The 2023-24 NBA regular season wrapped up a little over two-and-a-half months ago, and I couldn’t have cared less. Last season’s playoffs were quite entertaining, and I was hoping it would lead to a more entertaining regular season for 2023-24, but unfortunately, that didn’t end up being the case. Once again, I enjoyed the playoffs this year, but the NBA trivializes itself when the perception is that the regular season is optional content.

The National Basketball Players’ Association secured yet another lucrative, player-friendly contract with the NBA during their last round of negotiations¹, something I thought they would have a more difficult time with this go-around due² to the NBA’s stagnating national ratings and increasing criticism from fans on the load management culture. Despite that, one of the primary media talking points this season was how the players were upset they now have to play at least 65 games to qualify for All-NBA selections and other awards³. Aside from player entitlement reaching an all-time high, the quality of play has declined significantly during the regular season in the past few years, to the point that non-fans who’ve watched certain games with me the past two seasons, in particular, have commented on the “open gym shootaround” feeling they get from watching professional basketball. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has even addressed these concerns directly, introducing the In-Season Tournament, supposedly to inject excitement into the players, as if this isn’t their job, and even mentioning they may eventually abolish the All-Star Game, something he doubled down on during pre-game coverage of Game 3 of this year’s NBA Finals⁴. Talking heads in the national media and the players with a podcast mention how these are positive steps forward, but I fail to see this as anything other than anti-fan behavior.

Thankfully, my essays and coverage of the NBA from 2017 to 2020 have allowed me to easily keep up with current players and events without feeling as if I’ve ever been out of the loop despite watching less regular season basketball the past couple of seasons than I have my entire life. Three hundred and seventy-three days ago, I wrote an essay⁵ on the aftermath of the 2023 NBA Finals and how Jokic finally achieved what I thought he might be capable of when he led the Nuggets to their franchise’s first championship, which also included some thoughts on what other title contenders could do to compete. I’m pleased to write that the exciting trades and rumors that floated around following last year’s Finals resulted in another engaging playoff bracket this year, at least for the first two rounds. Sadly, it didn’t transfer too much of the regular season, as the biggest stories of the season I can think of off the top of my head as I write this were the Bucks firing Adrian Griffin with a 30-13 record and hiring Doc Rivers in January, and the Lakers receiving incessant undue national media coverage and free throw discrepancies. After losing in the NBA First Round for the second straight year, once again without Giannis available to play, this time in six games to the six-seeded Indiana Pacers, I’m willing to bet the Bucks front office wishes they handled the Damian Lillard trade and their coaching decisions differently.

I doubled down on the future of the Bucks over the Heat after the previous postseason, optimistic they could make moves to re-establish themselves atop the Eastern Conference alongside the Celtics, but it’s not looking great when the Bucks lose to a younger Pacers squad in the First Round before that team goes on to get swept by the Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals. While the Heat lost Butler before their First Round matchup with the Celtics and eventually fell in five, they at least stole Game 3 at home. Without Giannis on the court, the Bucks were unable to muster consistent offense, and realistically, they lost the regular season series to the Pacers, four to one, and Giannis played at least 35 minutes in all those games; they were likely always going to lose this matchup. Jrue Holiday has become an integral piece to the Celtics’ ever-evolving guard rotation; Lillard became a heat-check scorer who won some games and not much else since the team underperformed. Giannis’ availability is a legitimate concern, as even though he’s played in 136 out of 164 regular season games in that period for the Bucks, or 82.9% of their regular season games, he’s only played in three of their 11 playoff games, and that’s if we’re being generous, as he only played for roughly 11 minutes before leaving Game 1 of the Bucks’ 2023 First Round matchup against the Heat with an injury. If the Heat are on the decline, then unless the Bucks quickly make drastic changes before the 2024-25 regular season starts, they are as well. The quick dilution of the East just as the Celtics finally complete their ascension is all too ironic; as deserving of their success as they are, I will say that the team tied with the Nuggets as the Vegas pre-season favorites to win the title, eventually running away with the best regular season record and then winning the Finals in a gentleman’s sweep can be perceived as a rather uninspiring viewership experience.

