The State of the NBA

The professional league I follow closest is the National Basketball Association. Although for the past two NBA seasons, I found most games absolutely unwatchable. My cousin Michael, also a huge basketball fan (mostly college), has been saying this for years, and now I get it.

The NBA has arguably been the most successful professional sports league in terms of growth over the past 50 years. In 1976 the NBA and ABA merged , the league has continued to increase its fans, revenues, and relevancy in a way that no other major American sports league has been able to. Importantly, as we live in an increasingly global society, the NBA stretches the globe in ways football and baseball do not. Sports Pro Media had a nice article on why the NBA is “America’s most globally relevant sports property .”

The 2024 NBA Playoffs TV viewership declined 12% to 4.5 million . The Finals were the least-watched since 2007 (taking out the strange 2020-2021 covid seasons). That 2007 Finals? An absolute snoozer of a series with the Spurs sweeping a young LeBron-led Cavaliers team that had absolutely no business being in the finals. After Michael Jordan’s Bulls run ended, there was a long period of Western Conference dominance in the NBA, when any of the top four or five Western teams could have beaten the Eastern Conference’s best in the finals. From 1999 to 2018, the Western teams won 14 of the 19 championships .

Coinciding with the shift towards Superteams (a team of superstars assembled from other teams) the NBA has become more balanced between conferences. However, Superteams have consequences, making the difference between the good and bad teams in each conference and division more extreme. If not for Superteams, the Western Conference would have dominated the two first decades of the 21st century even more. The 2007 Boston Celtics kicked off the modern trend, the 2010, “take my talents to South Beach,” Miami Heat, continued it and then, somewhat hilariously, the 2014 LeBron, Kyrie and Kevin Love Cleveland Cavaliers carried the torch. Next the Golden State Warriors assembled the truly absurd roster of Steph Curry, Kevin Durrant, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green (not even including their NBA Finals MVP Andre Iguodala with Harrison Barnes and Andrew Bogut in their prime). ?

While I didn’t consider the 2024 NBA Playoffs to be that entertaining, it was nice to see two decidedly non-superteams in the Finals, the Dallas Mavericks and NBA Champion Boston Celtics. While the current superteam era has somewhat subsided, the NBA still has plenty of issues impacting the quality of the game and ultimately revenue.

NBA, we have a problem

While the WNBA is skyrocketing in terms of excitement, interest, and quality play, which has translated to legitimate gains in viewership and attendance , the NBA chugs along, the machine that it is, not quite languishing, but certainly not improving.

Steve Kerr talked about how the NBA officiating standards “are legislating defense out of the game ,” with common defense or any kind of minor, inconsequential error yielding all kinds of fouls in today’s games. Plays that officials wouldn’t even think about calling as a foul in the 90s now have the inverse reaction, officials must call them. Kerr also points out that the NBA has some of the greatest and most consistent officials in any sport. There was a period from the early to mid-2000s, when I was convinced certain NBA games were rigged. Officials would be calling a game one way the entire first half and then the officiating crew would come out the second half with totally different standards and bizzarro calls in especially consequential moments of important games, which usually favored the team that would be better for TV ratings, usually the larger market teams. I wasn’t surprised in 2007 when it was uncovered that NBA official Tim Donaghy was betting on games and that officials were receiving guidance from the NBA on how to call certain matchups and specific players. 2007 was the same year that Tim Duncan was ejected from a basketball game by Joey Crawford, while sitting on the bench, for laughing .

Crawford, who generally struggled with anger issues, was suspended by the NBA indefinitely after he apparently showed no remorse for the unusual call when interviewed by league officials about it. There was all kinds of officiating nonsense at that time.

Shortly after that, around 2010, something changed with NBA officiating and the consistency and fairness improved dramatically. Officials can still make a bad call here, blow one there, but overall, the standards and level of fairness is higher than it’s ever been. The National Basketball Referees Association claims that NBA Referees are correct around 95% of the time overall . Pretty good for men and women running down the court nonstop and getting yelled about by almost 20,000 people, and several dozen extremely large men on any given night.

How the 3-pointer went from the most exciting to the dullest shot in basketball

The other problem I have with the current NBA is the high scoring and little to no defense. Teams are incentivized to focus on offense over defense and prioritize shooters and scorers over solid defenders.

I wrote about how baseball’s rule changes were highly effective in creating more offense and a more interesting product . Today’s NBA is mostly 10 guys running back and forth on the floor jacking up three after three, with some open and easy shots around the basket when there is a lapse in defense. They might as well be playing horse. You see scores today where both teams are putting up the 125-145 points.

Check out this wild visualization of the expected point value of various shots on the floor and how it changes from 1997 – 2017 (video below).

The chart below shows the point contribution of the three-point shot, from its inception in 1979, through last season. You can see a constant upward trendline with 3-pointers making up more than a third of points the past four years and an even greater percentage of attempted shots. You have to go all the way back to 2011-2012 to find a year where the contribution percentage of 3-pointers to total points actually decreased (from 19.5% to 19.0%).

