NBA ratings are suffering for the exact reason you think

The NBA's Christmas Day game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Golden State Warriors on Wednesday was everything ABC hoped it could be: a close game (the Lakers won 115-113) featuring two of the league's best players (LeBron James and Steph Curry) at something close to their best (LeBron scored 31, Curry 38). When the overnight Nielsen ratings are released — whether good or bad — expect the usual discourse to fire back up.

The debate around NBA ratings has all but reached the point where the league can't win. If Wednesday's ratings exceed one's expectations, it will be because LeBron and Steph are still propping up the rest of the NBA well past their prime years. If the ratings fall short somehow, even the two biggest stars of their generation can't save a sinking ship.

JJ Redick, who lived and breathed the ratings game in his role as an ESPN analyst before joining the Lakers, scratched the surface of the debate in speaking to reporters last week:

While many of those talking points are nothing new, it's worth noting that Redick (to an extent) pointed the finger at his former network. ESPN had Stephen A. Smith and Kendrick Perkins in the studio on Christmas Day. Their commentary drew plenty of criticism on social media beyond the usual I-can't-stand-these-guys echo chamber.

To Zito's point: maybe when we import the LeBron-versus-Steph, MJ-versus-Kobe, Magic-versus-Bird strain of debate into 2024, the question of "who's the biggest star" just sounds tired. When ESPN talks about the NBA the same way it did five years ago, it might be making the ratings problem worse.

There's a bigger point to glean from Redick's comments, however: it's easy for anyone to project their personal grievances onto the debate around why NBA ratings are so poor. The reasons are so sprawling, and contain enough nuggets of truth, NBA ratings are what they are for the exact reason(s) you believe.

Is the homogenization of offenses around 3-point shooting? A decline in star power? ESPN's coverage? Competition from other leagues and other events? The league's political climate relative to the rest of the U.S.? Sure, why not.

"I don't discount that there are some people who might have walked away from the NBA because of politics," The Athletic's Richard Deitsch told The Ringer's Bryan Curtis on the latest episode of the Sports Media Podcast. "But I would use the same argument that in 2017, there were so many people who were saying the NFL is done, the NFL will never come back. And it was most amusing thing I ever read because that's just not the case. Like, of course, you would come back. You're not going to not watch the Buffalo Bills because Colin Kaepernick was doing something in San Francisco.”

"That whole period where people were, 'the reason fewer people are watching ESPN is because some political thing somebody said on ESPN. Well, there's also this cable bundle that's like falling apart like the temple in Indiana Jones under everybody's feet," Curtis said. "The same thing with newspapers. 'What went wrong with newspapers?' Here's what went wrong: it's a newspaper. That's what went wrong. The thing that worked doesn't work anymore."

In other words, it's the medium. The NBA's ratings are suffering because ratings for just about everything are lower and more broadly dispersed than ever. The NBA is proving the rule, rather than the exception.

When dipping your toes into the NBA ratings debate, remember the forest tells the story more than the trees.

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