However, I am pleased to announce that the “perpetual first-round exit Timberwolves” I wrote about last year found their leader in Anthony Edwards. Their well-roundedness certainly played a factor in their team advancing to the Western Conference Finals for the first time in 20 years, but their maturity as a team is the result of Edwards’ leadership. The Nuggets weren’t the well-rounded team they were the year prior when they won the championship, and it showed as they couldn’t close the Timberwolves out with a 3-2 lead in this season’s Western Conference Semifinals; the loss of Bruce Brown, Jeff Green, and Ish Smith was more sizable than people give credence. Even still, the Mavericks gentleman swept the Timberwolves in the Western Conference Finals, advancing to the NBA Finals for the first time since 2010, just one season after trading for Kyrie Irving and missing the playoffs. They, in turn, were the recipients of a gentleman’s sweep by the Celtics, but the Western Conference saw its fifth different representative in the Finals as a result of the Mavericks playoff run. The Clippers re-tooled their lineup to assemble what they hoped would be a superteam, only to fall in the First Round to those Mavericks, and the Kings failed to return to the postseason after losing their second play-in game to the Pelicans. That parity I wrote about long ago and continue to allude to after the collapse of the Hamptons Five continues to swing wildly on its pendulum. Despite that, I keep circling back to my initial thought of feeling generous that I didn’t have to watch any of the regular season to skip to the end and “get to the good stuff.”

It doesn’t necessarily have to be that way; aside from the disconnect between players and fans, the major broadcasting networks, specifically ESPN, have done a terrible job promoting the NBA. Wale’s tweet⁶ only highlights the reality that independent content creators on YouTube have, far and away, become the best source of daily sports information and analysis. Sports broadcasting, in general, has become unimaginative; compounding with the NBA Finals resulting in a gentleman’s sweep amidst a season of those independent content creators creating more videos detailing moronic statements made by entitled athletes doesn’t exude the most enticing viewership experience. Remember, this is all just one offseason removed from the players agreeing to their new collective bargaining agreement. Hey, at least the Stanley Cup Playoffs were entertaining from start to finish.

So yes, while the Celtics star duo of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown fulfilled their destinies and concluded the 2023-24 NBA season by hoisting the Celtics’ record-breaking 18th NBA championship, it should be concerning that this years Finals Game 3 outdrew its counterpart from the previous season’s Finals by only 0.19 million viewers or about 190,00 people after Game 2 was the most-watched Game 2 of an NBA Finals since before COVID⁷. The 2023 NBA Finals saw average viewership decline from the 2022 Finals, with that trend continuing into the 2024 Finals, firmly establishing the 2022 NBA Finals as the post-COVID, four-season high in average viewership. This trend should be concerning when the NBA Finals has averaged at least 14.35 million viewers since 2008, and now they struggle to crack 12 million; surpassing 12 million viewers requires Steph Curry, which is ironic when I distinctly remember starting this blog as a response to hearing people in my everyday life comment on how Curry and his Warriors killed the competitive balance of the NBA and made it unwatchable. Despite that, the 2018 Finals would easily rank as the highest-viewed Finals of the last four years, as it racked up a 17.56 million viewer average during the ninth and most recent sweep of the NBA Finals. The narrative is that nobody likes superteams, yet when a franchise takes its time to build around a duo they drafted by making the necessary moves to maximize their potential, even amidst front-office changes⁸ and drama⁹, fans are unhappy and say the season was a dull ending. I’m more concerned with the overall disconnect between the fans and players and how the owners equivocate to stalling ratings. The Celtics winning does me no harm, but it doesn’t give me anything to forecast, as they should be considerable title favorites for the foreseeable future as multiple franchises, and perhaps eventually, the broadcast networks and franchise owners, begin a phase of serious reflection.

Editor’s Notes

1. NBA.com – 6/28/2023 – NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement Signed
2. Havarti – 9/24/2022 – Hampered Negotiations
3. YouTube/ESPN – 1/31/2024 – Stephen A. GOES SCORCHED EARTH on complaints against NBA’s 65-game policy 🔥 | First Take
4. YouTube/ESPN – 6/12/2024 – Adam Silver remembers Jerry West, talks league expansion, All-Star Weekend & more | NBA Countdown
5. Havarti – 6/24/2023 – Trump Card: The Joker
6. X/@Wale – 3/19/2024 @ 7:59am
7. Forbes – 6/20/2024 – With Several Lopsided Games, Ratings For The 2024 NBA Finals Dropped
8. NBA.com – 6/2/2021 – Danny Ainge Announces Retirement; Brad Stevens Promoted to President of Basketball Operations
9. The New York Times – 2/16/2023 – Celtics Make Joe Mazzulla Their Head Coach, Cutting Ties With Ime Udoka