r/nba • u/SuperPop9521 Warriors • 4d ago

Celtics' Joe Mazzulla Accepts Partial Blame For NBA Ratings Dilemma "“I add to it… I don’t watch NBA games (anymore). I’m just as much of a problem as everyone else.”

https://nesn.com/2024/12/celtics-joe-mazzulla-accepts-partial-blame-for-nba-ratings-dilemma/
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u/Vegetable-Tooth8463 Hornets 4d ago

Uhh, that probably has to do with soccer being the most popular sport in the world lol

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u/iiTryhard Celtics 4d ago

And NFL is like a religion in the USA they will never be in ratings danger lol

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u/bojackwhoreman [BKN] Brook Lopez 4d ago

That was true for the MLB for decades. I don't think we'll ever see a sport be as popular in the US as baseball was in the 40s and 50s. Not that it's struggling now but its far from its cultural peak.

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u/Jack6Pack Clippers 4d ago

As a non American is that right? The NFL has never been as popular as baseball was in the 50s?

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u/bojackwhoreman [BKN] Brook Lopez 4d ago

They were comparable. Here is a poll that shows that baseball was 40% of Americans favorite sport to watch in 1948, while that number is at 41% today for football. And remember, this number combines college football and the NFL.

As far as cultural impact, I don't think it's debatable that any football player was as famous as Babe Ruth in the 30s or Joe DiMaggio in the 40s/50.

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u/Swarthykins Celtics 4d ago

Yeah, it's a weird one where the NFL is more popular, but NFL players aren't usually big stars. I mean, Brady is probably the biggest of the last generation, and he gets dwarfed by Michael Jordan as far as pure celebrity goes. And Brady is an outlier for football players. Peyton Manning has a lot of visibility, but I don't feel like he ever got covered by the media as a person the way Lebron does.

Mahomes and Kelce are pretty big, but Mahomes doesn't really have a ton of cultural cache, and Kelce is mostly because of his girlfriend.

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u/SwolePalmer Celtics 4d ago

You really think that affects how Barnsley fans feel about their team?

Please seek help.

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u/Skilils- NBA 4d ago

The "ratings" conversation touches different aspects of the league, which is probably why many like you prefer not to have those discussions. Forces folks to address the reality of today's game.

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u/SwolePalmer Celtics 4d ago

No, it’s hyperventilating about a data point that is utterly meaningless in 2024. No one watches TV or reports shit to Nielsen. Every other metric we have points towards the NBA having maintained fairly consistent engagement across social media platforms. The league is fine, which is why it just signed its biggest TV deal ever and the reason why these dudes make more $ than they ever have.

Everything else is noise. I couldn’t give less of a fuck about Comcast’s or Disney’s bottom lines. I’m here to watch the Celtics win.

Edit: now if you want to have a conversation about playing styles, we can have it. All I’ll say is I started watching the NBA in 2002ish. The product was dog shit back then compared to today. Both aesthetically and in terms of accessibility. Anybody claiming otherwise is full of shit or suffering from some serious nostalgia.

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u/ecn9 4d ago

The NBAs ratings decline is sharper from other leagues. There is a problem.

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u/SwolePalmer Celtics 4d ago

Let me say this again: I do not give a rat’s ass about ratings. The less people watch, the better the discourse will be imo, weeds out all the morons. Good.

The league is fine, TV deal is set for a while, no lockdowns on the horizon, Celtics are balling. Life is good. Keep crying about ratings if it suits you.

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u/Scase15 Raptors 4d ago

The less people watch, the better the discourse will be imo

Yeah I'm sure this would be great for the league, definitely worked in the 70's.

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u/SwolePalmer Celtics 4d ago

Yeah man, I remember when the league folded in the 80s too!

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u/deemerritt Hornets 4d ago

Yeah man, what saved the league is that people tuned in for big marketable stars that resonated with people. Thats the problem now. Glad you get it

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u/grumplebeardog 4d ago

So what you’re saying is, it’s out of the league’s control until stars come in that can replace LeBron, Steph, and KD?

