[Rankin] ... Kevin Durant continuing to address #NBA viewership being down. "I take this serious. I'm locked in as to why people don't want to watch us play."

https://x.com/DuaneRankin/status/1872176949801504956?t=sOlhzun3lYo5ImePn8Xpwg&s=19

6.5k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

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u/Tel3visi0n Spurs 1d ago

All of you are answering as basketball fans. The real reason is the games don’t matter. There are no stakes compared to the NFL where every game matters for playoffs and division standings.

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u/DeeOhMm Heat 1d ago

Crazy how far down I had to go for this. I had LP and YouTubeTV last year and I rarely watched because the regular season feels meaningless until March.

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u/nicehouseenjoyer 1d ago

Actually the regular season gets worse towards the end because the bad teams are all tanking, apart from the very few that are fighting for the last spots in the playoffs.

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u/Darkstrike86 1d ago

100% same for me.

I have the games up on my 2nd monitor while I game, but I never truly start caring till March.

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u/_Hollywood___ Lakers 1d ago

People would lambast you for this take not so long ago, but I guess it truly just became undeniable. Casual fans have been saying this for years. I still watch cause i always have. I will say though, even during the lakers tanking seasons, I had more interest in the league than now.

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u/TooWashedUp 1d ago

The regular season not mattering has definitely always been a criticism but I think the big mistake the league made was allowing teams to confirm that. You have good teams resting their best players because they don't want them to get hurt in what is considered a meaningless game, and you have bad teams purposely not wanting to make the playoffs. So you have fans knowing that teams are either only thinking about the postseason or taking whole seasons off.

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u/Sampladelic Mavericks 1d ago

It became undeniable once the league literally created an entirely new award in the beginning of the season just to make people feel like the early November games mean anything.

The truth is the NFL is just more exiciting because their players give their all every game. You don’t get that in the MLB or basketball

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u/NoPause9609 1d ago

This. I’ve been a fan for over 30 years but these days barely watch a game until after the boring All Star weekend bullshit is over.

Nothing played before March has any kind of stakes at all.

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u/Vince7oh2 1d ago

I always said the all star break is when the nba season starts

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u/Tasty_Check_7124 1d ago

Honestly this is probably it. We all know what "playoff basketball" is, and it exists because we understand that the average regular season game doesn't really matter so teams are constantly resting guys, playing lazier defense, and generally just playing uglier basketball.

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u/stml Warriors 1d ago

Yup. Everybody keeps talking about access and pricing when guess what, people don’t even give a shit about pirating the streams for regular season games anymore. Tons of people don’t watch even if it’s free.

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u/XXISavage 1d ago

I wonder what they could do to make it more interesting. The model works in the NFL because the regular season isn't stuffed with so many games, each one generally matters.

I don't watch baseball so I'd be curious to know what they're doing to keep their regular season interesting since that should theoretically suffer from the same flaw of "too many games that don't really matter."

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u/FriendshipBest9151 1d ago

Baseball has changed but the way it used to work is that barley any teams made the playoffs, so regular season mattered.

NBA plays too many games and lets too many teams in the playoffs. You can make without even trying in the easy.

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u/Saitsu 15h ago

Baseball kinda "solved" it by going the complete opposite direction. It understands that realistically, no one is going to watch all 162 games of the season. It's a definite "leave on in the background while you're doing other things" game. So they just made it a goal of trying to improve the experience both on TV and in the ballpark for the few times you do sit down to watch prior to the playoffs, rather than making the goal making more people "care" at all. In other words, unlike a lot of people in here who went "Hey, finally have time and ability to watch a game! ...holy shit, that was miserable to sit through, I'm never doing this again" they want "Hey, finally have time and ability to watch a game! ...Hey, that was pretty breezy and nice, I'll have to make it a point of doing this again".

Sure as hell isn't perfect, and the commish is still miserably bad and there's still a bunch of issues, but at the very least it is a different shade of philosophy.

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u/Skank_hunt42 Thunder 1d ago

I wonder what they could do to make it more interesting.

They tried the NBA Cup.....and no one watched. IMO the league bet on Zion and Lemelo to becoming stars flopped and now there's a whole bunch of non American stars in the NBA who don't care to be the face of the NBA as it's problem.

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u/SharKCS11 Pistons 23h ago

If the product was good enough, people would find a way to watch. I bet a huge chunk of Americans watch stuff like UFC and Formula 1 illegally here. Especially UFC.

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u/bai_ren 1d ago

Wish they would move to playing BO3 or BO5 series during the regular season like they do in baseball. Stop the ridiculous road trips with six games in six cities. I want to see coaching and adjustments between games.

Drum up some buzz for the series and make each one more meaningful than just another game in a long, drawn out season of games.

I’m curious how ratings compared for their in season tournament too.

