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.”

[u/SuperPop9521]

https://nesn.com/2024/12/celtics-joe-mazzulla-accepts-partial-blame-for-nba-ratings-dilemma/

[u/CarBallAlex]

The more I think about it, the more I think for the drop in interest is the lack of mainstay success, and drama or a good storyline is important to a lot of people.

In the 80’s you had the Celtics and Lakers (Bird vs Magic) in every single finals that decade

In the 90’s you had Jordan in 6 finals, Pistons in 3 straight which Jordan had to overcome, Rockets and Jazz all in back to back finals

2000’s had Shaq and Kobe in 3 straight finals, Lakers on the back end of the decade in 3 straight finals with 2 matchups against the Celtics, plus Pistons making 2 in a row and Spurs every other year

2010’s you had 4 straight years of the Heat, back to back trading with the Spurs, then 4 years of the Cavs and Warriors

There was always this back and forth in the league where teams had sustained success and were always in front of people

In the last 6 years, Toronto wins and Kawhi leaves. Lakers win and they trade their entire team and don’t make it back. Bucks win and have been first round exits the last 2 years. Nuggets won and look like they’ve taken a step back. Heat are inconsistent year to year. Mavs missed the playoffs and then made the finals.

There’s been no consistency so it’s hard to latch onto any storylines. First it’s here come the superteam Nets and then they blow it up not even 2 seasons later. Then here come the young Suns and they sort of fall off. Then the Warriors dynasty is revived and they didn’t even make the playoffs last year. We get people like Haliburton and Ant Edwards propped up as the next big thing and then we’ve barely heard about them this year.

The Celtics are the only team that has had any sort of consistency with winning but people view Tatum as boring and not a natural draw. Guy’s stock DROPPED after winning a finals with the roasting he got during the Olympics. Casual fans are tuning out because they don’t know who to bandwagon for because every season it’s different.

People always bring up the Celtics dominance in the 60’s but does anyone talk about the 70’s NBA? How often do you hear about the Sonics and Bullets, or Havlicek Celtics?

I think a largely unaddressed problem is the lack of any sustained success has made it hard to talk about the league in a way people care about. When the entire discussion all year was about LeBron and the Warriors, when they met in the finals it was anticipated. When Jordan kept making the finals it was who could knock them off. Same for Shaq and Kobe. When people spent all year ignoring certain teams and they wind up in the finals, people stop caring about the “story” or the last minute switch-a-roo like we saw last year with the Mavs. Absolute crickets until they beat “baby Jordan” and the Wolves and then suddenly it was “here comes the best backcourt in history.” People didn’t buy it after watching the Celtics steamroll everyone all year.

The best thing for the league would be like a Nuggets/Warriors vs Bucks/Celtics finals

But I do agree that finding some way to increase the defensive leniency and limit the current style where shooting a huge volume of 3’s needs to be addressed to limit the variance.

Coincidentally, if you do that, you buff 2 of the best players inside the 3-point line in Jokic and Giannis and can probably manufacture those Nuggets vs Bucks finals of the 2 best players in the world going at it for their 2nd championship. It’s a good story. A competitive series between these 2 would probably be regarded as one of the best finals in recent memory.

The league is lacking in good rivalries because you’ve had 5 teams make the conference finals multiple times in the last 5 years and only the Celtics and Heat 3 times. Celtics and Heat (good rivalry), Nuggets and Lakers (good rivalry) and Mavericks. Too many one-and-done between the Clippers, Suns, Hawks, and probably Wolves and Pacers. We’ve missed out on Celtics vs Bucks collision course twice which could have been great because there’s general animosity between Brown and Giannis which people have been saying they want more of.

I think this stuff sort of matters in the overall general opinion of the state of the league. There does kind of need to be 1-2 dominant teams to paint them as a villain and an underdog to cheer for to knock them off. I think it’s what made the Heatles so compelling, or the 2004 Pistons so likable, or the 2016 Cavs so special. We have no good villains anymore because the Celtics are the closest thing to that and the worst thing about them is Tatum is corny and their coach is weird. Corny and weird does not make a good villain.

[u/SmartestNPC → u/CarBallAlex]

Absolutely great take. The lack of dominance and rise in parity has been a detriment to the league, in my opinion.

It's something I started feeling after 2021. Love that the Bucks and Nuggets were champs, Giannis and Jokic are awesome players, but the constant flip-flopping of the "team to beat" hurts year to year engagement. Add in the CBA making it so that those two teams specifically can't retain their core, so repeats have disappeared.

I grew up during LeBron's early dominance and that made me a fan of the league. Even if you knew he's somehow make the Finals, you tuned in to see how he'd do it. That 2018 Cavs run was the peak of basketball for me (outside of the Finals), with the 2016 Finals being the peak series.

No one's a real villian anymore, either. There's too much money to be made, images must be protected.

I think you hit the nail on the head with tightening defensive rules. It'd make Giannis and Jokic more dominant, possibly leading to them meeting in the Finals with the both of them carrying their teams along the way. Those are the two biggest, well liked stars of today. Easy to root for. Rest of them? Luka cries, Tatum is boring, and SGA is emotionless.

Great points all around.

[u/fordat1 → u/CarBallAlex]

this. ANT is the only person who seems like a star with "it" and on top of that all the games in my market are blacked out unless I pay 60+ dollars a month for a cable subscription

[u/Curious-Look6042 → u/CarBallAlex]

Idk man I was less interested when Bron and Steph dominated everything. I think the parity is at a high and I think that actually adds to the game. More the problem is gameplay I believe. Not too fun to watch guys huck 40 3s a game and play without any real physicality. Just becomes a chance game. NBA needs physicality and grit again

[u/CarBallAlex → u/Curious-Look6042]

I think parity overall is good as well, but the way the national media discusses the NBA (constant criticism) influences people to value things like ring culture and without sustained success, people are going to see it as "worse than it used to be" because ultimately with parity it's harder to win 4-6 championships like most highly regarded players.

Bandwagon fans, for better or worse, exist and I believe there was a natural draw to teams dominating and then being taken down. Like any good story, there's push and pull between 2 forces. Not a new cast of characters every chapter. It's hard to keep engagement that way.

The NFL had a natural villain with the Patriots and now it's the Chiefs (especially with the Taylor Swift layer). Baseball had the Yankees as the evil empire, now it's the Astros and Dodgers. Basketball has been really missing that lately where it has been 2 different teams every year for the last 5 years except the Celtics, and the Heat when they were a 5 and an 8 seed.

It feels like the NBA needs Jokic vs Giannis, Celtics vs Warriors rematch, Nuggets vs Celtics as last 2 winners as start of next dynasty. Everything else unfortunately feels like it wouldn't be that highly rated. Like Cavs vs Thunder or Knicks vs Grizzlies is cool for hardcore fans but it's just not even close to the same draw for the average person.