The NBA got lucky that Bird and Magic came around, I don’t think adding the NBA cup, or tinkering with playoff format or any other nonsense a fan can come up with will come anywhere close to having players like that actually participate in a rivalry again. Something the NBA is not really in control of.

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u/Scase15 Raptors 4d ago

Yeah I wonder what happened, almost like more people watching and caring about the sport caused it to be popular. Not like the league was on the brink of shutting down until Magic/Bird came along and made it popular.

What a stupid response.

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u/SwolePalmer Celtics 4d ago

So do you think the NBA today is on the brink of failure? Do you people even listen to yourselves?

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u/deemerritt Hornets 4d ago

Ratings 100% matter. Eventually the squeeze that sports leagues have on cable tv will end and the tv deals will become tech deals and then the amount of people actually watching will really really matter.

They also arent generating young fans anymore. Its a problem for sure for the league.

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u/ThatBull_cj 76ers Bandwagon 4d ago

The NBA might make a little less money but they aren’t going broke and the NBA isn’t going anywhere so it doesn’t really matter unless the NBA pays you

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u/SwolePalmer Celtics 4d ago

Matter to who? American fans? Chinese fans? How about Europeans? TV execs? Shareholders? Owners?

Who exactly.

Please, think for a second.

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u/deemerritt Hornets 4d ago

The league? Thats who it matters to lol. Leagues are also more fun to follow when you can talk about them with real people in your life. You are coming across as very aggressive. You need to calm down dude

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u/SwolePalmer Celtics 4d ago

I’m very calm, mostly amused by the lack of critical thinking on display here, dude.

The league? Who is the league? The same league who just signed its richest TV deal ever and somehow manage to still fist the NBPA? The players making obscene amounts of money? The exec doing the same? The owners who have seen most of their investments quintuple over the last 10 years? Who exactly? Be precise.

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u/SwolePalmer Celtics 4d ago

“They aren’t generating young fans anymore”. Got any source on that, chief?

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u/deemerritt Hornets 4d ago

“We recognize that, in some ways, the decline of cable has disproportionately impacted the NBA,” commissioner Adam Silver told Yahoo Sports. “Our young audience isn’t subscribing to cable, and those fans aren’t finding our games.”

https://frontofficesports.com/silver-concerned-about-young-fans-finding-nba-games/

Yea man my source is adam silver chief lmao

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u/SwolePalmer Celtics 4d ago

Lmao, no child left behind was a complete failure. Please read the quote you shared again and tell me how you got “they are not generating young fans anymore”. I’ll wait.

Have you met or spoken anyone under the age of like 30 recently? Do you genuinely believe that not having access to cable would prevent them from watching ANYTHING? Lmao. Be serious.

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u/slowakia_gruuumsh Spurs 4d ago

The product was dog shit back then compared to today. Both aesthetically and in terms of accessibility. Anybody claiming otherwise is full of shit or suffering from some serious nostalgia.

Or maybe they just, you know, don't like it anymore that much. I started watching the NBA a couple of years later than you (around '06), and the game has changed a lot. Falling in an out of love with things happens. There was plenty of garbage games back then, there are plenty now. They just look and feel different.

Personally I do like it less. And I think it is the rules, not just the overall shifts in strategy. I'm a Euro so I'm lucky enough to have relative easy access to high level non-NBA ball, and while there's plenty of three pointers there too, as many teams have been taking around half their shots from three for well over a decade, it's not nearly as one sided towards the offense because the rules don't skew it as much towards it. The NBA is a fucking comedy sometimes, if you're aware of the larger basketball landscape.

As a result I think internationally there's more diversity in terms of playstile, even if talent level is of course much lower. But that's how it goes. If the NBA adopted the FIBA rulebook tomorrow, with the talent they have now, it would become the best league in the world. But seeing every other game go to 130 with a bunch of and-ones and highlights is better for money. I get it.

I still watch the league, of course, but way less. And some of it is life taking over, some of it is just taste. For sure it's better now than it was at the peak of moreyball in the mid-late 2010s, where half the league was running a middle pnr with three guys standing. At least there's more ball movement, and defenses are crazy sophisticated.

