More than nostalgia: How NBC thrived and how ESPN failed with the NBA!

[prophecypro]

Once Michael retired the NBA ratings tanked crazy on NBC which was one of the reasons NBC convinced themselves not to renew it after 2002. Heres an article below showing it lost something like 35% year on year. 1999-2002 was for rough

And you know what was crazy? Thats when the Shaq and Kobe Lakers were running the league! And I remember feeling like it was only people my age and black fans who were into watching Kobe/Shaq, C-Webb/J Will, Vince, Iverson, Sprewell etc etc...the casual fan was on his
But whats crazy is....even for Shaq and the Lakers who were a draw on tv the previous two decades (Showtime Lakers and then Shaq's Magic always drew well)

To me it seems like the league didnt get back or close to that level until the Superteams era of the Heat then Warriors and Curry vs Lebron. I think it also helped that those super teams got a lot of mainstream coverage and the era of taking heads gong viral. Now the league is in a funny place where the ratings are cooling off, the most obvious younger stars are foreign (Giannis, Joker, Luka) or on the rise (Ant, possibly Ja who knows) and the small market teams and no dynasties are cooking.

 

[concise]

Even their news fire
Meet the press at 10am

Tim grilling politicians ..rip

thats my bills fan

American political shows were available to Canadians?

 

[Tribal Outkast]

Before reading the obvious would be

-ESPN took a "hot-takes" approach, focused on LeBron too much
-Stephen A Smith was a cartoon character

NBC had icons like Bob Costas, dikk Enberg, Steve Snapper Jones, Bill Walton, Marv Albert, etc.
NBC had the goat production

and lets be real.. 1990s was a far superior product and brand than the current NBA.

Nothing more needs to be said. Good luck getting this back NBC. If they just hire a bunch of retreads from other networks then I don’t think it will work. You’re never going to bring THAT feeling back but I’m sure they’ll try. They’re just going to dump games on peacock hoping people will buy that shyt

 

[Tribal Outkast]

NBC had Michael Jordan + free national exposure, ESPN is a paid service and the College to Pro connection was much stronger back then. Not rocket science.

I’ve been saying the nba would be better off establishing a network deal outside of cable. You’re in the cut the cord era and wonder why ratings are low. The nfl plays on all major networks(ABC when espn feels like it) The nba should at least have one established network to play on

 

[MikelArteta]

American political shows were available to Canadians?

Yup

 

[Remote]

Wow.



Sunday’s Pacers-Knicks Game 7 is as good an example as any. Here is how NBC’s Marv Albert set the stakes for the previous Game 7 between the teams in 1995:

They say it’s what athletes dream of: playing in the seventh game. The final game of a series. You wonder if it isn’t something that dominates their nightmares. An entire season reduced to 48 minutes, four quarters, one game. You wonder what Reggie Miller is feeling right now. A few days ago, he boasted of sweeps and chokes. Today, it’s his season that could come to an end. And what of Patrick Ewing? Betrayed by his body, yet still expected to do more than just bring his team back from the brink of elimination. Can he carry them to a championship?
These men, these teams, have been here before. We’ve seen the same emotions displayed, then silenced. Last year, the Knicks battled back to win a seventh game against Indiana to move on to the Finals. Now, a year later, the same two men, the same two teams, it’s another Game 7.

Perhaps a bit melodramatic, yet it effectively lays out the stakes and the historical context for the teams and their stars. This year’s Pacers-Knicks Game 7 opened with Stephen A. Smith yelling about “orange and blue skies” while jostling with Spike Lee, leading into a comparably brief open by Mike Breen:

Madison Square Garden will be packed and loud for this do-or-die matchup. [Sound of fans chanting “Let’s Go Knicks.”] For the Knicks and the Pacers, it all comes down to one game. For one team, a single victory and it’s onto the conference finals. For the other, a defeat means the season is suddenly over.

ESPN is oddly detached from the stakes, oddly uninvested in the players’ journeys and what the game means. ESPN is uninterested in telling the viewer why he or she should care about Tyrese Haliburton — or even Jalen Brunson, really, given most of the network’s Knicks talk has focused on Smith’s fandom.

Breen, who worked for the NBA on NBC, has the experience and skill to write and perform an actual tease. He simply was not given the time, as ESPN deemed it better spent on Smith.

The “Gee Whiz” school of sportswriting was met with no shortage of resistance, and an “Aw Nuts” alternative emerged in opposition. This model was marked by a more cynical eye, per Enriquez, “making fun of the vices of athletes, coaches, and owners, acknowledging the realities of gambling and greed … and suggesting that participants and spectators took sports altogether too seriously.” It would not be fair to suggest ESPN occupies this position — which is more along the lines of the “Deadspin”-era blogosphere and “The Dan Le Batard Show” — but the network is clearly more detached.

For ESPN, the games are not immortal. The players certainly are not; ESPN has spent LeBron James’ entire 20-year career questioning his skill, mettle and worthiness. (NBC sought to create the next Michael Jordan, ESPN uses Jordan as a cudgel with which to diminish every player who came after.) ESPN is a new kind of sports journalism entity, one that has turned the “Gee Whiz” model inward. For ESPN, it is Stephen A. Smith who is immortal, and every “NBA Countdown” rant that is legendary — the kind of self-possession that would have been impossible to imagine when sportswriters were having to moonlight as umpires and statisticians to get by in the 1920s.

Pair that self-obsession with the broader efficiency of this era — a carefully-crafted, meaningful tease takes time to write, edit, and air, while generating no money — and one gets a Game 7 broadcast in which the game is secondary to the network broadcasting it, in more ways than one.

 

[Remote]

The ending of that article sums it up:

ESPN is not a platform for the game, the game is a platform for ESPN. So long as that is the case, one has no choice but to turn back the clock in order to watch the game as it was meant to be shown.

 

[Malcolmxxx_23]

American political shows were available to Canadians?

Yes abc nbc Fox News cbs
Pretty much everything
I’m 45min drive to the border

 

[concise]

You were a kid, there was nothing to do on the internet but learn

 

[K-Apps]

 

[Joe Sixpack]

Beyond MJ, they knew how to tease a game with their intro montages and dialogues.

They elevated the profiles of Hakeem, Ewing, Miller, Malone, Robinson, Drexler, Barkley, etc.

CBS also knew how to tell a story about the NBA.

I liked CBS better

Pat O'Brien and Tommy Heinsohn

Lakers vs Celtics

THAT was the pinnacle of the NBA for me

1980s was SOLID GOLD

You couldn't of written a better story in Hollywood with Larry Bird and Magic Johnson

 

[Stick Up Kid]

Bring back Bob Costas, Ahmad Rashad, Doug Collins, Hannah Storm, Tom Hammond, Mike Fratello, even Peter Vecsey's lying ass.

RIP to dikk Enberg, Steve Snapper Jones, Jim Fagan (voice of "this is the NBA on NBC"),

 

[ISO]

The NBA product was just superior from 1990-2002.

NBC was at the right place and time

NBC itself isn't going to make analytics ball more interesting.

It wasn’t superior the mega star of the games history was just around (Michael Jordan) and they seemed to have covered the game with more journalistic integrity and prestige.

As soon as Jordan retired ratings start tanking and NBC pulled out.

Basketball is not meant to be played at 85 possessions per game.

 

[Remote]

Y'all need to read the article.

It's thorough and posts clear examples that separate ESPN from NBC.

This isn't the story that's summarized by tweets or headlines.

 

[K-Apps]