The Future of the NBA is as Uncertain as Ever
From local TV deals, a new CBA, and declining ratings, the NBA is at a crossroads; their future more uncertain then ever before.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the NBA was comparable in popularity to the NFL. In the MJ-led 90s era of basketball, 20+ million people watching a game were commonplace. Things are evidently not the same in the year of our lord 2023. The interest in the NBA has cratered — every season bringing some sort of new lowlight. This season, the All-Star game was the least-watched edition ever. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg for Adam Silver and his league’s uncertain future.
From the upcoming CBA negotiations to the issues with load management, the league is at a crossroads. Here’s what’s wrong and what could be next.
Things That Aren’t Really Problems
Before we get into problems that the NBA actually has to deal with, let’s start with things that people act like are problems…but they really aren’t. All-Star Weekend immediately comes to mind to me.
Everybody made a huge fit that the All-Star game wasn’t competitive. We said the Dunk Contest sucked (until Mac McClung saved it). We trashed the Skills Competition (rightfully so). You get the gist. Nobody liked All-Star Weekend. There were cries from former players and media personalities to make the game more competitive.
Denver Nuggets head coach Michael Malone called the game the “worst basketball game ever played.” Jaylen Brown called it a “layup line.” Now, is it funny that two people who have direct control over the game’s effort and intensity are also trashing it? Absolutely. But I would be lying if I said I also didn’t want the game to have a little more luster.
However, I think everybody is forgetting one big thing here. The All-Star game has never been about being competitive. It’s a gimmick. It’s not like the players get to sit in their hotel and relax leading up to the Sunday night game.
Players have to sit with media and do sponsored events and other festivities throughout the weekend. The higher-profile stars don’t get a vacation until the weekend is over. If the NBA wanted a better product, they wouldn’t have a long-ass draft that takes too long or a goddamn concert right in the middle of things. It’s not an environment that breeds competitiveness. Anybody expecting competitiveness has the wrong idea.
I don’t see a world where the All-Star game ever becomes competitive. Is that sad? A little, but the NBA has made the weekend a media spectacle. You can’t also expect these guys to go out there and play their hardest — risking injury — for a game that doesn’t matter in any capacity.
And it’s not like the All-Star game has been thriving for years, either. The game consistently racked in 15+ million viewers until the 1999 lockout-shortened season. The All-Star game didn’t take place that season, and since then, the viewership has never been the same;
And if you still are hanging onto the hope that the league will make some changes to make the game more competitive, he’s the proverbial dagger to your heart. In his annual All-Star Weekend press conference, Adam Silver (Mickey’s next boss?) said that the weekend would set records for local economic impact for an All-Star Weekend ($280 million) and for hotel nights (33,000). In other words, the league made a shit ton of money, and nothing else matters.
Hold onto that thought.
Load Managing
Load management started as a way to increase the safety of players around the league. Now, it’s the league’s biggest and most transparent problem. Everybody agrees that adjustments are needed. Nobody’s saying that the player’s safety isn’t important. But I think we can all agree that things have gone a little too far.
It seems like star players are missing more time than ever before. Obviously, load management — a measure meant to keep players safe — isn’t the reason for all these injuries. In fact, it’s a little weird that with all the advances in sports medicine, rest, and equipment, we’re seeing so many injuries. Beer and cigarettes used to be commonplace during halftime of games. Now, we’ve got avocado ice cream and it seems like guys missing 10+ games every year is the norm.
The new reality that NBA fans have to face is unacceptable. Fans tuning into the average national TV game, or worse, who paid for the tickets, are already asked to accept the days and weeks of their favorite player being out because they’re actually hurt. On top of this epidemic of top players being injured, the paying customer is also asked to accept players simply not playing because … just in case?
I’ve been to two Blazers games this season. In both of them, the opposing star player I paid to see was out. Tyrese Haliburton was out with an injury, but the Mavericks were resting Luka Doncic on the second night of a back-to-back. Both games were lackluster.
The NBA has a rule that bars teams from resting players for marquee performances. But that hasn’t stopped teams from starting the load management process in December and January. At that point, you aren’t resting for the playoffs. You’re just doing some weird stuff.
Remember when Silver was bragging about how much dough the league was raking in? During that same presser, he said, “Fans are the ultimate adjudicators, and right now, they’re telling us they love the NBA.”
Right….
A Whole New Game?
Why are we seeing so many injuries nowadays?
It’s a fair question. We routinely see the best players in the league miss 10-15 games every season now. This is with major advancements in sports science and technology. In previous eras, players logging in heavy minutes and playing nearly every game was the norm.
So, what’s changed? Well, for one, players are playing basketball at a younger age than ever. Playing basketball year-round from a young age wears down the vital muscles and joints needed to play the sport. Kids have also become less inclined to be multi-sport athletes in high school.