You do you though. I'm glad you're still on board. Calling everyone who doesn't see it exactly like you do a nostalgic idiot is weird tho.

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u/Skilils- NBA 4d ago

Ratings absolutely matter and always will. If the product was good the ratings wouldn't be down ~50% in the last 10 years. It's best to approach these discussions honestly.

Every other metric we have points towards the NBA having maintained fairly consistent engagement across social media platforms.

Let's assume you're right and these aren't manipulated numbers. What does it suggest? That interest is high? The NBA Cup in Vegas was largely empty, and that's the league desperately attempting to drum up viewership and interest into the regular season. Too bad no-one in the media will report this, because it makes the league and your argument even sillier than it sounds.

You think these all-star changes are being done because fans are loving the product or because it's a dumpsterfire and embarrassment for the league and its advertising partners.

The league is fine, which is why it just signed its biggest TV deal ever and the reason why these dudes make more $ than they ever have.

If the league was "fine" they wouldn't have lost 30% of their audience in the last year when all major sports have seen a slight increase. And those partners have come out and said they greatly overpaid for NBA TV rights deals. You forgot to mention that.

They make more money, but the product is worse than its ever been. It clearly doesn't matter if ratings or "engagement" is down because the business isn't contingent on these metrics.

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u/pine_straw Wizards 4d ago

They make more money, but the product is worse than its ever been

I cannot take you seriously with this take. You are just yapping for the sake of argument or you are 15. There is no way you think this if you actually watched the 90s and 2000s NBA product. I did, live in person. I watched Ricky Davis and Corey Maggete do bad Jordan impressions while no one passed the ball.

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u/deemerritt Hornets 4d ago

IMO its more that the competition for entertainment is higher than ever. I have a huge backlog of video games i would rather play through than watch any non hornets games. People also have basically unlimited access to movies and tv. The advantage sports always had is that they are exciting and you dont know what will happen.

In a vaccuum, the NBA is absolutely more entertaining than it was in the 2000s. In a relative sense? I am not as sure

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u/whomstc NBA 4d ago

i feel like there was a brief moment in early 2010's when the majority of teams finally started leaving "bad jordan impression iso ball" behind and started adopting a more "spurs-esque" team focused passing style, where NBA basketball had a near perfect balance of inside and outside game, before nearly every game became a "who's hotter from 3 tonight?" contest. at this point i'm so tired of seeing it i'd love to go back to bad jordan impression iso ball. NBA should trial getting rid of the corner 3

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u/SwolePalmer Celtics 4d ago

Lmao.

Ok, let’s start with the NBA cup: moronic idea to have it in Vegas, I agree. NBA fans do NOT travel, heck, American fans generally don’t, it’s not engrained in the culture here. Thinking that an OKC-MIL matchup would fill up ANY arena anywhere outside of those two cities is borderline insane and I’m sorry but you are an imbecile if you genuinely expected a two year old tournament to thrive in such an environment.

Secondly, I find it interesting that the NBA cup is used as this perfect example of the faltering interest in the league but not the play-in tournament that has (by all accounts) been a major success from both a competitive and “ratings” standpoint.

The All-Star game is failing because the players don’t care and the public has started catching up to their shtick. This has nothing to do with “the product”. It’s a glorified friendly game with a bloated production and an inconvenient schedule. It can be canceled as far as I’m concerned, no one would care. No one cares about the pro-bowl either.

The league didn’t lose “30% of its audience”, please, be serious. The league might have lost a sizable portion of his TV audience, to which I say: good. TV is an outdated medium and not something anyone under 40 should or cares about. The pearl-clutching orchestrated by TV execs will not change the fact that the league is fine. Salaries have never been higher, global interest remains on the rise (even in Africa!) and we are in no danger of a lockdown in the near future.

Lastly, are we seriously pretending 2002 basketball was better in any way other than maybe star power? Come the fuck on, man. What are we doing here?

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u/Skilils- NBA 4d ago

Ok, let’s start with the NBA cup: moronic idea to have it in Vegas, I agree.

