The NBA is Vastly Underachieving While The NFL Continues to Flourish. Why?
Uncovering every reason the NBA has seen a steep decline in viewership in contrast to the NFL's success
Draft Classes:
This year’s NBA Draft class was the biggest joke maybe in the history of professional sports or at least in contention for one of the worst of all time. In terms of firepower and superstar storylines there weren’t really any for the league to hype up. It’s become a thing in NBA Drafts where it’s either a generational prospect year or just a year with a bunch of young role players with little to no serious potential to become a perennial All-Star. The issue with that is how do you sell that to a sports fan? The fifth pick in the draft plays defense! But, he can’t make a jumper to save his life and if he steps up to the stripe to shoot two free throws he’s hovering around 50-60%. With how the game has evolved it’s just become odd in terms of how the draft only has two rounds in comparison with the NFL’s seven rounds. I understand it’s a much smaller league in terms of player base, but I think the NBA should add another round or two to their Draft. The fourth round could be reserved for the NBA’s developmental G-League as well to make it a real asset for teams to develop farm systems akin to the MLB’s model.
My favorite oddity and the most puzzling element in the NBA Draft is how often European players get misevaluated simply due to their country of origin. Dario Saric, Andrea Bargnani, and Darko Milicic were all branded future franchise cornerstones yet generational prospects like Nikola Jokic and Luka Doncic received some of the worst analysis I’ve ever seen. Doncic dominated a professional basketball league as a teenager and ESPN still tried to act like Trae Young was in the same stratosphere as him. Jokic slipped to the 2nd round mainly because of his lack of athleticism, but his game as a big was incredibly polished with his passing drawing similarities to an elite guard’s level of distributing the rock. There’s so many silly things with the Draft as well in terms of how the league “randomizes” the order of the draft each year when it’s quite obvious what is going on. Wembenyama magically ends up a Spur as the media puts pictures of him in his Tony Parker jersey all over the place! He just randomly goes to an organization that popularized building around foreign talent while he might be the greatest foreign prospect that has ever lived, regardless of sport. With the NBA having less selections it also opens a pathway for scouts to unload some of the worst takes imaginable when it comes to player comparisons because the league doesn’t want the media to say the number one draft pick blows.
Contracts:
More so than nearly any other sport the NBA has pitiful contract problems. Players sitting out because they don’t feel like playing, players like Bradley Beal receiving $50 million a year over five years with a no trade clause, and teams giving colossal contracts to massively depreciating assets to give the illusion that the organization cares about its fanbase. It just makes no sense how some players make so much money yet they are actively trying to NOT participate in games. It's actually absurd. There needs to be changes and the commissioner has no solutions really. What’s to stop a player from claiming they're injured when they are not to collect a $60 million contract? It all started when Kawhi Leonard decided to sit out during regular seasons after dealing with a severe ankle injury bug. This was due to an incredibly dirty Zaza Pachulia closeout while playing the Golden State Warriors in the playoffs. He jumped into Kawhi’s landing space and the rest is history. It messed Kawhi’s ankle up which already had an injury history, so he developed an idea that was a smart play to prolong his career. Load management. More and more players subscribed to the idea that they could skip portions of the season to be healthy for the playoffs or just sit out with injuries that weren’t severe enough to warrant an absence. It’s always been a topic of debate because there’s no real way to get a solution to it because it’s hard to prove players are just skipping games and fines do little to no damage to a superstar’s monstrous contract.
The biggest problem with these contracts is how much stats play a part in players getting paid. In specific, empty stats don’t get treated as such. A good example of this is Brandon Ingram a “star” Small Forward who quite honestly has done nothing notable in his career when the games matter. Despite this, he just signed a $40 million a year, three year contract with the Raptors after he was traded to Toronto prior to this year’s trade deadline. The only thing he excels at is being a solid perimeter shooter, but his shot selection can be bad and his defense is just meh. He has alright efficiency and got what he expected before the offseason with a bad team swooping in to give him a long term commitment simply because he consistently averages 23+ points a game. This happens very often across the league. Long term mega deals that sink franchises for the foreseeable future. The perfect example of this phenomenon is Josh Smith who somehow convinced the Pistons to give him a four year $54 million contract that would be stretched out well past his playing days in Detroit. It might have been one of the worst deals in the sport’s history yet teams continue to do deals like this to help their squads hover around the .500 mark and protect the jobs within an organization’s front office. There’s just too much complacency in the league when it comes to giving former stars whatever they ask for even if their best playing days are far behind them.
