Why the NBA is no longer the best way to watch basketball
Zafir Nagji, Sports Editor |
The 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games were stunning from start to finish, with unbelievable moments in every sport and discipline. From Simon Biles’ breathtaking gold medal performance to 51-year-old Turkish shooter Yusuf Dikec taking home a silver medal in a white t-shirt and no specialist gear, there was no shortage of incredible feats for fans to witness.
One of the more predictable outcomes of the Olympics was Team USA taking home the gold medals in men’s and women’s basketball. However, when comparing the two most recent international basketball tournaments (the 2023 FIBA World Cup and the 2024 Olympics) to modern-day NBA basketball, some fans felt that the international game was more entertaining.
It’s important to remember that there are a few differences between the rules in the NBA and in international basketball competitions, such as FIBA World Cup tournaments and Olympic games. The international three-point line is about half a metre shorter than the NBA line, and the game is played with a different ball altogether. Quarters are ten minutes instead of the NBA’s 12, teams receive six timeouts per game as opposed to the NBA’s seven, and players foul out after five fouls compared to the NBA’s six.
With fewer timeout interruptions, teams also play for longer periods without stoppages and players are discouraged from intentionally fouling to prevent transition offence. That’s further enforced by FIBA’s unsportsmanlike foul; if a defensive player commits a foul and does not attempt to make a play on the ball, in other words making a non-basketball play, the fouled player receives two free throw attempts and their team is given possession of the basketball.
There are other rule differences that change fundamental aspects of gameplay too. In international basketball, defensive players can stay in the painted area as long as they want, as opposed to the three-second limitation in the NBA, and can knock the ball off the rim after it hits the goal, as long as it is not actively in the cylinder, which would be called a goaltending violation in the NBA. This allows defences to guard the rim with ferocity and forces offences to be more creative, take more three-point shots and play at a faster pace.
Altogether, this makes the international game feel more defensively focused, faster-paced, and more competitive than the NBA. Slovenian superstar Luka Doncic and Greek phenom Giannis Antetokounmpo have both famously claimed that scoring in the NBA is easier than in international basketball. Even some of Team USA’s newest players expressed their sentiments on the competitiveness of the international game after their first experience at the FIBA World Cup in 2023.
“Scoring is easier in the NBA just because of the different rules,” Milwaukee Bucks forward Bobby Portis said. “The games are two totally different games.”
“The physicality is different,” Paolo Banchero said. “You can be physical on defence in terms of redirecting your man, the way you can guard. That’s the biggest thing that stands out. And a 40-minute game, it goes by quicker. In the NBA, you can be down 20 in the first quarter and not be worried because you’ve got time. You can ease into the game a little bit. Not here; you want to be going 100 miles per hour from the jump.”
This increased intensity on the defensive end of the floor in international games, combined with the significant reduction in commercials, paints a picture of just how highly the NBA prioritizes marketing over maintaining the highest level of competition in their basketball product.
For example, every time a foul is called in the NBA, broadcast stations run advertisements during the free throws. Specific segments of the broadcast, such as State Farm’s “Assist of the Night,” act as further promotional material. Factor in the NBA’s mandated TV timeouts, which are required to be called by or before the 8:59 mark in the second and fourth quarter and 5:59 minute mark of all four quarters, and fans rarely ever get more than two minutes of stoppage-free basketball.
So, even though the number of free throw attempts per game in the NBA (23.5 in 2022-23) is almost identical when compared to the 2023 FIBA World Cup (23.7 when adjusted for the difference in-game time), they feel more like a marketing exercise than a basketball play.
Commercials are also played during instant replay reviews, which take obscene amounts of time for referees to do. A matchup between the Los Angeles Clippers and Phoenix Suns saw the last 90 seconds of game time take 33 real-time minutes. According to StatMuse, there were as many referee reviews (5) as there were shots attempted in that span. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver expressed his own concern with the extended length of reviews this summer and is even considering establishing a “task force” that would ideate possible alternative review methods. This includes incorporating Sony’s Hawk-Eye optical tracking, vision processing, video review and creative graphic technologies to automate more objective calls, such as out-of-bounds and goaltending rulings.
Of course, all TV stations and media outlets depend on the power of advertising to stay in business. Creating that much space for paid advertising time helped the NBA reach a new all-time high in total league revenue at the end of the 2022/23 NBA season. According to a Statista survey, the NBA raked in $10.58 billion USD in revenue that year, a growth of over $500 million from the previous year. This helped the league secure a new TV rights deal with NBC, Disney, and Amazon Prime Video totalling $76 billion over the next 11 years.
That means that NBA viewership is still on the rise, and with a slew of new superstars starting to take over the game, there’s no evidence that the league’s growth will slow. One could also argue that the NBA’s increase in advertising has little to no effect on most casual fans, who keep up with league action through social media highlight clips and only watch their local team’s games or marquee matchups with box-office names. According to a Variety Intelligence Platform survey, 54 per cent of American NBA fans said that they prefer watching highlights over watching full games.
However, if highlight reels usurp TV viewership as the main way to watch the NBA, a new business-end issue will arise for the league; monetizing social media content is much more challenging than with television-broadcast games. An Instagram user can scroll for hours and watch as many highlights as they want, skipping through the advertisements as quickly as possible and generating minimal revenue for the league instead of turning on their TVs and sitting through all of the mandatory marketing.
Plus, as TV deals become more lucrative, the cost of the subscription services required to watch games rises with it. The NBA’s own League Pass subscription costs $20 per month but excludes nationally broadcast games on major channels, such as ESPN, as well as local team broadcasts. In the USA, this means fans of local teams cannot watch their own city or state’s games through league pass, but because Canada only has one team, the entire country is not permitted to watch Toronto Raptors games. Additionally, Canadians are blocked from watching any other games that play on TSN or Sportsnet. So, to watch games legally, fans must buy the prerequisite Amazon Prime, Disney, and NBC subscriptions, pricing out a large share of hoopers.
This has led to an explosive uptick in illegal streaming websites, which, in addition to putting fans at risk of legal trouble, results in a loss of potential revenue for the association. This has become an issue in various other leagues too and has led to the United States of America’s Department of Justice starting to crack down on some of these sites. A fan-favourite illegal site, accessed by 15 million users monthly, was recently seized by Homeland Security. The notice on the website reads:
“This domain name has been seized by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) pursuant to a warrant issued by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana… It is unlawful to reproduce or distribute copyrighted material including sporting events, television shows, movies, music, software, or games without authorization. Individuals who do so risk criminal prosecution under Title 18.”
The notice also outlines that first-time offenders convicted of a criminal felony copyright violation face up to five years in prison, fines, restitution, and forfeiture. Taking down the numerous sites will be all but impossible, as the domain’s original administrators stated that they own “over 400 domains in total” and pledged not to shut their platform down until “sports become affordable for everyone.”
There’s no arguing that basketball is in its golden era as a sports entertainment business. From the value of the NBA’s latest TV deals to the increasing virality of basketball highlight reels on social media, the whole world is adopting basketball as a favoured sport. Last year’s FIBA World Cup and this year’s Paris Olympic Games served as a global reminder that, in its purest form, basketball is a beautiful game to watch.
However, as the NBA continues to price out a large share of its audience and prioritize generating advertising revenue, the glorious game becomes tainted by the stench of gluttonous capitalism. Fans have already shown they will lose interest in watching whole NBA games, choosing social media highlights instead, and go so far as to stream games illegally on hundreds, if not thousands, of sites. Eventually, this will only rob the NBA of its potential growth and ruin its reputation as the greatest basketball league in the world.