The shooting abilities of modern players and the analytical prowess of front offices and coaches have gone too far. Not only are players of all positions shooting more three-pointers per game, but they are also shooting them from farther away. If they want to shoot a 30' shot, great, let them, and reward them.

I never thought I would say this, but the NBA either needs to eliminate the three point shot, or move the line back an additional 5’. In fact, just make it one line straight across the court so the closer you are to the sideline, the farther you are from the basket, getting rid of the shorter corner 3, the darling of analytics-focused teams, and guys who made it their signature shot, like Bruce Bowen and P.J. Tucker. Below you can see my proposed NBA court, nice and simple, with the 3-point line 29’ from the bucket straight away, farther from the corners. It would make painting and swapping out the floorboards way easier too. You're welcome basketball operations staff. ?

If the NBA wanted to get really crazy and add another element to the strategy, they could also eliminate the 3-point shot in one direction. Sounds absurd, but image the intrigue of only having the 3-point line on one side of the court and in the other direction only 2-pointers, regardless of where the ball is shot from. It would be like watching the 2020 NBA going one direction and the 1970 NBA in the other. Even more intriguing, the transition game would totally change depending on which direction the team is shooting towards.

Instead of coming up with ways to make the game itself more exciting, the league has been re-engineering the schedule.

The NBA tries to be like soccer...I mean, welcome to The Emirates Cup

I guess the trend started with the Play-In tournament leading to the playoffs, and next thing you know, there is a whole other championship cup within the regular season. The Play-In was a temporary transition measure during the 2020 Covid NBA season where teams on the fringe of making the playoffs have a mini-tournament to see who makes it. That was the year of the NBA bubble at disney world. Part of the importance of the play-in was to give teams a chance to get back into the swing of things before starting the regular playoffs. The Play-in is similiar to the NFL and MLB wild card systems, but slightly more complex and definitely adds some intrigue to the end of the season by increasing the number of teams who could theoretically at that point possibly make the playoffs.

The Play In was so successful during the covid bubble the league brought it back the following year and it's stayed. I'm happy about the addition and it makes a lot of sense. Sure it stinks to have your team be in the 7 or 8 seat and get knocked out and not make the actual playoffs in the new system versus the old, but it seems fair that those teams would have to lose both games in the play-in for that to happen.

Last year the league introduced the NBA Cup, which the Lakers apparently won in December, although I had no memory of it before doing the research for this article. It has since been rebranded as the Emirates Cup for this season. If you didn't watch the US Open or otherwise forgot what Emirates is, the company is a UAE based airline out of Dubai. I find it a bit strange they are so aggressively advertising in the United States with an average of only US 40 flights per day, making them the 44th largest airline operator in the country by flight count, but if they want to send their marketing dollars to the US, sure we'll take them. And if they make flights from and in the US more affordable with increased competition, even better. Here are the groupings below. The Spurs drew an extremely difficult group of Thunder, Suns, Lakers and Jazz, with almost no chance of emerging, kind of like when the US mens soccer team lands in a World Cup group with Brazil, Argentina or France.

The Emirates Cup later stage tournament play will take place in Las Vegas, with the group play occurring on Tuesdays and Fridays during a one-month period. The outcome of the Emirates NBA Cup has absolutely no impact on the team's NBA playoffs and Finals Championship chances (except that the games count in the standing, except for the Emirates Cup championship game). The winning team's players split a prize pool, that was $500k for players on the winning team last season, a number that is high enough for us regular people to feel like a huge sum of money, but small enough for the average NBA player to consider finding a $100 bill on the sidewalk. The average NBA salary is projected to be around $12 million next season.

Actually, I wanted to check the math, so for an average American making $60,000, winning the Emirates Cup would feel like a $250 bonus, as a ratio to total salary. Not nothing, but less than the weekly cost of groceries for an average family. Was it worth it for the extra few games and travel? Maybe.

From a viewership perspective, the NBA Cup between the Lakers and Pacers last year was the most-watched regular season game, excluding the coveted Christmas matchups . It still feels gimmicky to me, and kind of like throwing duct tape on a crack in a ball to slow the leak of air. It might achieve the goal to get more viewers mid-season, but unless the fundamental gameplay is solved, more games and another tournament is not going to help.

The East closed the gap

The modern disparity discussed earlier which generated many boring NBA finals matchups over recent years has been shrinking. Lev Akabas in this Sportico article looked at the winning percentages of Western vs. Eastern Conference winning percentages by season from 1996 - 2024. Keep in mind each team plays their intraconference opponents four times per year and interconference opponents only twice a year, so if it was just looking at those interconference games, the disparity would have been greater.

Another opportunity to add to the intrigue would be to eliminate conferences and have the top 16 teams enter into the playoffs regardless of where they are geographically located. I'm less in favor of this change, but it would fix the problem of conference disparity.

The Business of NBA Ownership

In 2023, Mark Cuban sold the Mavericks to the Adelson and Dumont families for a staggering $3.5 Billion , more than twelve times the $285 Million he paid for the franchise in 2000. Wild return on investment. But wait, Cuban, the savvy shark that he is, still retains control of the team, owning basketball operations and personnel decisions, and a 27% stake in the club. In appreciation for the efforts of the Mavericks staff, Cuban announced $35 million in bonuses to team employees. There are less than 200 listed on LinkedIn, but not everyone’s on here, so assuming 300 full-time employees total, that’s nearly $120k per employee. The bonuses considered how long employees had worked for the Mavs. Talk about a meaningful way to celebrate and reward your employees.

