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The NBA has a massive problem. The league’s ratings have declined 28% since the start of the season, and the average number of viewers per game is down 1.1 million since 2015.
Most recently, Adam Silver, the commissioner of the NBA, tried to solve the problem by creating the NBA Cup, an in-season tournament that put regular games at higher stakes.
This worked to a point, as cup games received a 71% viewership increase compared to regular season games, but the cup final this year had 35% fewer viewers than last year’s inaugural final, showing that that might be a temporary fix but will not work long term.
Viewership trends can be impacted by anything, but a glimpse at solving the viewership problem was shown at the start of this month leading up to the Feb. 6 trade deadline.
The madness kicked off at the start of the deadline week, when the Dallas Mavericks surprisingly traded Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis. This started a domino effect of blockbuster swaps, in which De’Aaron Fox went to San Antonio, Zach LaVine and Jonas Valanciunas got dealt to Sacramento, Kyle Kuzma was shipped off to Milwaukee, Brandon Ingram found his new home in Toronto and Jimmy Butler finally got his big move, which ended up being to Golden State.
These massive trades move bonafide superstars around the league and strengthen teams that are in pole position to make a deep run in the playoffs. Obviously, if there are more exciting duos and trios, superteams and rivals, viewership will go up.
The biggest hindrance in NBA viewership is the increase in three-point shooting, which fans consider boring and repetitive. Viewers want to see an uptick in physicality, an aspect that has been decreasing almost directly with the decrease in TV popularity.
One solution to bring back physicality and decrease three-pointers is to shorten the lane, where players cannot stand for more than 3 seconds on offense and defense and must stay out of the lane on free throws. This would reward prototypical big men who can’t shoot, allowing them to score more often and get more rebounds, but surely increasing the league’s physicality and giving more space for dominant bigs like Jarrett Allen and Bam Adebayo. The lane is currently 16 feet wide, but reverting the “Wilt Rule” would set the lane at 12 feet, the current college standard.
Another way to stop the three-point revolution is to increase the abilities of defenders trying to guard the arc. Two ways to do this are to allow hand checking behind the arc and allow goaltending on three-point shot attempts. Hand checking is an overly enforced foul with little intent of malice, and allowing it will allow perimeter defenders to stop the triple much more effectively.
Goaltending as a rule itself makes sense, but allowing it from behind the arc would allow for much less three-point shooting, as blocking these shots would be a lot easier. Goaltending from behind the arc is a rare occasion anyways, so getting rid of it makes plenty of sense.
Besides the constant shot chucking, another one of the NBA’s biggest flaws, in the eyes of its spectators, is the amount of stars who get sat in games on account of injury, minute restrictions, or other playtime reasons.
The solution is easy. Lengthen the season and get rid of back-to-back games that cause stars’ fatigue and may lead to injury. Want more viewers? Have more stars play. How do you have more stars play? By making sure your stars are healthy.
Players like Luka Doncic and Joel Embiid play less than ¾ of the season most of the time because of this grueling schedule. Extend the season by a month or two, ditch the back-to-back games and your eye-catching stars will be guaranteed to bring in more viewers.
Whichever way the NBA chooses to get back their ratings and viewers, it needs to be done fast before irreversible damage is done.