How To Fix The NBA In 11 Easy Steps
How To Fix The NBA In 11 Easy Steps
Replay, announcers, fouls, let’s get this thing fixed.
Mike O’Connor is the best O’Connor in basketball writing. Previously of The Athletic, you can find Mike on Twitter @MOConnor_NBA. Mike’s writing is brought to you by Body Bio, supplements based on science, focusing on your gut and brain health. Get 20% off E-Lyte, Calm, and all Body Bio products with promo code RTRS20 at Body Bio’s website.
Over the past couple of years, there have been all sorts of debates as to why the NBA’s TV ratings are down. Pundits have suggested everything from load management, to cord cutting, to politics. While I am not here for the purposes of debunking any of those things, I think that a far more efficient summation of things would be the following statement: the NBA is just not a very entertaining television product right now, relative to what it could be.
That’s not a sacrilegious thing to say; I am always taken aback by NBA fans’ unwillingness to consider that there may be legitimate reasons behind the NBA’s ratings plunge -- or that it even exists at all. I am a massive NBA fan myself, and I watched almost every game of these playoffs. But even as a diehard fan, I often find myself watching in spite of many things, and I can’t help but wonder how much better the product could be with some very simple changes.
With that in mind, here is my personal list of things that the NBA could implement to help make themselves a more entertaining product -- from a TV presentation perspective, a rules and stylistical perspective, and a team building perspective.
Part 1: The viewing experience
Number 1: Switch to a single announcer format; no more color commentators
Let me state this as clearly as I possibly can: color commentators in basketball have an inherently impossible job, and the position simply should not exist. I am not even making the argument that the current crop of prominent color commentators are bad at their jobs -- they are, but that’s not the point. The point is that they are given an impossible and unnecessary role that the sport would be immensely better off without. Every game should be called with one single announcer, who does play by play and provides some color on the side.
I realize that sounds insane, but bear with me here. The two or three person commentary crew structure is too clumsy, and doesn’t mesh with the flow of the game in basketball. Whereas other sports allow for natural, predictable breaks in which a color commentator can pop in and break down the game, basketball does not.
In football, every single play is described in real time by the play-by-play announcer, and the replays are broken down in more depth by the color commentators. In baseball, there are long lulls in between pitches that allow for breakdowns or free-flowing conversations between the announcers. With basketball, it too often feels like the announcers are getting in each other’s way, because there is no clear time where the color commentator should stop talking and the play-by-play announcer should resume.
The league’s most prominent broadcast crew -- Mike Breen, Mark Jackson, and Jeff Van Gundy -- often feels like the latter two are doing a podcast while Breen is trying to interject to describe the happenings of the game. It’s distracting, needless, and provides nothing of value.
Even if prominent color commentators like Van Gundy, Jackson, Chris Webber, or others were providing outstanding analysis -- which, again, they are not -- the product would be better off without the distraction. In Euroleague TV broadcasts, some already feature only one commentator, and please take my word for it: it is infinitely better.
The simplest way I can describe the change is this: it keeps your attention far more focused on the happenings of the game. Color commentators, without exception, do the opposite of their intended purpose -- instead of taking you deeper into the game, they take your attention far, far away from it. While game action is unfolding, they will be arguing about some obscure rule, or talking about a player’s backstory. I promise you, you have no idea how nice it is to not have that until you experience it.
Thanks to Euroleague, I have seen the light, and it is the single announcer format. They are still able to provide color commentary when necessary, there are no awkward interruptions, no unrelated tangents, and they don’t crap all over the game. It is an immensely superior product.
Number 2: Overhaul the approach to in-game stoppages
Here are three more very simple things that the Euroleague does better than the NBA, which the NBA can easily copy: they are vastly more efficient in their use of replay on the broadcasts, they don’t do in-game ad reads, and they prioritize fast substitutions / stoppages to speed up the pace of the game.
