s lousy basketball to watch. He also doesn’t watch it because in his eyes the league consists of far too many players who are either lazy, selfish and/or spoiled brats who get paid way too much money to do a job they don’t give it their all. (Maybe that’s a result of all the commercialization.)

Now granted some of what he said is completely over the top, but there are parts of what he says that are true. Prime example is New York Knick center Eddy Curry. Guy had all the talent in the world, but he’s a lazy, fat arse. He has no drive, he doesn’t give a shite, but he still makes you the fan show up and pay to see him play. And he also has a ridiculous contract. And then there’s Gilbert Arenas. I’m supposed to root for a guy like him when he doesn’t even have the common sense to think to himself, “Maybe I shouldn’t bring a loaded weapon into a locker room?” And finally there’s LeBron. All this leader stuff was a part time act. When the going got tough he bailed. Michael Jordan, after being drafted by Chicago, thought to himself it’s my job to make Chicago a winner. It’s my RESPONSIBILITY to change this franchise around. Guys like LeBron preach it, then bail.

The NBA also struggles because there’s no real league leader. In the NFL you have guys like Manning, McNabb and Brees, but in the NBA the most popular guys are guys with extra luggage. He is an incredible basketball player, but Kobe Bryant was accused of rape. Think what you want. LeBron James. Enough said. Tim Duncan? Okay there’s one. Carmelo? Puh-lease. Kevin Durant? Maybe in the future.

Officiating in the NBA is worse than any league out there. We bitch out the NCAA or NFL, but nothing holds a candle the NBA. It’s so disgusting to find out that refs cheated in games. The Tim Donaghey incident in itself is a huge eye sore for the NBA for years to come, regardless of how hard Stern tries to sweep it under the rug. I mean we yell it as fans but to actually find out that the refs were cheating is beyond comprehension. So how do you watch a league that lets something like this happen? Or better yet how do you watch a league that seems to say it was Donaghey acting alone? Why does the league insist on keeping the same refs that time and time again have questionable officiating? (I can reel off countless stats, but I don’t care to.)

I agree with what someone said earlier – the league has changed rules deliberately to make the league more of an offensive league. The number of touch fouls is embarrassing. Even worse, Stern made it so technicals are issued the instant anyone complains (shows emotion) after a foul is called. He said he did it because the NBA was falling out of touch with its viewers. If Stern really wanted more people to watch the NBA he would stop having games where the whistle goes off every 4 seconds. I like basketball, not free throw contests.

The worst is when the blatant officiating clouds the biggest moment of the season like the 2010 NBA Finals. It doesn’t matter what side of the fence you were on, whether you hate or love the Lakers, the fact is the Lakers shot more free throws in the 4th quarter of the Game 7 than the Boston Celtics shot the entire game. The point is instead of watching one team triumphantly pull out the victory – we instead watched a free throw contest that completely robbed us all of what we wanted to see that evening – basketball at it’s best.

Despite the league’s shortcomings I’ll probably still end up watching the NBA Playoffs and yet again find myself wondering why a 95 year old man like Dick Bavetta still has a job.

I was a huge NBA while Jordan played and have slowly became disconnected (except in my brief gambling runs -they never last long)

I think the reasons are:

1. Playoffs are too long, the first round should not be best of 7

2. Too long of gaps between playoff games, shorten the season a couple of weeks and stop giving so much down time between playoffs games

3. Players complain about every single call....literally, not one foul call during the course of a game gets called without any bitching

4. LeBron is a douche

I hate basketball so much I won't even watch sportscenter from the Superbowl to opening day of baseball season.

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Dude im not reading all that shite You should try out for a sports writing position though.

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ha ha ha. I don't know what happened. I started typing and son of a bitch next thing you know it's 10,000 words and I'm thinking to myself, "Dammit now I'm the guy that posts the 10,000 word response."

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where you can go 16-0 in certain conferences and lose one game and not make the tournament?

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Let's at least be honest. No one is following the SWAC. That 16-0 thing is only true of conferences no one watches in the first place. I love college basketball, but the only OVC game I'll watch all year is their title game.

Anyway, the NBA, of course, is hardly in dire straits and I know this started as a joke thread, but the NBA does have an attendance problem. The NHL tends to outdraw the NBA in non Sun Belt cities. It's not a huge gap, but you naver want to lose to the NHL if you wish to be considered a healthy league.

Attendence matters more than people think. Let's say the average seat costs $50 for an NBA game, averaging the best seats against the nosebleeds. You get 20,000 people to show up, a low number, and that's $1 million in receipts. The NBA has 41 home games, so that's $41 miliion. We haven't even gotten into concessions and parking, which is a veritable goldmine. And 20,000 is anemic attendence. It's probably not a reach to say many teams (though certainly not all) clear $100 million on hosting games each season. That's a significant revenue stream.

TV matters for sure, but so does fannies in the seats.

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I haven't seriously and passionately watched the NBA since Jordan retired the second time. I am not a fan of some of the rules like defensive 3 seconds and traveling being widespread and uncalled.

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Watching the NBA, I honestly get the feeling that I am watching something similar to wrestling.