This is one of the primary reasons super teams have failed in the NBA because a free agent from a bad team gives the illusion that they have a lot more meat on the bone than they actually do. Teams think they’re one piece away and pay said asset whatever it takes to acquire them. The Suns have become a laughing stock due to thinking they had built a dynasty with an old KD, a washed up Bradley Beal, and Devin Booker despite ignoring key positions for role players. Marching Jusuf Nurkic onto the court to play Center as if he hasn’t broken his leg and isn’t a shell of his former self should be a federal offense (I know he’s no longer on the Suns now). It’s happened with James Harden, Kyrie, and KD before in Brooklyn where the team decided to get the top three free agents who all operated as primary ball handlers to lead their team. It was an epic failure and the three rarely even saw the court together. They didn’t care though. Each one of them would move on with their money to another team in the near future to chase an elusive ring with no repercussions. They’d each receive massive contracts afterwards despite being in their mid thirties.
Superstars nowadays are content to have their money and don’t really care about regular season games because why should they? It’s an 82 game season and the smart move is to preserve yourself and maintain your contract value over all else. Does anyone really believe the Cavaliers or Thunder can win a championship this season? Both these one seeds are organizations who have been over performing in the regular season just to fizzle out in the playoffs due to their competition kicking into high gear with something actually on the line. I understand both teams are young so maybe this analysis seems lazy, but neither team has a shot against the Boston Celtics and Denver Nuggets in the playoffs although on paper they are the best of the best. The NBA’s regular season especially for aging superstars is essentially a glorified shoot around. The game has become unwatchable in part due to players having all the power in negotiation knowing that they are always going to get what they want and once they do it doesn’t matter how they perform. Just look at Joel Embiid. He has missed nearly half of the games in his career, but he has given the 76ers owner the illusion of the team being a real contender. He has collected well over $250 million from contracts, yet his injury history allows him to sit out whenever he’d like to. It sounds like I’m hating on the players, but in any other major sports league this isn’t tolerated. The league’s unwillingness to address the issue is baffling. How hard is it to change the format of the regular season to preserve the player’s health while banning load management unless there is significant enough medical proof that a player can’t play? For average folk if they were making north of $100 million at their day job showing up and giving it their best would be the bare minimum they could do.
Gameplay/Officiating:
Oh my goodness. I could write an essay about how unwatchable this sport has become as of late and everyone knows the problem. A game with loads of three pointers is not enticing. It saps the game of electric plays on the fast break because it’s become acceptable to pull transition threes all night. The analytics indicate the team with more three point attempts has an exponentially higher chance of winning, so now the league has responded with a substantial increase in shots behind the arc. This isn’t really the issue that should be debated though. The issue lies in the officiating of some of these games. Here’s a little tidbit to highlight the problem with officiating.
The game is a regular season contest that occurred last year in Madison Square Garden when “my” Detroit Pistons took on the New York Knicks. The game on February 26th of 2024 was an electrifying watch especially for a Pistons fan (which I’m not really). The Pistons were in the middle of a pathetic season with the team being among the worst of the worst. Somehow they found a way to lead in the match by one point with 20 seconds remaining given that the Knicks had their best season in a long while last year. 111-110, The Knicks’ Jalen Brunson with the ball in his hands amidst the best season of his career. He takes a quick jab step pullup three ball, it clanks off the rim, and what ensued was chaos. A scramble for the ball ends up with Detroit’s Simone Fontecchio in possession of the ball. He is immediately swarmed by Knicks players. A strip of the ball while he got bumped gives the ball back to the Knicks and Divincenzo gets the ball up top with a Pistons defender in his grill so he forces a pass to Brunson in the corner with 10 seconds remaining. The Pistons rookie star defender, Ausar Thompson, jumps into the passing lane, steals the rock, and breaks for the other side of the court. Divincenzo then cuts him off, dives for the ball, and full blown tackles Thompson into the bench while Brunson has a hand on Thompson’s back to give him a friendly shove. No call. And what do ya know the Knicks win! It was horrendous to watch and was probably the easiest foul call of all time, yet the NBA didn’t want the lowly Pistons to interrupt the Knicks historic season. The Pistons bench was irate and the team had a word with the league after the game’s conclusion. This has been an issue that has spanned over decades.