Nowadays, there’s no “offseason” when you’re standing in the outfield or running around a track. You’re constantly running, jumping, and sprinting, putting more and more pressure on your body. Even during the offseason, players aren’t sitting at home and resting. They’re putting even more work in — spending more time running and jumping.
Dr. Brian Moore is a physiologist and co-founder of Orreco, a company that works extensively in the Premier League as well as the NBA, MLB, and the PGA. He’s dedicated to athlete recovery and injury prevention. He gave a couple more reasons as to why we’re seeing an increase in injuries;
- Basketball is a very fast-paced game. Players run at high speeds and more much longer
- Athletes can be over and underconditioned. A player can be overprotected from injury — therefore being more exposed to potential injury when they do play.
The style of the modern NBA is also a lot different than that of previous eras. Players have never had to cover so much ground before. Gone are the days when isolations with eight players chilling on the opposite side of the court were commonplace. The increase in pick-and-roll basketball has resulted in more sudden stops and quick starts, particularly on defense.
That’s the most taxing type of movement, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. But, here’s the counter to that. While there is a different type of physical toll on players these days, it’s certainly not less. Ask any guard from the ’80s and ’90s who ran through the gauntlet of pushes, shoves, knees, elbows, and outright assaults on their bodies as they tried to navigate through the paint that they weren’t being “taxed” physically. Not to mention the nightly mosh pits between big men beating the holy hell out of each other down low;
Do I think that because guys don’t play multiple sports in high school is the only reason for the jump in injuries? No. To be honest, I don’t know if there is an answer. Everything tells us that players should be healthier and in better condition than ever before. Instead, they seem to all have the joints of senior citizens.
But, not to be harsh or anything, the boom in injuries isn’t really the problem. Again, load management isn’t causing guys to get hurt more. To get to the real issue with load management, we’ve got to go to the source. Transparency.
Glass House
If the new reality is that players get hurt more often, so be it. But, I think I speak for every NBA fan when I say that the whole “resting” stuff in the middle of the season is ridiculous. There’s an easy way to avoid all of the anger and confusion.
BE MORE TRANSPARENT!
We have a stat for just about everything nowadays. Every year there are new ways to quantify a player’s success. Where’s the corresponding, “This proves that load management works” metric? The evidence that holding Players X and Y out of games regularly over the last three years has made Players X and Y more efficient by Z percent? The lack of clear data league-wide makes it harder to make the case that load management works, despite what everybody says.
We constantly hear teams put out blanket statements about how they have data or science that backs up their decisions, but why not release that to the public? It would be a lot easier for fans paying their hard-earned money to go to games to stomach the decisions if they knew some of the science factored into the decision.
Even though the teams are the ones telling their players to sit out, the players are the ones facing backlash. There isn’t a lot of public sympathy for athletes being chartered around on flights and getting paid $50+ million a year, I guess.
The problem in the load management debate is that it is impossible to prove the absence of something. How do we demonstrate what chronic or catastrophic injuries might have been prevented in some alternate universe? With basically every team following some kind of load management program nowadays, there is no control group for us to compare to in this experiment (must … fight … urge … to make … Thibodeau … joke), no scientific formula that says, “Good thing you sat him out, he was going to tear his ACL tonight.”
And, of course, every situation and athlete is different. Asking a 38-year-old LeBron James to play every game is different from asking the same of a 24-year-old Luka Dončić. Asking P.J. Tucker to stand in the corner on offense for 40 minutes is different from asking James Harden to do the same while orchestrating every play.
The increase in proficiency in sports performance staff leaguewide over the past decade has been ginormous. The issue is that if it’s in each contending team’s interest to pull back on regular-season games for its best players, it is also telling fans the regular season is irrelevant. That’s a pretty scary reality for the league.
Dr. Moore and his team recently broke through potentially important research that could lead to changes across all sports. For years, an Orreco collective of sports physicians, scientists, and coaches have measured physical and psychological stressors, travel frequency and time zones crossed, and blood markers to determine how the body responds to the stress. Using computer vision technology to monitor player movement during Premier League soccer matches, the Orreco staff successfully charted a player whose running pattern changed noticeably for 10 minutes before suffering a severe hamstring injury. The technology can predict, based on movement patterns, that an athlete is near injury with 85 percent accuracy. I’m grossly oversimplifying the technology and how it works: but that’s the gist of it.
Adam Silver and the league seem adamant about not shortening the season to less than 82 games. Even though the benefits of doing so would not only keep players safer but potentially solve the issue of the regular season being a joke to half the league. But, hey, gotta keep that bottom line up, right?
Transparency in this issue would go a long way for everybody. If the Clippers and Lakers told everybody the data behind Kawhi or AD sitting out that particular night, things would sit better. Would people like it? Probably not. Heck, I’m not even sure I would look at the data. But it’s a lot better than the system we have in place right now, where there’s almost no warning before players miss marquee matchups.
