The NBA is filled with spoiled millionaire prima donnas across the board. As soon as they’re drafted, the likable public persona goes out the window because now that they’ve officially made it, they don’t really cherish the people that either rooted for them or helped them get there.
Now they don’t need to play by your rules or for your affection. That’s why American sports have deteriorated in recent years.
And the NBA might be in enormous trouble for that reason after these new statistics came out.
There’s really nothing worse than an eccentric athlete, is there?
It’s not all professional athletes, but in recent years, they’ve become elitists in their points of view because money and egotism changes people.
Professional sports used to be an arena of no-nonsense athletes going to work to do business. But then something changed.
You could probably point to Deion Sanders as patient zero but it wasn’t until Chad Ochocinco and Terrell Owens exploded onto the scene that changed up that dynamic between the viewer and the athletes they rooted for because you really started to despise the flamboyancy of their egos.
It’s intensified exponentially nowadays in almost all of the major sports; more so in the NBA and NFL, but less so in the MLB and NHL.
The NBA used to be a hard-line physical sport but it wasn’t until the hand-checking rule that completely turned the league upside down from an outside-in to an inside-out game.
Now, all these NBA players are just jacking up threes because the referees have overly called defensive fouls. It’s hard to watch.
And fans have taken notice of it too.
This has been one of the worst NBA seasons of all time and they’ve experienced huge drops in two of the league’s biggest markets.
It’s been reported, “The New York Knicks (down 38 percent on MSG) and Chicago Bulls (down 24 percent on NBC Sports Chicago) had two of the four biggest local TV ratings decreases this season. The Bulls’ 1.36 rating is the team’s lowest in 13 years.”
The New York Knicks and Chicago Bulls are two of the most historic franchises in the history of sports but both teams were abysmal this year so it wasn’t surprising.
And on a national level, the NBA saw a drop in overall viewership as well.
With LeBron James moving out of the west from the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Los Angeles Lakers, many NBA fans found the Eastern Conference way less exciting. After all, James made the NBA Finals eight years in a row before this year with the Cavaliers and the Miami Heat.
That has a lot to do with it.
Also, you have to factor in the juggernaut that is the Golden State Warriors. In the offseason, the championship team added one of the best big men in the league, DeMarcus Cousins, for a measly $5 million so he could prove his worth after rupturing his Achilles last year while he was a New Orleans Pelican.
This year, in the first round of the playoffs, Cousins tore his quad and his season was over.
But the Golden State Warriors won a championship without him last year with the same squad. In fact, they’ve won three out of the last four years.
The point is: people know the endgame whether or not they watch the playoffs or not. That’s why statistics are down.