Kobe’s infamous elbow across Mike Bibby’s face down the stretch of a crucial game six back in the 2002 Western Conference Finals was a clear example of rigged officiating. The Lakers got every single call that series in order to cement Shaq and Kobe as one of the greatest duos in league history. When Kobe elbowed Mike Bibby the score was 103-102 in favor of the Lakers and a foul on Kobe undoubtedly would have altered the outcome of the game with about eleven seconds remaining. The fate of the game could’ve been in the Kings’ hands down the stretch. Instead Bibby gets called for a blocking foul, the Lakers push the series to seven games, and complete the illustrious three peat. This series notably featured an officiating crew that openly admitted to rigging games. It’s not even a conspiracy. Then four years later there was another somewhat questionable occurrence in the playoffs. In the 2006 NBA Finals the Heat were up against the Dallas Mavericks who rode Dirk Nowitzki’s otherworldly scoring ability all the way to the biggest stage. In this series though one thing stood out more so than the play. Foul calls.
Everytime Dwayne Wade drove and missed, his shot would be accompanied with a swift whistle from the referee under the basket. The series started out 2-0 in favor of Dallas, but the whistle became an insurmountable obstacle. With Joey Crawford calling games as an official (WHO ADMITTED TO RIGGING GAMES), Dwayne Wade would magically bring the Heat back to win the next three games. This was behind games that all saw the Miami Heat obliterate the Mavericks in free throw attempts. Dwayne Wade himself had 25 free throw attempts in game five of the Finals in 2006, two of which would decide the game late. The call on Dirk to give him these last two game sealing free throws was a pitiful one. A phantom foul. Wade wasn’t contacted, fell, threw the ball up, and smoked the layup. Now after the game the series was 3-2 and the Heat would bring home the hardware in game six. His volume of free throw attempts in Game 5 still holds as the most in NBA Finals history excluding Shaq in 2000 with 39 free throw attempts because teams intentionally fouled him to give him the attempts. Despite the refs playing a huge role in the series oddly enough Wade would start beef with Dirk Nowitzki and belittle the All-time great. The series seemed like the NBA REALLY wanted Dwayne Wade to become the face of the league and would do what they did with Kobe a few years prior to make it happen. Calls aren’t just calls in the NBA and I’ll explain what I mean by that.
Bigger markets advancing further into the playoffs (with superstars of course) means more money for the league. If there’s a way to push these teams further by giving them calls in the regular season and beyond, the league will most likely look to employ that strategy. My scenario with the Knicks was one smaller scale example, helping the Heat bring home their first Finals trophy to expand Miami’s market was another, and pushing the Lakers towards a three peat was a third clear picture of “favoritism.” The league can deny it until the grave, but it’s been a truth over the course of NBA history. Oh the Knicks are bad, nope they can’t be for long. The league gifted the Knicks franchise cornerstone Patrick Ewing when the organization was wavering. The Lakers are on track for doomsday in the modern NBA once AD succumbs to injury and Lebron retires, but wait here’s Luka! No one in their right mind can tell me that Adam Silver had zero involvement whatsoever in that trade. The Lakers were dead to rights, with a talent pool for prospects in recent history that has fallen off a cliff, but somehow they get a 25 year old wizard for absolutely nothing in return. Only an aging injury riddled AD who likely has a three maybe four year shelf life along with one singular draft pick. The biggest markets seem to never fade in the NBA and once they do somehow they always get pulled back up towards the top, so there are so many underlying narratives that hold influence for the league’s officiating. No one was talking about the NBA until this horrendous blockbuster deal! It’s honestly a joke how the commissioner doesn’t immediately veto the trade. The icing on the cake comes from The Jazz and their GM Danny Ainge who said he had NO IDEA that getting Jalen Hood-Schifino in the three team blockbuster deal meant the Lakers got Luka. How is that possible? While we are discussing the league, what are the NBA’s rules?