Adding some context — really, any context — would not only take the heat off players but the league itself. Just being able to point to information that explains why this works could help answer questions of why so many teams are doing this and how it helps, and wouldn’t that be helpful for the league right now?
It’s Time For The NBA To Get Into Streaming
Along with the CBA set to expire after the 2024 NBA season, the league will need a new media rights deal. The current deal was signed in 2014 and went into effect in 2016. By the time the contract ends, the league will have earned $24 billion from ESPN and Turner Sports (TNT).
Since then, the broadcast industry landscape has been roiled by new technology and shifting consumer habits. We’re now deep into the so-called streaming wars being waged by the legacy networks and tech giants like Apple and Amazon, and we’re also well into the cord-cutting trend that has seen U.S. pay-tv homes (cable and satellite) plunge from more than 100 million a few years ago to less than 70 million today.
Speaking of cord-cutting, that’s why some of your local sports broadcasts are in jeopardy of going under. Regional sports network (RSN) owner Diamond Sports missed a $140 million interest payment earlier this month and is likely headed for bankruptcy. The company now has a 30-day grace period where its management team will try to restructure its $8 billion debt load with creditors — and if they can’t come to an agreement, they’ll default on their debt and have to file for bankruptcy.
This is important because Diamond Sports currently holds the local media rights for 42 teams across the NBA, MLB, and NHL. They televise roughly a third of the games across those leagues and owe teams $2 billion in rights fees this year alone. 16 of those teams are in the NBA.
The easiest way to explain regional sports networks (RSNs) is that they are local cable channels that broadcast sporting events of local teams in U.S. professional sports leagues. Diamond Sports is the largest regional sports network. Sinclair acquired the assets from 21st Century Fox in 2019 at a $10.6 billion valuation.
A big reason why cable is so expensive is because of these RSNs. Because the number of people still paying for cable has declined so steeply over the past decade, the solution has been to jack up the prices for these RSNs even more;
It’s a vicious cycle. The fewer and fewer people use cable, the more these prices jack up. It’s a big reason why the company is in a financial mess right now. The downstream impact is scary too. TV money is a core part of the NBA’s revenue stream, so if these RSNs fail or local TV revenue drops dramatically, we could see a reduction in salary caps (meaning less money for players).
Now, the NBA regular season is close to being over, so this won’t be a major problem for them. But, considering that they have a new media rights deal on the horizon, it may be time to pivot. The league is reportedly looking for a $75 billion rights deal — a significant increase from that $24 billion figure just a decade ago.
So, where should the NBA go? In my opinion, it’s time to jump into the streaming game. This RSN situation is further proof that cable is going by the wayside. It’s time to find a rights deal with streaming options. The NFL did that with Amazon Prime, and that was a good idea.
Major League Soccer announced a 10-year commitment with Apple last summer. While MLS limited its growth and discoverability by removing itself from cable TV, at least its cash flow will be stable over the next decade, and fans know exactly where to watch games (without blackouts).
Could the NBA do a deal that involves a streaming partner? Maybe we could see games on Amazon Prime (and Twitch, which would be nice) or on Apple, too? NBC may be interested in getting back into the NBA game, too. Could the league work out a deal with both of them?
The NBA’s fans are young, global, and more inclined to a streaming platform than that of the NFL. And I think the league knows this. They cut the cost of League Pass this season — making it more accessible after subscribers jumped in a big way last season. That was smart, and I think it’s a sign of what’s to come.
For the league to take the next step and rebound a little bit ratings wise, the NBA can’t stick with cable. At least not entirely. The upside to entering a streaming platform is too good to turn down. And, we may not have to listen to TNT’s dogshit commentators anymore. Everybody wins!
(Note: I am still for the option of slowing down the NBA schedule to let Mike Breen broadcast every game. Just saying)
Outlook
I will always watch the NBA, no matter what. I don’t have anything better to do…clearly. But, the NBA is clearly falling behind the NFL in both popularity and relevance. If they want to change that, these next few years will be crucial. The league has an uncertain future. If they mess this period up, it could be detrimental to the sport.
Load management needs to be made more transparent. Streaming needs to be included in the next media rights deal. And those are just the basics. I’m not even going to get into the likelihood of expansion franchises or a midseason tournament (which would be the stupidest thing ever btw).
All of this is to say is that change is coming to the NBA. We’re going to see $70+ million dollar contracts being inked. We’re probably going to see the NBA move homes. And, hopefully, the star players we love to watch so much can stay on the floor more.
The possibilities for what comes next are endless. I only know one thing for certain. Adam Silver would be a worse leader of Disney than he is a commissioner.
What is next for the NBA? Leave a comment down below!
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