Warriors beat writer Danny Emerman shares his thoughts on the NBA and beyond…
The bell has already rung on the first round of NBA television ratings handwringing.
After increasing its opening night viewership by 6% from last year, the first week of the NBA saw massive declines in ratings. ESPN’s Wednesday doubleheader drew an average of 1.6 million viewers, down 42% from the network’s first games last year. TNT’s signature Thursday night game between the Spurs and Mavericks declined 29% in ratings compared to last year’s window.
And last Friday, more people watched Boston College football versus Louisville on ESPN2 than Pacers-Knicks on the worldwide leader.
It makes sense that studio executives would be at least mildly concerned by declining viewership. But fans of the league, notably, don’t work for Disney, Turner, NBC or Amazon. I’m not so sure why anyone else cares.
The NBA is doing just fine. The checks on their 11-year, $76 billion (with a B) media rights deal are going to cash through 2036 regardless of the ratings.
On a macro level, Nielsen ratings are decreasing across the board in the cord-cutting and social media era. Still, the NBA is a television product, and it remains one of the most valuable ones. In 2023, 56 of the 100 most-watched programs were sports; 45 of those were NFL games, followed in second place by six NBA Finals games.
As long as there’s a market for live programming, the NBA is in prime position. Even if ratings continue to decline, revenue will skyrocket. Supply and demand.
As to why ratings are down, there could be a number of factors. In years past, pundits blamed athletes taking political stances (that’s not the case here, which is evidence it likely never was). Going against a World Series between MLB’s two signature franchises in the Dodgers and Yankees probably cut into the Association’s market share. Some stars, like Joel Embiid and Kawhi Leonard, were absent from primetime matchups.
The most common theory is that the game is becoming too homogenous, with every team taking too many 3-pointers. Ten teams are launching at least 40 per game, up from two last season. Even Steve Kerr said it’s “a concern” from the league’s perspective.
The NBA could change all sorts of things to appeal to fans. They could make dunks count for three points. They could move back the 3-point line or end the arc before the corners. They could get wonky with power plays and legalized fighting — Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla’s ideas, not mine.
I’m just not sure the game is broken. Teams get their 3-pointers in a variety of ways; the Warriors move the ball and run constant, unpredictable action to spring shooters. The Celtics and Suns rely more on difficult shot-making from their stars. Beyond 3s, flipping through League Pass is a tour of different styles, from Nikola Jokic in Denver to Oklahoma City’s five-out attack.
Are people really yearning for the early 2000s, where isolation-heavy, inefficient basketball ruled the day and Finals games ended with 77-76 scores?
Is the sport really in such a dire place? When games are competitive, they’re riveting compositions of athletic marvel, strategy and intensity. This isn’t baseball, which needed rule changes to address going from the national pastime to a bloated afterthought.
There’s no need to worry about the league’s bottom line, and the actual product itself isn’t the issue.
Steph Curry, Nick Bosa and false equivalency
Several people on the right-wing edges of social media have shared an old video I took of Steph Curry endorsing Kamala Harris at the Chase Center podium. In it, Curry says the vice president is a decent human and someone he’s confident can bring the country together.
They’ve used it as what they perceive as a smoking gun of double standards in the media: If Steph Curry can do this, why is there outrage that Nick Bosa wore a Make America Great Again hat on national television?
You’d have to be out of your mind to equate the two. One athlete was publicly sticking to his principles and sharing why one candidate aligns with his values. The other hijacked his teammates’ on-field interview and then tucked his tail between his legs when given the opportunity to explain his rationale.
“I’m not going to talk too much about it, but I think it’s an important time,” Bosa said when asked about his hat in the 49ers’ postgame press conference.
Defending Bosa is strange. Wouldn’t supporters of Donald Trump have preferred to hear Bosa give his perspective about why 45 is such a great guy? Unlike Curry, he cowered. Everyone already knew Bosa was a big Trump guy, so if you’re going to make a political stunt, shouldn’t you stand on business?
Instead, the right — the party of “shut up and dribble” — is suddenly fine with Bosa expressing his beliefs, however meekly, simply because he’s on their team. Funny how that happens.
Curry is interested in leveraging his platform to reduce childhood hunger, increase access to quality education, encourage kids to stay active and to improve equity in sports. We know this because he does that through his foundations and because he speaks his mind.
Maybe Bosa has political aspirations, too. Maybe he’s convinced Trump’s tariffs would help the United States’ economy. Maybe the only thing he cares about in a president is their tax policy, and Trump would save him a buck with his tax breaks. Maybe he just met Trump at a UFC event and feels a personal connection to him.
Or maybe Bosa agrees with Trump that the government should round up immigrants into detention camps for deportation. Maybe he thinks it’s a shame that the wives, girlfriends, mothers and daughters of the 49ers organization have control over their bodies in the state of California. Maybe he thinks Democrats are the enemy of the people.
There’s no way to know after the pass rusher pleaded the fifth. Bosa of course has the right to make his voice heard, just like Curry or Colin Kaepernick before him. He just didn’t even take it.
There’s no double standard here. One said it with his chest, the other didn’t.
A Kuminga contract fact check
Since Jonathan Kuminga and the Warriors failed to strike a deal on a contract extension, there have been a lot of numbers thrown around — reported, aggregated and otherwise.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been told that the Warriors never put a $30 million offer on the table. If they had, it may have been too enticing for Kuminga to turn down.
Instead, the talks never made serious progress and Kuminga is slated to hit restricted free agency. It’ll be difficult for him to prove himself in Golden State, as its crowded roster doesn’t have a stretch-big to complement him and Steve Kerr’s offensive system doesn’t necessarily highlight his strengths. Those factors, plus the Warriors’ hunger for another star, makes Kuminga a plausible in-season trade candidate.