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u/EmuMan10 Suns 1d ago

Yeah the series in baseball do help with this. Despite having a much longer season, the interest hasn’t dropped for baseball but grown. They also took away some of the stuff making it less entertaining. Incentivizing stealing, getting rid of the shift, the pitch clock, all of that helped them without fundamentally altering the game

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u/fuckitimgoingdeep Rockets 1d ago

It's also nice as a fan if you lose to a team you usually have a chance to play them again tomorrow and get even.

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u/epheisey Pistons 1d ago

I'll admit that the recent changes have helped recent trends, but it's a stretch to claim that series in baseball really help. Those have existed forever, and viewership had been in a decline more or less since 2000. Interest in baseball has grown compared to say the last few seasons, but they're still well below their 2016, 2017 numbers, which were also lower than their numbers in the early 2000s.

And it certainly helps that the last World Series included the two most popular teams in the world.

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u/EmuMan10 Suns 1d ago

Well they’re never matching the ratings of 2016. That’s the outlier of interest for baseball because of the cubs breaking the curse

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u/Whiskey_hotpot 1d ago

Great point. If a team plays 4 times in the season, first shorten the season... but if not make it 2 back to backs.

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u/SimpleSurrup 1d ago

Yeah but make it winner takes all so you lose 5 games if you lose the series 2-3.

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u/No-Criticism-2587 1d ago

"Playoff basketball" just means teams only have to play against equal teams finally. The other garbage 24 teams who have no chance are out or eliminated first round.

If regular season games were competitive it would be fun to watch.

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u/hangingsliders 1d ago

More than half of the teams are going to make the playoffs, which last for so long that it’s like an entirely new season. Not much point in watching an increasingly mid product before then.

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u/NoPause9609 1d ago

Couldn’t agree more. The play-in concept sucks.

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u/MDRtransplant Jazz 1d ago

NBA would never go back but I think having the first round of playoffs be a 5 game series was so much better than a 7 game series.

The playoffs last too long

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u/faithminusone [SAS] Manu Ginobili 1d ago

Yeah everyone saying it’s because it’s too hard to watch, but I don’t know anyone who even cares to watch national games. The product is just not super entertaining to non diehard nba fans. Lack of defense, constant foul baiting and flopping, incessant hero ball and an over reliance on the three ball are the characteristics that define so many regular season games anymore. A regular season nba game just isn’t very appealing to the average joe anymore.

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u/F1gur1ng1tout 1d ago

I was a die hard nba fan. Not that long ago, I could name just about every roster down to the 12th man. The games don’t matter and the game just doesn’t have the same charm to me, precisely due to those reasons.

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u/Aggravating_Video258 76ers 1d ago

Wow, are you me? Haha I’m in the exact same boat. I feel like the NBA has just turned into a contest of who is better at exploiting rules and fouls, and every team plays more or less the same way. I like how you said it, it’s taken the charm away.

I never thought I’d be “this guy”, but I’ve started watching way more college ball. The players are way worse, but it reminds me more of the game I love, and it’s been fun to follow. Each team has a unique identity, it feels like there is less stoppage from fouls (I have no data to back this up before someone replies and “well actually”’s me), and the games are quicker.

I’m still a league pass subscriber, watch probably 2 games a week, but it’s nowhere near as interesting as it was even 5 years ago

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u/EmuMan10 Suns 1d ago

Well with being halves vs quarters, shorter in game time over all, it goes by faster which makes it feel like there’s less stoppage even if there’s a lot of them. The final minute of a close game still might take forever but we got there quicker

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u/TubbyTimsKFC Bulls 1d ago

College basketball is vastly more entertaining than regular season NBA

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u/_Hollywood___ Lakers 1d ago

I’m not even American and I’ve started following UCLA and UCONN for this reason 😭. Honestly, I get it. I know college ball will probably look like the NBA eventually, but I’ll enjoy it for now. Last nights lakers game was awesome, but yea it rarely feels that way in today’s NBA. I’m sure Celtics fans are happy, but man, I just can’t do it with all the 3s, and I bet some of them find it boring too, but don’t care cause it works.

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u/mylanguage Knicks 1d ago

FIBA basketball is borderline perfect btw -

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u/MeatTornado25 1d ago

The games didn't matter when you were a diehard either. It's been the same 82 game schedule for over 50 years.

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u/henryofskalitzz Supersonics 1d ago

Yes people here don’t realize the reason games are split across so many channels and platforms to begin with is because the majority of NBA regular season games don’t get enough viewers to be consistently TV relevant. There’s a huge gap in viewership numbers between a Lakers vs Celtics matchup and a Hornets vs. Celtics matchup

That’s how you end up with “Bally Sports” somehow being the highest bidder for game rights lol

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u/tigull Suns 1d ago

I believe the 82-game regular season was first designed with the live audience and mind as it was pretty much the only way to bring every team to every NBA city and still justify the conference system. Today's landscape is very different of course, and the sum of all other factors mentioned in these threads brought us where we are.