No one can define what a carry currently is. Players get away with carries all the time often in highlight plays as well. Travels go unnoticed as well far too often. No one can really define what actions equate to an ejection. Questionable calls down the stretch that get taken to the replay monitor take eons to come away with the right call leading to an inferior product for fans to consume in comparison with other major sports. Still today there’s a problem with the faces of the league getting a ridiculous amount of free throw attempts every night. The league’s leading scorer Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has been special this year no doubt, but he has consistently averaged around 9-10 free throw attempts a game. This year his free throws account for a fourth of his scoring output scoring eight a night from the stripe to bolster his 32 PPG average. This foul debate and bending the rules all began with James Harden abusing the rule book every night to the tune of his six best seasons in the prime of his career. Six years of jumping into defenders, hooking their arms on ridiculous looking shot attempts, and stopping in place to back into contact led to 10 free throw attempts a game for these six years. It allowed for Harden to put up months where he averaged 43 PPG and he was utterly unstoppable. This prompted the league to make some changes to how fouls are called, yet they never really established a solution to address the softness of foul calls and the subjective nature of officiating. You watch a college basketball game and then an NBA one and it’s clear to see the difference between the two games, from a physicality standpoint, is night and day.
Coaching:
A prominent component of NBA history is the role coaches play in forming dynasties. Nowadays you can see teams with good coaching have their coach get kicked out of the door as per request of a star player. In the 2023-24 NBA season head coach Adrian Griffin had everything operating smoothly for the Bucks and the team was on a roll atop the Eastern Conference with a 30-13 record. Despite his success Giannis had a dispute with him and he was promptly blind sided with his firing. His replacement, Doc Rivers, was a known loser in the playoffs and has had a long history of having less than adequate gameplans for his team when games carry more weight. Griffin even stepped in as the replacement for Mike Budenholzer who gave the Bucks the best coaching tenure they’ve ever had and a championship trophy. His philosophy grew stale and they discarded his talent as well. The role coaches play has become more and more hands off to appease star players. Just look at former Head Coach Mike Brown from the Kings. He brought them back to relevancy, maximized their talent, and was a well respected coach around the league. Late in a game earlier this season, De'aaron Fox closed out on Pistons young shooting guard Jaden Ivey while the Kings had a three point lead. There were three seconds left and after a pump fake from Ivey, Fox jumped towards him, fouling Ivey on his three point attempt. And one. The Kings lose by one point. Afterwards Mike Brown said Fox definitely didn’t do his job and that he needed to look over the tape. Fox took exception and the team’s only beacon of hope was fired. Fox now got traded at the deadline in 2025, so the questionable move the organization made for their star player looks even worse now. Worse than players firing coaches though is when ESPN enters the NBA huddle.
When coaches are mic’d up and the camera pans to them it’s supposed to have fans see just how intense the league really gets. Instead when the Lakers had Darvin Ham at coach I can vividly remember ESPN zooming into the huddle while he told his guys to hustle and play hard. No real coaching, just acting like he was. His clipboard read something along the lines of PUSH THE TEMPO! Or any other broad platitude that had fans fall in love with the game. Not so much. As someone who isn’t the biggest fan of the sport it made the league seem like more of a joke whenever ESPN had coaches mic’d up because they never once got into detail. Maybe it’s to protect from other teams stealing their calls they drew up or whatnot, but set plays have become more and more a thing of the past as the NBA has evolved. One of the only times I saw a coach get fired up about the game this year was when JJ Reddick lost his cool after his LA Lakers messed up the play call he gave on back to back trips down the court. After the team was playing lazy and turned the ball over several trips in a row down the court Reddick was already upset. Then Dalton Knecht and Austin Reaves kept assuming the wrong spacing on his playcall so he finally blew a fuse, called a timeout, and lit into them. That’s what a fan wants to see. A coach that demonstrates an elevated level of care for his team. It’s a rare breed in today’s game to see a coach really get into the game.