While the Mavs deal was the most interesting, that was not the biggest deal in sports. It was a good year for whoever the investment bankers are who specialize in these transactions. Matt Ishiba completed his takeover of the Phoenix Suns for $4 Billion in February. A Josh Harris led group paid a staggering $6.05 Billion for the Washington Commanders . In terms of ROI, shockingly, Cuban’s 12X return over 20 years doesn’t crack the list of the greatest sports teams investments . If you have a few billion laying around, it seems sports teams were a good investment 10, 20 and 30 or more years ago and seem to still be today.

If you have a few billion laying around, NBA teams are a great investment, especially within the past 15 years. For the billionaires reading this, the above message and/or anything else contained within this article does not constitute financial advice.

Spurs News (Not offended if you skip, unless you're a Mavs fan)

The Spurs got really, really lucky, landing Victor Wembanyama , but are still awful. In fact, they won the same number of games the previous year, without Wemby as they did with him (a measly 22, for the winningest coach in NBA history ). I went to one Spurs game this season and the entirety of the halftime performance was, I’m not kidding, a baby race. Not even a good one at that. It was captured in the Spurs reddit . The saddest part though? While the baby race was terrible, the basketball was somehow less entertaining, and not just because the Spurs were routed by the eventual NBA Champ Celtics, by 30 points . The user Desafiante says “this game is really tough to watch. The baby race is the best part of it.” ?

The upside of having the #1 pick and most intriguing player in the league? The schedule improves. The Spurs went from being able to count how many nationally televised games the appeared in on a single hand for the pre-Wemby 2022 - 2023 season to not having enough digits, fingers, and toes included (4 to 21 ) for the 2024 - 2025 one.

The 2024 – 2025 season promises to be more compelling with the additions of Harrison Barnes and Chris Paul, but the Spurs have a long way to go to get back towards relevancy.

Another problem with the Spurs and a byproduct of their success is that the rest of the league has patterned themselves after the team from San Antonio. Few teams showed any interest in foreign basketball players until around 2013, while the Spurs were already digging diamonds in the rough like Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili in the late 90s and early 2000s. This year’s Olympic games featured a wide range of NBA talent, with over 60 NBA players competing for foreign countries. Not that many Olympics ago you had guys like Dirk Nowitzki, the Gasol brothers, Peja Stojakovi? and, at times, two-thirds of the Spurs roster, but that was it. 10-15 foreign NBA players in the Olympics was a good showing.

Gregg Popovich’s coaching tree has also overtaken the league, making it difficult to find a coach or GM not influenced by Popovich and the Spurs. There isn’t much of a comparison to what Pop and Spurs have done with other leagues. You have Belichick and the Patriots, but Popovich doesn’t care enough about basketball to cheat. In baseball, the Oakland A’s of the 90s practiced the Spurs analytics and identifying underutilized talents, but never captured a championship, and their manager Art Howe was only with the club for six years.

I am hoping for the best this year, but being realistic. Pound the rock.?

Professional basketball, what’s next?

The NBA is still home to the greatest basketball players in the world and attracts fans and viewers from around the world in a way that other American sports do not. The 2024 WNBA season has provided a significant dose of summer basketball entertainment and while revenue parity is still a long ways off, the WNBA could conceivably start turning a profit sometime soon. The league is set to land a significant media contract in 2025. The WNBA playoffs are scheduled to start September 22 and conclude by October 20, during the NBA preseason. The NBA season will start on Tuesday October 22. What an awesome transition for basketball fans from one season to another within a week or two of each other. A strong and compelling WNBA can only help the NBA, and vice-versa.

This graphic from SportsMediaWatch tells the story of the NBA over the past 30 years. You can see viewership nearly reached the Jordan highs in the "Heatles Era" of superteams, but has since then been in decline.

It seems we are entering another era of the NBA, after the "Recent Downturn" as labled on the graphic above. But it is still to be determined whether the slide accelerates or the league bounces back.

Basketball is a great game, one of my favorites to watch and play (for those curious, I was a very mediocre 3 and D player in my long ago playing days – having last played organized ball in a 2013 San Antonio company league) but the NBA game today isn’t what it used to be.

We should have seen the signs coming when NBA beat writers and photojournalists began focusing more on what players wore to the arena than anything of basketball consequence.

Thankfully the solutions to the NBA’s problems are relatively obvious. I’ve discussed just a few of them here, but a number of measures can be taken to make the game more physical, more balanced, and less predictable. Baseball and football have made similar rule changes to improve the quality of the game (extra points being moved back, pitch clock, and shift elimination). I'm sure you have additional ideas. There’s still hope, but I hope the league acts quickly.

The players are the best they’ve ever been, the broadcast quality keeps getting better, the league is more and more global, it’s time to adapt the rules to get back to the high standard the NBA set for sports entertainment.