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u/soyboysnowflake Nuggets 1d ago

In the nfl most “national games” are on NBC (or peacock) or CBS (or Amazon/ paramount) - those services are either free to me or I’m already paying for them

For the NBA you will not find a game on free tv (ABC) until the NBA finals (and I think yesterday’s games?)

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u/Natitudinal 1d ago

Well ABC has a 'Saturday Showcase' or something, usually after the Super Bowl-NFL season winds up. Problem is it's the same rotation of the usual 5-6 teams or so. Basically like Christmas but only one game per week and lasting for the next 2 or so months.

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u/SecretiveMop Knicks 1d ago

This is exactly it. I’m an extremely casual NBA fan who pretty much only catches Knicks games here and there and will watch national games on holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Outside of those instances, I don’t really have an incentive to watch games because they’re simply boring to me, and I always see that games are on national TV almost everyday so it isn’t like they aren’t available to me. The league being about three point shots has taken away any kind of physical game and even if it wasn’t as much of a three point game as it is, you can’t lay a finger on a player without it being a foul anyway. Defense is nonexistent which takes away an entire aspect of the game. The flopping is ridiculous and is a huge turn off. Things like super teams and players just deciding not to play for maintenance was a massive turn off for me and soured me on the league even if those things have lessened a bit. There’s just not really anything appealing to me about the NBA and I’d much rather watch a random NFL or NHL game that’s on than a random NBA game.

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u/Cheese_danish54 1d ago

Lack of defense, constant foul baiting and flopping, incessant hero ball and an over reliance on the three ball are the characteristics that define so many regular season games anymore.<

This is exactly it for me. I used to watch basketball all the time growing up. I remember when the typical final score was like 101-97, and if a game went up to 115-112 it was considered a high scoring, no defense affair. Now I’ll check my sports score app and see games ending up 142-137. All of the points you mentioned above play into this scoring discrepancy. There is no defense, not necessarily for lack of ability but just due to the way the game is called/played now. It’s not fun watching guys chuck up 3s and play their entire game from the foul line. I hate watching guys spend minutes every game arguing with refs instead of getting back to play defense.

I didn’t fully realize this until I watched the Olympics this past summer. I felt like I was watching teams actually PLAY the game of basketball for the first time in years. When guys foul baited, the refs refused to play their game. When they argued with refs, they were ignored or given technicals.

The product simply isn’t entertaining to me anymore. And this is before we even factor in the 82 game regular season where you can’t really keep up with every game. And when you can tune in, odds are you may not even see your favorite players because so many stars skip 20+ games for rest (which is honestly understandable given the length of the season/post season, but it still stinks as a viewer).

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u/SlayerXZero Bulls 1d ago

Seriously. Too many games plus the mid season tournament. Too much jump shoots 3 point bullshit and flopping. NBA needs more drama and to incentize more physical play. The also need to make it so that stars aren’t hopping teams all the fucking time.

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u/epanek Cavaliers 1d ago

NBA players used to be known as athletic Freaks. Shooting 3’s is the opposite of athletic when you compare driving to the hoop.

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u/tlawtlawtlaw 1d ago

It’s definitely a combination, equalish blame imo

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u/nawksnai Raptors 1d ago

I’d argue that if you watched more games, you would be more invested in supporting your team, and in watching in future games.

If you are used to not being able to watch games, you don’t care about missing another one.

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u/MDRtransplant Jazz 1d ago

But the problem remains of getting interest from non-hardcore NBA fans.

Casuals have zero interest in watching most of their local market teams, let alone games with 2 teams they don't support

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u/lOan671 Washington Bullets 1d ago

It annoys me because it’s so obviously people projecting what they want the problem to be. Pretty much every “ratings are down” post I’ve seen is looking at ratings on ESPN or TNT compared to the year(s) before, not the games being broadcast by RSNs. Cord cutting definitely contributes but the decline in viewership far outpaces that and is beyond what we’re seeing in other sports.

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u/mdaniel018 Pacers 1d ago

The WNBA is blowing up, it’s not like people are disinterested in basketball

A huge factor I don’t see people taking about is the collapse of NCAA basketball due to the one-and-done era

It used to be that American rookies were basically household names among sports fans who had watched them compete for years in college, watched them improve and dominate. Just go look at Caitlin Clark to see what kind of audience an excellent player can build in college

If she was a man, she would have been in the league after her freshman year, and only people who watch basketball would know who she is

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u/ronaldo119 [PHI] Jumaine Jones 1d ago

And it's not like other sports are easier to watch. It's the same shit everywhere. I don't understand why people try to say it's an NBA problem

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u/Limp_Stable_6350 1d ago

yeah as someone who stopped watching basketball - there are too many fucking games in a season. why tune in for game number 47 of 100 when I can just watch the playoffs?

