More and more American viewers are tuning out of NBA matches, but soon a teenage prodigy could ignite fresh interest
With LeBron James and Steph Curry in the late autumn of their careers, the NBA has yet to find a new superstar who can transcend basketball. Photograph: Harry How/Getty Images’s debut in the dreadful TGL garnered slightly more viewers than the game between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Indiana Pacers last Tuesday night. His debut as a virtual golfer drew 1.05 million people at its peak but still averaged just less than the NBA clash managed across two separate channels, TNT and TruTV.
The long-distance sniper used to be a specialist position, perhaps best exemplified in his heyday by Steve Kerr, the crafty Bulls sharpshooter loitering with intent on the fringes of the action until opportunity knocked. Just about everybody can and does shoot from outside now. Like the upsurge in long-range points in intercounty hurling or the slavish devotion to playing out from the back in soccer, the game has fundamentally changed in a way not to everyone’s liking.
Those who watched or played in an era when there was genuine enmity between Larry Bird’s Celtics and Magic Johnson’s Lakers, or witnessed the Detroit Pistons brutally beating up on the young Michael Jordan, can’t stand the way the current crop fraternise with each other off and sometimes even on the court. The biggest names in the NBA routinely vacation or train together in the off-season and can often be found collaborating about which teams to join next.
With James and Steph Curry in the late autumn of their careers, the simplest explanation for diminishing viewership is that none of the next generation have stepped up to become the face of the league, the sort who transcends the sport like Kobe Bryant or Jordan. The Denver Nuggets’s Nikola Jokic might be the best player but often appears to have no interest in anything except getting back to Serbia to his beloved horses.
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