Season:
Many fans have questioned whether or not the league should maintain an 82 game season considering how many star players sit out during the season. Look no further than Zion Williamson who is good to go, but has sat on the sideline in the New Orleans Pelicans’ best interest. The idea of players sitting out while healthy has only grown over time with Kawhi missing significant time every year and Joel Embiid sitting on the bench for the sole reason of preservation. So looking around the league at that problem one would think the NBA might want to reduce the number of games in its season to heighten competition and make sure all its stars play. Well they don’t quite see it the same way. Adam Silver floated the idea of shortening the length of quarters to ten minutes rather than maintaining the current length of twelve minutes per quarter. Although that change would shorten the season by roughly 14 games it isn’t really a player friendly solution since it takes away a sixth of the game, which would hurt a team’s chance of mounting a crazy comeback and could slow down the pace of play around the league. The effect of shortening quarters most likely would result in much lower scoring games than fans are accustomed to considering managing the clock would become a huge component of the new look league. So why not just make the season less games?
Well one of the easier answers to that question would be negative financial implications that would come about with that new change. Would the TV deals need to be renegotiated? Would a shorter season take away significant chances for the league to make money? On paper, maybe. But if you boiled the season down to about 60 regular season games it doesn’t necessarily mean the league would be playing less games if they simply altered the setup of a season. Imagine having four different 15 game periods that allowed for eight teams in each conference to make an in season tournament where the top two finishers make the NBA playoffs for each respective conference. That would mean teams would get to play a few three game playoff like series to decide if they get into the playoffs and then once they do finish in the top two of one of these tourneys they get the remainder of the tournament sequences as rest. This incentivizes playing hard at every single moment to earn rest. You could have smaller market teams sneak into the playoffs on miracle runs as an added bonus. Upon season’s end seeding would work as usual with record determining each Conference’s seeding. If there’s ever a team that makes a heroic run that has no business being in the playoffs with a below .500 record then there could be a clause that the team will be subjected to a play-in game with the team boasting the next highest record in the conference that didn’t make it into postseason play. The NBA could use some innovation to address the dilemma of losing anywhere in the neighborhood of 20-40% of viewers this season. It’ll be interesting to see how it all unfolds considering the NFL has done the opposite with adding games in the season over the course of its history.
Developmental Stages:
One of the biggest challenges the league faces moving forward is the development of the next generation of talent that is to come to the NBA. Kids nowadays chase fame in AAU leagues to garner attention from the top college programs in the country. They don’t learn how to play as a unit with their teams, but rather as the superstar they perceive themselves to be. Then there are certain college programs and coaches that foster a one and done philosophy that allows these young players to capture the attention of NBA teams with their flashy play despite there being huge holes in their game. There is a staunch difference between how college basketball works and the NBA. What makes the college game so much better is the effort never being called into question on a nightly basis. Every game in college affects a team's seeding for potentially the best tournament in all of sports, March Madness. Constant hustle, physicality, and execution of plays allows for teams to scrap for the highest seed possible in the tournament to aid their chances of making it to the national championship. The college game has strayed so far away from the NBA that there is no correlation when watching the two side by side. The focus seemingly has shifted to becoming the best individual player, which is influenced by how the NBA is. The best of the best need to be able to take criticism and grow. Perhaps the NBA needs to create a system that fosters growth.
The league really needs a farm system to make sure that players coming out of college have a place to go where they can display their talents with the hopes of getting called up to the NBA. This would drive intense competition that could help get players a shot in the NBA and help teams as they could call up players for reinforcement to bolster their roster. Center out for the year? Well good thing the team has someone waiting in the wings who has been developing their game to fill the need. Imagine seeing a guy who never was on anyone’s radar come into a playoff scenario and shut down one of the best scorers in the league. It would give the league an edge, a draw for fans to consume the NBA’s product. The developmental model for players is more abstract than ever because players going from college to the NBA are encountering the largest disparity between the two leagues the sport has ever seen. Reinforcing a developmental league might be an easy way for the league to show fans that the league is getting back to tougher ways moving forward as players earning their stripes would allow for enticing narratives to appear out of nowhere. Currently the league is sapped of narratives with a decently large portion of the league’s superstars hovering around their mid thirties in age.