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u/kpsi25 Suns 1d ago

This is the real answer. Reddit tries to make it seem like it’s because it’s hard to find ways to watch games but I just don’t think people care enough about the product even if it was easier to watch

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u/FriendshipBest9151 1d ago

But it's been this way for a long long time. Why did viewership drop off 10 or 20 years ago in a bigger way?

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u/MicroUzi 1d ago

I completely disagree, I think that the game is not perfect but the far far bigger reason is the blatant corporatisation and the disgusting amount of ads interrupting play at literally every available moment.

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u/gothxo Cavaliers 1d ago

this is why the NFL is king. the shorter schedule just makes every game matter way more. with an 82 game season, a lot of games (even when your own team is playing) are just not gonna matter.

the NBA has a 9-game slate tonight. only two of those games feature two teams at or above .500 playing (Heat v. Magic, Thunder v. Pacers). the rest of the matchups include the 7-22 Hornets v. 4-23 Wizards, the 13-17 Pistons v. the 13-17 Kings, and the 7-21 Jazz v. the 9-20 trailblazers, for example.

to add onto that, the only two "nationally" televised games are NBA TV (a cable addon/streaming service), and one of those two games is the Jazz v Trailblazers and it tips off at 10pm EST.

the one NFL game tonight features a potential playoff team in a must-win game with the Seahawks and a popular, albeit not very good, Bears team that could play spoiler. it's available on Amazon Prime Video, a service that 180 million Americans have, AND is available completely for FREE on twitch.tv

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u/RokMeAmadeus 76ers 1d ago

Yep. Same with MLB. In the NFL, every loss is a crushing blow to morale. In the NBA its like oh that sucks.. and then you move on.

Not to mention players can pick and choose their teams, essentially. None are loyal. They bounce around and form super teams. My opinion, of course. I just dislike that part of it.

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u/EmuMan10 Suns 1d ago

With baseball though, because of the prospect crapshoot, the tanking isn’t quite the same and there can be individual records in play. Even a bad baseball team has something to be interested in most of the time

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/Whiteelchapo 1d ago

MLB does not have a game number problem. That’s part of what makes baseball the best sport in my opinion. You have 162 games in a season, and that is a large enough sample size to get some damn good statistics out of it

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u/BaronvonJobi 1d ago

FWIW, its seems like that was mostly a 2010s thing and seems to be confined that generation. Players still request trades obviously, but younger players seem less inclined to do the Bron or Durrant thing of offseason super starteam ups or hoping to an already stacked roster.

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u/DrWindupBird 1d ago

Yeah, it’s hilarious that KD is the one doing the head-scratching here. Dude bailed on the fans who loved him in OKC to join the superteam that beat him, then left to build his own team in Brooklyn and then abandoned them too, ruining the franchise in the process. Then he wonders why fans don’t care anymore.

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u/Nychus37 Warriors 1d ago

No no no, ratings are down because of things I specifically don't like (I still watch all my teams games) /s

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u/rutgerswhat Spurs 1d ago

That’s it for me. I love basketball, but I’m in my 40s and busy as shit all the time. It really isn’t even worth it for me to tune in until March or so. I’ll see the lay of the land as far as standings go but otherwise I’m really only checking the standings on the weekend

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u/NoPause9609 1d ago

So many people here saying March is when they start watching (myself included) so that’s 5 months of the season a lot of fans don’t care about.

Most fans I know actively despise the All Star weekend and the hype around it.

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u/BoonjBosh 1d ago

This is the real reason lol. The top comment talks about how expensive / hard it is to watch games. You can literally make the same argument for the NFL as well lol.

The difference is not just the stakes but the replay value. People only get to watch their team one day a week. Teams like Giants who are long gone from playoffs still have people watching because it’s only one day a week they get to watch their team.

Meanwhile NBA your favorite team probably plays like 4 games a week. You miss one game and the average viewer just shrugs it off. No biggie it’s just one game. This especially drops off for non contending teams/teams that are tanking

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u/llamadrama420 Hawks 1d ago

Yeah I agree. I think the three main issues are

Lack of stakes

Clutch time becomes an unwatchable mess of reviews, timeouts, and fouls. You simply can’t have a sport where the most exciting moments of the game get dragged out so painfully that any casual interest is loss. No casual viewer is going to turn on a close game and have the patience to watch 20 mins of ads and free throws to maybe see an exciting game-winning shot.