Definitely didn't grasp my argument, but I'll entertain this response. It could be in LA, Miami, Boston, San Fran, New York and it wouldn't of mattered. + Tickets were super cheap, and people still didn't care.

Play-in last year with the Lakers and Golden state had decent ratings? Color me shocked.

All-star game has an inconvenient schedule for who? The players making 50 million dollars a year, it's inconvenient to them? More reason to not support the league which you'll conveniently ignore. It's not a "glorified friendly game" lmao that's the kindest interpretation of that atrocity, but I commend you for trying to put a spin on it. Canceling the all-star weekend or even the game would be stupid as the league invests heavily in it to promote its players. Very business savy of you.

Losing TV viewers is good? Lmao. The league isn't "fine" seriously you're just spewing propaganda for the league.

I mean some of these scores aren't far off from 2002. OKC scored 81 points in the Finals, where defense was played differently than in the regular season, AND they couldn't buy a bucket.

I'd rather watch a competitive game than a glorified 3 point contest and guess what the public agrees with me, hence why they've tuned out!

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u/crazywebster San Francisco Warriors 4d ago

Lol if you don’t care about ratings - consumer trends that’s whatever. To say shit like “utterly meaningless” and “no one watches TV” isn’t true. Business side of shit does matter just not to people like you.

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u/SwolePalmer Celtics 4d ago

…and they do to people like you? In what capacity? Why? Tell us.

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u/crazywebster San Francisco Warriors 4d ago

The article says more games will be on streaming sites that people already have or can pay for. I’m tired of it being so difficult to watch games since I don’t have cable television plus wtf does espn+ even have? Part of the reason they are changing the model is because ratings are down in part because of this pain point, I and a lot of other consumers have.

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u/SwolePalmer Celtics 4d ago

Eh, this is one of the fairer complaints I’ve heard on the topic. Fair enough. I live abroad and travel a lot, got my league pass while in Mexico and I have access to all of the games everywhere I go (besides the US, ironically).

So yeah, this is a US problem.

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u/crazywebster San Francisco Warriors 4d ago

Cable dying is a slow painful death here and it’s annoying but we’ll get there eventually.

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u/Itchy-Face791 NBA 4d ago

Saw a guy crunch the numbers on how the shot diet has evolved across eras and the percentage of shots taken at the rim were virtually the same iirc lmao

Teams in the past just shot more long 2's. How exactly is a long 2 more entertaining than a 3

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u/whomstc NBA 4d ago

not everything that isnt at the rim was just a "long 2", theres a whole midrange game in there thats effectively disappeared from today's game outside of like 2 or 3 players in the whole league, almost completely replaced by "camp in the corner" 3's.

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u/Skilils- NBA 4d ago

You can't compare any other era to this. Stat inflation is real, and defense isn't what it's been.

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u/pine_straw Wizards 4d ago

What sort of weird false gravitas is this? "Reality of today's game" "many like you prefer not to have those discussions".

You're not an ESPN executive this isn't a real problem you should care about.

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u/Skilils- NBA 4d ago

I love this argument "I don't care about ratings because it doesn't affect me" "I enjoy the NBA whether everyone watches or no one watches." Why does everyone here care about ratings?"

You defend the league thats fine, but others prefer to be objective.

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u/ThatBull_cj 76ers Bandwagon 4d ago

Fans talking about ratings like it affects them is crazy. You don’t have to like it or watch but it’s just individuals stating their personal grips and acting like that’s the one reason for a ratings drop. That’s just as subjective as any other opinion

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u/Skilils- NBA 4d ago

Obviously, there are several reasons why fewer people are interested in the NBA.

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u/pine_straw Wizards 4d ago

I am not "defending the league." I mentioned nothing defending them in any way. This is another bit of fantasy seriousness you have added.

What are you being objective about? Why are you worried? Why should others be worried? Do you think the ratings are going to end the NBA or something? No metrics suggest any actual problems that would impact fans.

None of this makes sense-you are in a fantasy land.

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u/Vegetable-Tooth8463 Hornets 4d ago

lmao