Here are two clips, one from the NBA and one from Euroleague, which show the contrast that I’m talking about. In this clip from the 2019 NBA finals, look at how many useless distractions the NBA thrusts into your face in a short time. After Kyle Lowry gets fouled -- a questionable call, which I would have liked to see a replay of -- they show a replay of a layup from 45 seconds ago, followed by some aimless wandering around, followed by an in-game ad read for YouTube TV.
Compare that to the Euroleague. After Chris Singleton commits a foul, they immediately cut to multiple angles of the replay on that play. ALSO, while that’s happening, both teams make substitutions, which you wouldn’t even notice, because they have their subs come in before the first free throw, rather than in between them. And finally, they get through both free throws quickly. All told, from the initial foul call to the ball being taken out of bounds, the Euroleague sequence is 12 seconds shorter.
It’s all quite subtle, but the Euroleague simply makes watching the game feel like one continuous experience, rather than the NBA, which goes by at a snail’s pace while intentionally taking your attention away from the game at countless different stages. Pair this with having no distracting color commentators, and the Euroleague just makes it a far more immersive viewing experience in general.
Oh, and here’s another crucial point on the commentators, as it pertains to replay. Check out how nice it feels on this replay, to not have a color commentator screaming at you with their opinion about whether this play was a foul or not. Instead of rambling and complaining about the officiating, the announcer simply lets you decide for yourself, and says, “they feel that they’re not getting the decisions right now, as Wilbekin leads the protest that time.”
As a viewer, it’s more fun to have the agency to decide what I think about a call without a commentator telling me what to think. I don’t want to expend my energy disagreeing with Mark Jackson and arguing with him in my head, when I could simply interpret the play myself.
To summarize: speed up the stoppages, and stop using them as means to inject ad reads or lecture me about the rulebook. Make the game feel like one continuous, immersive viewing experience, rather than a winding road of distractions that come at me from all angles.
Number 3: Cut back on 90 percent of replays and remove the coach’s challenge
Stop making the final three minutes of a game like a court hearing. Frankly, I don’t give a shit if the ball went off of an offensive player’s fingernail after a defensive player dislodged it from his hand. I would easily make the trade of getting a few crucial calls wrong each year if it means that the viewing experience at large will be much more fun. I truly believe that we could cut back on 90 percent of replays and lose almost nothing in value.
Number 4: START THE DAMN GAMES ON TIME
That is all.
Number 5: Either go back to home whites or get better at planning the jersey contrasts
Why and how did the NBA get so unfathomably awful at jersey planning and creation? I truly believe that in the last 15 years we have gone backwards in terms of quality of jerseys. All -- and I mean all -- of the most aesthetically pleasing jerseys in the league right now are throwbacks.
Moreover, I think we need to go back to home teams wearing white all the time, because the NBA is simply incapable of creating an aesthetically pleasing color contrast.
Take this trainwreck, for example. This was a marquee matchup between the Sixers and Lakers back on January 27th, and the Lakers are wearing blue (?), which matches the color of the Sixers’ court, and would lead a novice fan to believe that they are the home team.
Why exactly are we confusing the novice fan, all in the name of creating an absolutely hideous color contrast? This is not a one-off mistake; you will regularly see two clashing colors on a floor where a super casual fan would have no idea who is home. Either go back to home whites or figure out how to plan the jersey selections in a way that the colors look decent together and that casual fans can tell who the home team is.
Part 2: Rule changes and fixing the stylistic nature of the game
Number 6: Eliminate cheap fouls and take fouls
“Take” fouls (intentional fouls in the back court to stop a fast break) are an abomination. Why are we allowing teams to stop the most efficient and exciting plays in the game -- fast breaks? Here is a simple rule change that would mostly fix the problem tomorrow: outside of the last two minutes, intentional fouls in the back court result in two shots and the ball, without exception.
Additionally, I think I speak for every single NBA fan and the majority of its players that the league needs to cut back on non-basketball motion fouls, like jumping into defenders while attempting a 3, or hooking a defender’s arm with the rip through move. It is hard to overstate what a disaster those plays are for the viewing experience.