The rules are ridiculous. And I’m not just complaining about the refs. The rules, and the extent to which players are allowed to stretch or break them, make it impossible to ref the game, and impossible to understand as a casual viewer. There are literally fouls on every single possession, on both sides of the ball. It’s impossible to be consistent and makes it feel like the game is entirely at the mercy of the refs. The rules need to be re-balanced and re-thought so that they can be consistently applied and don’t favour the offense to such a ridiculous degree.

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u/TheDream425 Pacers 1d ago

This is it for me. The players don’t seem to care much whether they lose or win any given regular season game, the coaches don’t seem to care, so why the hell would I care. These days my interests pretty much begin and end with the playoffs.

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u/EaseofUse 76ers 1d ago

Yeah there's merit to the access argument but it's definitely limited.

Basketball is relatively easier to watch when you don't know either team. Not on the NFL's level, but people don't usually stick around an entire baseball broadcast they're not invested in and hockey essentially relies on hometown fans because half the teams aren't even located in places where people generally play hockey. They like rooting for their team but they're not a couple of infographics away from understanding how hockey actually works.

Players don't give a shit about spreading games across different streaming platforms. They don't love it and they don't hate it, they don't give a shit.

There is no actual, tangible, remotely possible solution to the devaluation of regular season games beyond reducing the number of games. We can't stop the rate of injuries and we can't stop players pushing their bodies to the limits of modern medicine.

Literally everyone involved that makes money off of this league is incentivized to have as many games as possible. Almost ALL fans want fewer regular season games and almost NO ONE in any position of authority or even seniority wants it. Embiid and Leonard and George and Nurkic and Lonzo and LaMelo and all the rest, even they don't want to reduce the number of games.

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u/undecided_mask 1d ago

It’s an unsolvable issue due to the number of games, I agree wholeheartedly.

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u/NoPause9609 1d ago

And that’s what it all comes down to. Fans have told everyone involved what we want but that’s in direct conflict with the $$$.

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u/Darthmalak3347 Thunder 1d ago

i wish divisions mattered in basketball. i wish we had first round bye for #1 seed. the play in feels like a step in that direction (wild card round). i'd kill for divisions to matter so badly.

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u/GuerrillaApe Lakers 1d ago

The NBA will never go to lesser games to increase the importance of each game, so - in my mind - the best thing for the league to do is cut the league up into eight divisions of four teams each (after getting two expansion teams) and have the top team in each division qualify followed by the 2nd and 3rd division teams having do a play-in matchup.

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u/henryofskalitzz Supersonics 1d ago

NBA has historically depended on player personalities to drive growth (look at explosions in viewership growth with Bird vs. Magic, Jordan, Shaq & Kobe, Curry vs. LeBron). Once the old guard retires, the NBA has little in the way of marketable stars outside maybe Giannis and really no one that’s American

Combining regular season streaming isn’t going to fix the fact that finals ratings (which has always been on ABC) are down almost 50% since those cavs-warriors matchups

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u/mdaniel018 Pacers 1d ago

NBA games have as much intensity as a Tuesday night football game between Ball State and Bowling Green

They rely on pumping in music and having someone constantly yell on the PA system to disguise the fact that there is absolutely no atmosphere and half of the crowd isn’t paying attention to the game anyways, die hard fans have been largely priced out and replaced by people for whom going to a game is just a fun night out, not a core hobby

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u/Icy_Bodybuilder_164 1d ago

NFL fans talk about the game that happened last night and how that coach shouldn't have gone for it on 4th and 2.

NBA fans talk about either a big highlight or drama, because no one actually sat down and watched the full game. I can talk to a diehard NBA fan friend and be like "yo you know your favorite team lost last night?" and they'll say, "oh shoot, really?" There are no stakes and no one really cares to watch. The players don't care to play.

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u/Darkstrike86 1d ago

This is the only thing that matters.

The quality of the players has never been better. The rule changes over the last 5 years have made the game better.

But with 82 games, who cares if the Wolves lose to the Grizz in November?

Same problem with Baseball.

A big part of the entertainment is the consequences of losing a game. That's why the NFL is king.

The NBA needs to be 60 games. 2 games a week.

Make us care about it.

Right now everyone just says "I'll start watching in March.".

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u/JacobfromCT 1d ago

If you've been an NBA fan for many years, you get used to hearing bad faith criticism of the league from people who don't even like the NBA.

"They are a bunch of overpaid thugs who don't play defense!"

"The NBA is too WOKE!"

But most of the criticism I've been hearing lately is legitimate. The regular season feels irrelevant, superstars sit out too many games, three-point spamming is hard to watch, refs give too much leeway to the offense, there's too much emphasis on "clicks and drama" versus strategy in league media and 20% of teams get 80% of media coverage.

If a sport as conservative and resistant to change like baseball can look at their game and make needed adjustments (pitch clock, limitation on pickoffs and pitching changes, larger bases, banning the shift, extra-innings ghost runner) I don't see why the NBA can't.

