The slow death of the NBA?

Here’s a very brief history of my life with the NBA: When I was a kid, I would care about professional basketball in the winter when football was over because it was the ’80s, you could catch games on network television, and I liked Michael Jordan, Magic, Larry, Isaiah Thomas, and Kurt Rambis. In my little notebook at school I would doodle images of myself dunking, and then after school my friends and I would play one-on-one or try to dunk off of ramps that we’d built in someone’s driveway.

In the early 2000s I was writing very tiny NBA-related things for ESPN the Mag, and I would go to The Palace at Auburn Hills (RIP) to interview guys at the Pistons games. In this iteration of the league, individual teams still had identities—the Pistons played Team Basketball, the Pacers were big and physically imposing (Ron Artest is a defensive end for the Cleveland Browns in 2026)—but even then, I didn’t care about it all that much because I had already, sadly, outgrown it.

Because I don’t gamble, I don’t care about it at all now, and neither do the players, which is a real problem that other sports don’t face. Here’s a brief primer on why:

1. In the NFL there are only 17 games (so they all matter) and there is violence, which means that as a player you can’t coast, because if you coast you might get maimed and you will definitely miss out on a chance to earn generational wealth via your next contract. In the NFL, every game film you accrue is basically an audition for the other 31 teams in the league, who are all trying to win.
2. In Major League Baseball there is a one-on-one battle (pitcher vs. hitter) on every play, which offers the chance for success or failure for either player, and in doing so, also offers the chance for embarrassment. Even though there are a ton of games, and even though the salaries are astronomical (more on that in a moment), the chance for individual statistical achievement and embarrassment-avoidance usually keeps players playing hard. In baseball there is also the charm factor, i.e. the experience of attending a game, outside, in the summer, is an inherently pleasant thing for people regardless of what happens in the game itself.
3. In the NHL the salaries are relatively small (compared to the NBA) and there is violence here as well, in addition to a self-regulating ecosystem (always interesting, i.e. if you cheap-shot my guy, I’ll probably fight your guy). Also, built into hockey is the idea that you empty the proverbial tank during your shift and then you get a chance to rest. As a result, playoff hockey is one of the best viewing experiences in sports.
4. In golf, tennis, and combat sports, an athlete’s ability to earn is tied to his or her ability to win or place highly in individual events. So it’s a pretty safe bet that all of the athletes care, even if they don’t perform particularly well in a given event. And in combat sports there’s also the maiming thing, in addition to the idea that “who’s tougher than who” will always be interesting.

In light of the above, the NBA is a unique animal. If Darius Garland (just choosing a player at random) is slated to make $39.5 million to play basketball this season, he will be making more money in one year of basketball than my entire family has ever made, in the aggregate, in the entire history of my family living in America (which dates back to the early 1900s). But let’s put a pin in the money thing for a second.

The idea of being “dunked on” is such a culturally ubiquitous idea that, from a verbiage standpoint, it has transcended basketball and made its way into other realms of life, including but not limited to, discourse. Meaning that being “dunked on” verbally is almost as bad as being dunked on in basketball. It’s the embarrassment thing.

But with the way the game is being played now at the professional level, where everybody is a 6’6” three-point shooter, and on most plays, players just run to the wings to wait to shoot a three, basketball analytics (this, the three thing, is the most efficient way to play) has basically removed a.) a spectacular play, and b.) the chance for individual embarrassment. I mean, if somebody shoots a three-ball over my outstretched hand it’s less-than-ideal, but if somebody yams a dunk down on my head there’s a level of personal embarrassment at play.

In this, today’s NBA looks a lot more like today’s WNBA than it looks like the NBA in 1992. Also in this, we’ve lost regional identities (i.e. The Pistons and Knicks are Tough, the Lakers are Flashy), because everybody plays the same way. We’ve also basically lost individual body types (big bigs, small point-guards, etc.) so there’s nobody in the NBA who even remotely looks like us. There are no Spud Webbs or Muggsy Bogueses, or Scott Skileses anymore.

But back to the Garland example. If I know that I have $39.5 million waiting in my bank account, or if I’m Devin Booker and I’ve made $269 million in my career, I’m probably a little less eager to play through a sore ankle, and a little less eager to hustle back and play incredible defense during a Wednesday night game in January that means very little in light of the fact that if you count the So-Fi Play-In Tournament (yawn), 20 of the 30 teams in the NBA make the playoffs (which seem to last six months). I don’t really blame the players for this, because I might have a hard time caring if I had that kind of money.

So what can we infer from this? Maybe the NBA is just for kids (fine, I guess) and for people who don’t actually watch the games or “watch” via their DraftKings parlays. Or maybe we’re witnessing the slow death of something that used to matter to people and now doesn’t.