These calls masterfully highlight how this entire list comes together: a player lunges sideways into a defender while shooting a 3, and then, while the broadcast shows a replay of a layup from two minutes ago, Van Gundy yells at you about how the rules need to be changed, followed by an awkward transition to an in-game ad read from Breen while the player shoots three free throws. All of this bullshit flows together in an insidious way to make for what is simply a garbage part of the viewing experience.
Number 7: Increase the amount of physicality allowed from perimeter defenders
I wanted to include this in a separate point, because I’m not saying to eliminate any bogus or exploitable rule, but rather that the NBA needs to wind back the clock and allow its defenses to do, well, anything. The league has gone too far in restricting perimeter defenders in particular from inflicting just about any physicality on the offensive players.
The end result of the prioritization of offense is that the scoring is simply too high and the game lacks the same amount of tension. If you watched the Knicks regularly this year, you will know what I’m talking about -- each game was an absolute grind from start to finish. A six point lead feels like a big deal. A role player making a pull-up jumper with four minutes to go feels crucial. Each bucket in the last two minutes feels like finding a drop of water in the desert.
Do I want the league to go all the way back to the grind-it-out days of the ‘90s and early ‘00s? Of course not. But I want them to turn the dial slightly back in that direction. Making it harder to create shots on the perimeter will create games with more tension, more dramatics, and more intrigue. Nothing feels dramatic about a crunch time situation in which both teams are creating shots with ease.
Number 8: Drastically increase the number of delay of game calls for lobbying with officials too long
Here’s another drastic difference you’ll notice if you watch a Euroleague game: players will argue with the refs, but they won’t sequester them for 20-30 seconds and demand that they visit the replay monitor. There is a collective buy-in from all parties involved that keeping the game moving is a priority.
Think about how many times in an NBA season you see a player sprint over to start screaming at the ref, talk his ear off for 15 seconds as the whole arena watches, and finally the ref agrees to go check the replay monitor only to confirm the existing call.
95% of every Lakers game: pic.twitter.com/JmwGqVWG5g
— BGN (@BullsGotNext) May 28, 2021
I would like to think that this could be settled with a simple conversation and buy-in from the players, but there’s no chance that happens. What the league will have to do is start calling copious amounts of delay of game calls until the players learn to either keep it moving or get their lobbying in during timeouts. It boggles my mind how the players haven’t realized that their ratio of time spent lobbying to the number of calls actually getting changed is exorbitantly high. There is no value in it; only downside, for both them and the viewer.
Part 3: League structure and salary cap changes
Number 9: Loyalty incentives in the salary cap
For better or for worse, the reputation of the NBA is one where superstars bounce from team to team every year to give themselves the best chance of winning a championship. While there is surely some room for critique to be made towards the players for the amount of movement, there hasn’t been nearly enough discussion about what can be done by the league and its teams to give players any reason whatsoever to want to stay.
The first effort in that direction was the supermax contract, and the results have been mixed, to put it kindly. It’s unclear that players view the added salary as enough incentive to stay put with their teams, and even when they do, they are hamstringing their team from a salary perspective to an incredible degree.
Take Damian Lillard in Portland, for example. Part of the reason that Portland’s chances of building a championship roster around Dame are so poor is that he will single handedly take up nearly 40 percent of their cap for the next half decade.
What I am proposing is this: a loyalty incentive that decreases the salary cap hit of players who stay with teams for longer periods of time.
Under this proposal, players’ salaries would be unchanged, but for players who have been with their teams for five or more years, only 50 percent of their salary would count towards the cap, and for players who have been with the same franchise for 10 years, only 20 percent of their salary would count towards their cap. Perhaps a salary cap expert could come up with better percentages for maximum efficiency here -- I am open to debate on that front -- but I think I’m onto something here.