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u/C_Colin [CLE] Austin Carr 1d ago

I’ve always felt like 50 games would be perfect for NBA regular season. Could have the playoffs wrapped up but the start of May. Play a less congested schedule so stars aren’t needing load mgmt because b2b’s would cease being a thing. They could get creative with the scheduling and not even count the NBA Cup games towards the reg season record (it’s weird that they do that to begin with) so it would really be a 54game min season. Playoffs could theoretically get you to 82 games.

I’m a massive EPL fan and they have a 38 game reg season and every match feels very important. Add in 2 in season tournaments, and the top teams playing in another tournament + various auxiliary matches can see the top teams playing close to 70 games in a year and I tune into nearly every one of my teams fixtures plus usually catch one or two interesting matches of the week.

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u/PabloSanchezBB 1d ago

You are 100% correct. Something about the first half of the regular season is just boring AF not going to lie

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u/freshwes [BKN] Stephon Marbury 1d ago edited 1d ago

Lol everyone is all about how hard it is to watch. That's not the problem.

The problem is there are more interesting things to do than watch an NBA game. Social media, endless content and music options in their pocket, video games. Not to mention work, family, friends, dating etc.

Fantasy Football is the real reason I haven't seen anyone mention. It makes non-fans into casual. I know sooo many women who never watched football in their lives until they joined a work fantasy league and emjoyed it. In fact a couple of them started an all women's fantasy league and it's been going for 15 years.

NBA players aren't that interesting People are too oversaturated by their real personalities, social media etc. Like I guarantee Ja'marr Chase could walk by 99% of people and not get recognized.

NBA players are seen as too whiny, too political, too friendly with each other.

No FOMO, must see player Lebron, Caitlin Clark, Steph Curry, Linsanity - what drives people to feel like they have to see something spectacular. Think of the reason why we all watched the Jake Paul vs Mike Tyson fight.

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u/JulianImSorry 1d ago

I stopped watching this year. I have the majority of Celtics games available to me. But I don't watch because it's just boring. No defense, players just chucking up 3's. Constant ads. I just kinda stoppes following the league, I haven't watched one NBA game this year. The only people I know that watch are gambling on it

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/Tel3visi0n Spurs 1d ago

when did hockey extend the postseason??

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u/DriftlessCycle 1d ago

This is a good point. Way too many teams make the playoffs/play-in games and the rest lose on purpose for a better draft pick

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u/sdm1010 1d ago

They should shorten the season and make It so games count more. Does MLB suffer the same fate ? I means it’s what 2 to 1 for MLB vs NBA games?

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u/felltwiice 1d ago

I think I would agree with you on that. I was really into watching basketball when I was a kid in the 90s, and then as a teenager and as an adult I fell out of it, but I would only watch when I heard my team (Suns) were doing good and they were in that fight for the playoff spot. The first 50 to 60 games don’t really matter to the casual sports viewer, and usually about this time college and NFL football are having more meaningful games.

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u/lookitsafish 1d ago

That's how I feel as an extremely casual fan. I'm more of a fan of football first, then sports generally. It is hard to find games on, and the players just don't seem to go 100% and any individual game doesn't really matter. Similar to baseball but less boring

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u/Fancy_Ad5097 1d ago

Seriously, regular season games feel like glorified scrimmages. Even playoff games aren’t that interesting to watch outside of elimination games. Basketball can be exciting — there’s a reason we all love March Madness

1

u/majani Bucks 1d ago

If you suggest less games to give each game more weight, that's an automatic avalanche of downvotes for you, especially if you suggest they do it in the playoffs. Fact of the matter is, casual sports fans like high consequence, high variance, one off encounters. Only sports nerds like low variance, long, repetitive encounters. You want higher ratings? You have to appeal to casuals

1

u/MDRtransplant Jazz 1d ago

First round in playoffs should go back to 5 game series

1

u/ladidadi82 Nuggets 1d ago

As a casual basketball fan, this is definitely a big part of it. Too many games and not enough rivalry/must-watch games. I hate to say it, but I miss playing against the warriors when they were unstoppable because a win meant a little bit more. Same with the lakers.

Now with the nuggets playing poorly and not a lot they can do, I’m also less interested. I think basketball like most things ebbs and flows though. There was a time when watching bron vs curry was incredible, but that also got old and I didn’t care as much their last finals appearance. I think we’re at a point where the league doesn’t have a lot of interesting things/players to watch for. Once the new generation starts building new rivalries, it will go back up.

1

u/some1saveusnow 1d ago

Absolutely, these games don’t matter and the players know it and the product is reflected in that. It’s become a chore to watch nba basketball (I’m 42 male) and I only do it cause I love playing and watching the sport. This is two yrs now I’ve started to skip massive chunks of the season and I would keep doing it except I’m going to get back into betting games here and there

1

u/bigfatcanofbeans 1d ago

I'm a casual, this is most of it.

