Sandomir - NBA TV Ratings in Tank

Sorry, but four years into the league and the guy is a tremendous scorer but a suspect shooter from outside the lane.

 

Matchups make fights-also ratings. San Antonio-Cleveland is not a matchup that'd attract casual fans (James is damn good, but he's not as popular as ESPN thinks). Most of the people who follow basketball closely didn't think the Cavs had much of a chance. Many of those folks didn't watch game one, and as the Spurs kept winning, the number of folks finding something else to do kept growing.
It's chance, that's all. If the Suns-Spurs had been the Finals, rating would've been fine.

 

Five things to make the NBA better
1) Shorten the regular season to the point that the Finals are over in May.
2) Go back to the best-of-five series in the first round
3) Seed the playoffs and dump the conference championship system
4) Have better broadcasters. I'd rather watch Barkley in the studio than the games.
5) Hope like Hell that the major-market franchises get good again

 

As I pointed out earlier, that is probably because there are literally hundreds of other viewing choices. Of course it's going to be regionalized.

I still would like to know where the NBA Finals ranked against other programming in its time slot. That is the true barometer vis a vis TV ratings, not the rating itself. And I'm not trying to defend the NBA, I think it sucks balls right now, but I think that information is the key.

 

Up against regular repeat programming, I believe the finals did all right. I think the games were in the top 30, but I'm not sure without having the numbers in front of me.

And baseball depends on the matchups. One of my best memories as a baseball fan was 2003, when NBC and CBS postponed new episodes of Friends and CSI because the Yankees-Sox and Cubs-Marlins were drawing great numbers on Fox. That to me said baseball still mattered. Of course, with Padres-Astros you're not going to get those ratings.

 

This shouldn't surprise anyone. This happened to be ABC's nightmare finals matchup: a) two small isolated media markets; a) a complete mismatch; c) perhaps the worst team ever to reach the finals in Cleveland; d) San Antonio, for whatever reason America doesn't like to watch the Spurs, all 4 of their championships have gotten shitty ratings, and the ratings always jump in the years in between when the Spurs aren't there.

So, I doubt this means that much as to the league's overall health, a matchup like this probably would've gotten bad ratings even back in the NBA's heyday. Now if they'd gotten these numbers with a great matchup of major market teams or teams with a fun to watch style like Phoenix, then the league should be worried.

 

I hate statements like this. Cleveland was 50-32. Not great by any means, but certainly not the worst NBA Finals team by a long shot.

The '81 Rockets were 40-42 when they played the Celtics in the Finals (beating the 40-42 KC Kings in the Western Conference Finals).

The '71 Bullets were 42-40. So were the '76 Suns. The '99 Knicks had a winning percentage of .540 in the strike-shortened season which translates to 44 wins in an 82-game season.

The '75 Warriors won the NBA title with a 48-34 record. Portland had 49 wins when it won in '77.

 

And even Monday Night Football's ratings went down, causing ABC to panic and screw around with the broadcast crew on a regular basis, even though there was nothing the network could possibly do to bring back the ratings of the glory days, when people had, what, six channels?

 

Dude. Shut the fuck up.

You got fucking owned last time on this. This is not a one-year thing for the NBA. The ratings are down by FIFTY FUCKING PERCENT from the "oh shit, the bottom is falling out" low of 1999. Yeah, other sports are falling too. The NBA is falling like Wile E. Coyote over the cliff. Baseball's falling too. It's still more fucking popular than the fucking NBA.

As for your stupid fucking theory that all we say is BUT BASEBALL'S PERFECT, go back and click on the post I quoted on the first page and read that thread from a month ago. A whole bunch of us went on and on about how baseball's not perfect, by any stretch. Most of us are sick and tired of all Sox-Yanks, all the time too. So cram that up your ass.

But for all its faults, baseball sure as fuck more popular than the NBA, and it sure as fuck is being played by a whole lot of fucking kids nationwide.

So take your silly-ass NBA rules and MLB drools shit back to the nba.com chat rooms. I'm sick to shit of reading it here.

 

This is like arguing which is colder, Edmonton or Calgary?

Both sports' ratings are falling, and both are falling like Wile E. Coyote off a cliff.

1992 finals ratings: Baseball 20.2, NBA 14.2

2006 finals ratings: Baseball 10.1, NBA 8.5

Percentage drop: Baseball FIFTY FUCKING PERCENT, NBA 40%.

And I'm sure this year's NBA finals will be more than 50% lower than 1992, and so will baseball, especially if it gets Milwaukee or San Diego or Cleveland in the World Series.

Take the Spurs out of the equation, and the NBA is actually almost treading water.

Give baseball fans two legendary franchises like the Tigers and Cardinals . . . and they still managed only a 10.1 last year.

It's a 1,000-channel universe with games that end at midnight. I wouldn't blame anybody for not watching either.

 

BUT YOU CAN HAVE CONVERSATION WHILE THE GAME IS GOING ON! AND YOU GET TO HAVE A HOTDOG! YANKS AND SAWKS!