The NBA’s Identity Crisis: Who Is This For?

Daniel Waddleton

Feb 17, 2025

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WHENEVER NBA COMMISSIONER Adam Silver is asked about his league’s declining TV ratings, he tends to offer the same response. This is what he had to say in an interview with The Athletic prior to the NBA Cup Championship on December 17th:

“If you look at other data points, in terms of our business, for example, we’ve just come off the last two years of the highest attendance in the history of this league,” Silver said. “We’re at a point where our social media audience is at the highest of any league and continuing to grow exponentially. So, it’s not a lack of interest in this game.”

Silver routinely pushes back against the idea that the NBA is losing popularity despite declining ratings, and he has a legitimate case. The league’s social media presence is massive, allowing it to thrive in ways traditional TV numbers don’t fully capture. Many people may not watch NBA games regularly, but they stay engaged through social media and podcasts.

The NBA’s Instagram following (89 million) nearly triples the NFL’s (31 million). Its players are bigger celebrities than those in any other sports league, and the constant player movement ensures the NBA stays in the headlines year-round.

However, leaning too far into this "social media league" identity has had its consequences, and last night’s All-Star Game felt like the breaking point.

If you tuned in at any point during the three-hour broadcast, I’m sorry. Even if you thought the basketball itself was more competitive than in prior years and that the format worked, the basketball itself only lasted 34 minutes. The other two hours and 26 minutes were filled with ads and non-basketball nonsense.

It was bad all night, but the low point came when they paused the championship game of the tournament for 17 minutes to honor Inside the NBA -- a studio show that isn’t ending, just moving to a new network.

From the 40-minute delay before tipoff, to Kevin Hart’s multiple stand-up routines over the PA during games, to Mr. Beast’s awkward halftime contest, where Damian Lillard had to literally stand in front of him so the contestant could focus on his shot, the whole night felt like a car crash you wanted to look away from, but couldn’t.

Silver and the NBA have clearly lost the plot: the people who actually tune into these games LOVE basketball. The social media crowd they’re desperately trying to appease isn’t watching. No one who sits down at night and chooses to watch an NBA game over all the other entertainment options does so without a real love for the sport itself.

The role they gave Draymond Green on the broadcast only reinforced this problem. A player who could be a perfect ambassador for the modern game instead led the charge in trashing the league and engagement farming. Here’s an example from a comment made last night:

“Every possession was some type of chess move,” Green said. “You don’t get that today in the NBA, often. ... You don’t just get that on a regular basis. It’s just who can run faster, who can hit more threes, it’s no substance. I think it’s very boring.”

If you’ve ever done a deep dive into prime Draymond and those dynasty Warriors teams, you’d see just how high-level of a basketball thinker he is. I have no doubt that Draymond knows the NBA is as talented and complex as it’s ever been. He was a key part of the game’s evolution, playing at the cutting edge of NBA offense for half a decade.

Now to be clear, there's no arguing that the NBA regular season is a perfect product. There are many boring games. I’m sure Draymond has played in plenty of games that felt exactly the way he described.

But if you take a random regular season game today and compare it to a random regular season game from the '90s -- the so-called "golden age" -- there’s no way you can tell me that version of basketball was played at a higher level or was more entertaining.

This brings me back to a larger point I touched on earlier this season about ratings, but after last night, I feel the need to emphasize it again because it genuinely frustrates me.

When will the NBA and its TV partners realize that turning pre- and post-game studio shows into a "trash the NBA" session -- while it may help with social media engagement -- is actively hurting the league?

These former players and media talking heads repeatedly push the lazy narrative that today’s game is just a glorified three-point contest, when in reality, that’s just not an accurate breakdown of what happens on the court. Instead of explaining the depth and evolution of the game, these shows feed into tired social media talking points that fuel misinformation and negativity.

And the audience they’re trying to reach? It falls into one of two categories:

1. People who don’t actually watch the games, they just see and share clips online.

2. People who don’t understand what they’re watching.

   
   

If these studio shows actually tried to educate fans instead of pandering to social media outrage, the discourse around the NBA would be completely different.

Instead of telling viewers, "The game sucks now," why not break down strategies, matchups, and offensive innovations? Instead of encouraging fans to count three-point attempts, why not help them see the cutting-edge techniques modern offenses use to create those shots?

One of the best basketball content creators right now is Ben Taylor of Thinking Basketball. He’s not just a film junkie/analytics guy, he’s also a historian of the game, someone who appreciates past eras while acknowledging what makes today’s NBA great.

He constantly emphasizes that while we should always appreciate past decades of basketball, it’s okay to acknowledge that today’s players are more skilled than ever and that modern offenses are more complex than they’ve ever been. It’s no different from advancements in medicine or technology -- as time goes on, people get smarter, more innovative, and things naturally evolves.

He made an incredible video debunking the "the NBA is boring now" narrative, pointing out that people focus too much on the end result of possessions rather than the intricacies of how those possessions develop. If you feel like basketball has lost its creativity, I encourage you to check out his video—it might change how you see the game.

At the end of the day, the social media crowd isn’t going anywhere. The NBA will always have viral highlights, player podcasts, hot take artists, and endless legacy debates. So despite living in a time where distractions are everywhere, Adam Silver and the league need to stop obsessing over keeping the social media crowd engaged with nonsense, they aren’t leaving.

What the NBA should be focused on is making more people actually love the sport again. If the league and its TV partners made even a small effort to educate fans rather than feeding negativity, they might even start to regain some of those lost TV ratings.

I write this blog for fun, blending your typical NBA discourse through a deeper film and analytical lens. I’ll never have the reach to convince millions that the game is in a great place.

But people like Shaq, Charles Barkley, Draymond Green, and Stephen A. Smith do.

I just hope that one day, they realize the impact they have on basketball discourse, and how much better it could be if they weren’t so negative.