NBA regular season is boring basketball that doesn't matter on a game to game basis.

1

u/hezeus 1d ago

Yeah as a very very casual fan (and big fan of most other sports like football, hockey, mma) I find basketball games hard to watch in general since it feels like they usually come down to the last few minutes like the Lakers game yesterday

1

u/FearlessNobility 1d ago

Yep this is the answer and it’s hilarious to hear it’s anything different. Shrink the playoffs, 50 games. Makes them mean something

1

u/Elguapo69 1d ago

Not saying that’s not a factor but it’s always been that way, even when the league was at peak popularity.

1

u/nawksnai Raptors 1d ago

Irrelevant. The season has been 82 games for a very long time, and yet people always watched the games.

I agree with most other people that the inability to actually watch the games is having the biggest detriment on viewership.

Fortunately, I live in Australia, and League Pass is WAY better here than in Canada (where I’m from). I can watch any game, any team, on the schedule. That’s it. No complications. Costs me roughly $120 USD for a 12 month sub.

1

u/Tel3visi0n Spurs 1d ago

Not irrelevant, people have way more content options than just what’s on their regional sports network or nationally televised games.

1

u/nawksnai Raptors 1d ago

Content options. Options!

Nobody wants to subscribe to multiple services to watch games. Why would they?

1

u/jackattack222 1d ago

Genuine question but how come baseball and hockey aren't having these issues? Or are they?

1

u/SeanO54 1d ago

I am a very casual fan, I am only here because NFL subreddit was talking about the ratings. Just too many games, same thing with NHL and MLB. It’s too much of a commitment.

1

u/Whiskey_hotpot 1d ago

This is it. 82 games is too many. It waters down the product and makes teams either rest their stars which is bad for ratings or run them ragged and risk them being too tired for the playoffs.

The playoffs which are already too long. First round should go back to 5 games. Maybe even first 2 rounds. And then cut down on back to backs. 2-2-1-1-1 is dumb. 2-3-2 creates more drama imo and reduces the flying time for the players.

Feel like oversaturation of entertainment products is the top reason for failure across sports movies and TV right now.

1

u/helpChars Lakers 1d ago

The real answer is they took what was engaging, full of emotion that fostered rivalries and diluted it into a G rated experience where everyone is injured or undergoing injury management. They're not even pretending like they want to beat each other anymore. Shoot threes, broken plays, give up huge leads , technicals for hanging on the rim or looking at somebody the wrong way. What a piece of shit product.

1

u/Rolands_ka_tet Bucks 1d ago

And worse the players only take the last 1.5 quarters seriously

1

u/Dubzil 1d ago

I have never really watched NBA, anytime I looked into it I just can't even imagine someone keeping track of a whole season. It feels like the season lasts the entire year and your team plays more than once a week? No idea how people keep up with it. It's also just too many points tbh. Games are like 60-140 points per team, it's a wildly huge gap from game to game and each point doesn't seem like something to celebrate.

1

u/waffle-van 1d ago

Yea product is ass. Need to ref like FIBA. Just let the be physical and i guarantee you you will see more competition (at least marginally)

1

u/DrWindupBird 1d ago

This is the main reason I quit watching. I started to watch English soccer, where not only does every game have the chance to make or break a season, but the stakes are real. The bottom 3 teams drop to a lower league entirely. You can’t afford to tank a season on purpose, let alone 3 or 4 seasons running like some bball teams do. After watching that, the NBA feels more like pro wrestling or something: just theater. And by the time the games do actually matter in the playoffs, half your favorite players are out anyways because they got injured in meaningless regular season games.

1

u/Spetznazx Cavaliers 1d ago

Make divisions matter again. A lot of divisional rivalries also went away when division wins didn't matter anymore.

1

u/lolfinance 1d ago

This is it. The level of effort game to game varies so widely. Excessive rest days, random “personal reason” injury reports all the time, etc.

1

u/ir8roont 1d ago

Ive always thought it would be better to drop the playoffs and have the winner with the best 82 game record.

1

u/Still-Helicopter6029 22h ago

Frl, you should have seen my reaction to hearing mlb teams play 100 plus games a season. Who tf is watching those games?

1

u/FriendshipBest9151 14h ago

But it's been like that forever. Why are people all of sudden turned off by meaningless regular season games when they've always been meaningless?

1

u/Sonnyyellow90 14h ago

Bingo.

Same exact problem baseball has. Too. Many. Games.

The games last forever, have no meaning, stars sit out regularly because even they dgaf about these games.

It’s hard to sit in and give a shit about the first quarter of an NBA regular season game. I just feel an overwhelming sense of meaninglessness when watching lol. It’s like watching a dude in the MLB go up to bat in a 0-0 game in the 2nd inning. Oh he got a single! Literally who cares.