As an example, since next year would be Lillard’s tenth year on the Blazers, he would get paid his full $39.3 million salary, but only $7.86 million (20 percent) would count against the cap -- taking Portland from $17.5 million over the cap, to $13.94 under it.
Here are the only flaws I can find in this plan: First, it would create an environment where the richest owners might always come out on top, because keep in mind, they’d still have to pay each player their full salary. Would Blazers owner Jody Allen really spend that additional $14 million, even if she could? Maybe, maybe not.
Second, it would incentivize tanking, because getting a franchise cornerstone would be even more valuable. Third, it could lead to long tenured role players asking for preposterous salaries from their incumbent teams, which they would argue is reasonable because so little counts against the cap -- for example, why would Marcus Smart not demand that the Celtics pay him $25 million? It’s only $12.5 million on their cap.
Fourth, it’s possible that players getting drafted to bad organizations would simply ask out earlier. Instead of players going to the Lakers or Nets in their sixth or seventh years, they may demand out in their first or second, so that they could start the clock on their salary cap cuts.
Still; I think that it incentivizes the good things more than the bad -- smart drafting, good team building, and continuity. It is still extremely difficult to keep a player on your team for 10 or more years (this year, the only player who would’ve qualified was Stephen Curry), and it would still be quite possible to build a championship team without one of those players. The hope from this implementation would be that more homegrown champions emerge, and that small markets have a chance to keep their star players.
Number 10: Shorten the damn season
It ain’t gonna happen, there’s no way to justify the monetary hit, but a man can dream, can’t he?
Part 4: Conclusion
Number 11: A collective buy-in from the league and its media partners to focus less on the soap opera aspects of the league
I firmly believe that if the league were to do steps 1-10, step 11 would happen automatically. But the bottom line for the NBA right now is that the game itself isn’t as interesting to its fans as the off-court, drama-based aspects are -- and they have only themselves and their media partners to blame for that.
Based on the way that the NBA product is promoted, it is clear that they view their audience not as conscientious observers but rather as toddlers in constant need of loud and shiny distractions to be entertained. Perhaps they are right to some extent, but I don’t think they are aware of the damage they are doing to their own product by constantly feeding the worst aspects of a fan’s mentality. Other sports do an astoundingly better job at teaching fans to focus on the tactical aspects of the game.
I would bet that, on average, a far bigger percentage of football fans could tell you what 12 personnel is, or what Cover 3 means, or what a post route is, than the percentage of NBA fans that could tell you what a drop coverage is. Make no mistake, that is simply a matter of what the leagues and their media partners have chosen to promote.
And let me be clear: I am not simply trying to bemoan this from some high-horse intellectual perspective. I don’t care if the average fan doesn’t want to learn the tactical aspects of the game. But when you put absolutely zero emphasis on talking about the game itself, you get a debate culture that can only revolve around other things, and it becomes incredibly, ridiculously toxic.
It is as exhausting as it is predictable: after each and every star exits the playoffs, they are denigrated and called a fraud. You are a loser if you can’t win on your own, and you are soft if you jump to a team where you have help. There is no other sports league -- or any other entertainment product, for that matter -- where the culture around it is based this heavily around disparaging the performers.
The pessimist might view this as an unchangeable culture -- a product of a generation that spends its lives on social media. I would disagree. I think that debate culture in any sport simply trickles down from what comes from what they see from the media; the average fan just parrots what they hear or see from whomever they perceive as experts. Every football fan thinks they could be an offensive coordinator, because that’s what they see on TV. They are conditioned and taught that it is a deeply tactical game at every single turn. That’s what football debate shows promote. On the contrary, every NBA fan thinks that they are watching nothing but a quirky live storybook, because that’s what they are told that it is.
Basketball is a beautiful game with ample substance to be shared and talked about. Focus on the actual, intrinsic nature of the sport, rather than painting it as a live soap opera, and you will get a fanbase that actually respects and enjoys the game for what it is.