1

u/Reasonable_Worry6044 14h ago

A 20 game nba regular season would be lit

-1

u/mr-301 1d ago

Everyone says ‘games don’t matter’ and then we get to the last 20 games and there’s 8 teams all with 3 games of each other.

6

u/Savage9645 Brooklyn Nets 1d ago

Of course they all matter on paper, all 162 MLB games matter too but they don't FEEL like they matter and that's what the fans care about

0

u/mindseye1212 1d ago

Then why did fans used to watch at high rates? Weren’t there a lot of meaningless games in the past too?

1

u/Tel3visi0n Spurs 1d ago

Less content options back then. The game for your regional team or the nationally televised game may have been one of the only things to watch just a few years ago. Now we have access to more content than a person could ever watch on demand at all times.

1

u/mindseye1212 1d ago

So the games didn’t matter then either… people only cared about the popular teams during the regular season as well…

-11

u/YouWannaSeeADeadBody Thunder 1d ago

It arguably matters more now than it ever has done with the playins and the in season tournament, so I dont know why this would be the answer. The regular season games have never mattered so if ratings are down that isnt the cause.

And it didnt matter at all for years when you knew the Warriors and Cavs were going to be in the finals every time, and ratings were good then.

Its just how hard it is to watch the games, no need to overthink it

9

u/135467853 1d ago

In what way do the play ins make it matter more? 20 out of the 30 teams make the playoffs now. It’s ridiculous.

-2

u/YouWannaSeeADeadBody Thunder 1d ago

because there is more to play for at the end of the regular season for the 6-10 seeds than there was previously

-2

u/whocares4506 1d ago

every single game matters, what are you talking about? for example, Lakers beating the Warriors last night has a high probability of determining play-in seeding when April rolls around

does something like the Wizards vs Hawks matter to most fans? no, but neither did the Raiders vs Jags last weekend either

put the games back on easily accessible platforms and viewership will increase

2

u/MDRtransplant Jazz 1d ago

And yet what were the raiders vs. jags ratings?

-4

u/pikajewijewsyou Thunder 1d ago

Every game does matter. Teams are packed in close and avoiding/ making the playin can be a big deal for some teams. Home court is also important in the playoffs. Baseball ratings are doing fine and they play way more games

-15

u/Ghost_4394 NBA 1d ago edited 1d ago

I’m tired of that excuse. Not every game needs to matter. Sometimes I just wanna watch hoops. If anything, the NBA having more games, more opportunities to watch, is a way better experience for the average fan. If you’re a diehard NFL fan, it’s a shitty experience, knowing when you have to miss a game due to IRL stuff. Whereas with the NBA, you have plenty of opportunities to watch.

Edit: I guess I'm being downvoted for the radical thought that getting to watch my team more often is a bad thing?? Lmfao

8

u/BGDutchNorris 76ers 1d ago

? If every game doesn’t matter, why would the average NBA fan watch it? I get superfans watching every game but most people need some stakes or something

-3

u/Ghost_4394 NBA 1d ago edited 1d ago

? If every game doesn’t matter, why would the average NBA fan watch it?

The 'average' /casual fan would just care about the big match ups, but for all the real hoop heads, we'll watch just about any game. I love being able to come home on a random Wednesday night and watch Bulls vs Cavs followed by Celtics vs Hawks. And if I'm a fan of one of those teams and have to miss the game, guess what? Still plenty more opportunities to watch your team play that same week. If you're an NFL fan and you have to miss a week, you're basically going 2 weeks without getting to see your team play. How on earth does anyone think less games = better???

Edit: typo

3

u/BGDutchNorris 76ers 1d ago

The problem isn’t losing the hoop heads. It’s losing the casual viewers. No matter how dedicated the hardcore fans are, there aren’t enough of yall for them to get the ratings they need

Also less games is better thanks to scarcity. You may get more opportunities to watch the NBA, but if the quality gets diluted because of it that’s a problem. NFL has less games so every week the game matters. It makes it worth more to the casual viewers

0

u/Ghost_4394 NBA 1d ago

So let's say hypothetically the NBA agrees to a 17 game season just like the NFL. Do you really think suddenly they get more viewership? I highly, highly doubt it. Too many games isn't the problem for the NBA. 82 game season is just fine. Changing the scheduling would have no effect.

3

u/BGDutchNorris 76ers 1d ago

Yes. Yes I do

1

u/MDRtransplant Jazz 1d ago

1000% they'd get more viewership

1

u/MDRtransplant Jazz 1d ago

The problem is that average / casual fans aren't tuning into the big matchups.

They're just watching 10 min YT highlight videos or checking box scores.

Whereas casual / average NFL fans will still have the game on in the background