Come late September or early October, LeBron or Giannis or Kawhi or, wouldn’t this be wild, Pascal Siakam could be lifting the Larry O’Brien trophy in the mostly empty, air-conditioned Wide World of Sports gym.
If anyone wins an NBA title this year, and no one gets sick, or worse, dies in pursuit, it will mark a happy ending to what has been the worst confluence of catastrophes in the league’s 74-year history.
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“There have been seasons when the product on the court wasn’t great, like the early 2000s,” says The Athletic’s resident NBA expert, David Aldridge. “Kobe and Shaq were great, and the Lakers were dominant, but there weren’t that many really great teams or memorable playoff series. (I was bored out of my mind during the Spurs-Nets Finals in ’03.) Allen Iverson and the Sixers making the Finals was a great story, but let’s be honest: Philly was a terrible offensive team that season, led by an inefficient shooter. The calendar year of 2004 was brutal, with Kobe Bryant’s rape proceedings taking up most of the first half of the year, then with Malice at the Palace in November. But that overlapped two seasons.
“This year, though, takes the cake. And throws the cake into a river. And the river is by a nuclear plant. And the river then catches on fire.”
Indeed, there has been no other season in which pro basketball lost at least $1 billion (and probably more), was embroiled in political turmoil that exposed tensions at home and in China, lost two titans of the sport, one in a tragic accident, and suffered a double-digit drop in the percentage of viewership, due in part to two key injuries on teams the NBA was counting on to drive fan interest.
And then, well … the coronavirus pandemic and protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death reached way, way beyond basketball.
Trivial as it might seem now, the NBA has been rocked by missteps and misfortune the entire season, and how it navigates its audacious, 22-team, return-to-play plan carries great significance for the league’s future.
“It’s been a rough year, no question about it,” said Mark Cuban, chairman of the Dallas Mavericks. “For not just the NBA and the NBA community, but the whole world. Hopefully, we can get back to playing and give people a diversion they can enjoy.”
Let’s start with October, a disastrous month in which Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted his support for Hong Kong protestors, and the league’s national TV schedule imploded thanks to injuries to Stephen Curry and Zion Williamson. The league was poked by the sharp end of two sticks, experiencing the downsides of huge, normally fruitful partnerships. The Chinese, with the largest consumer market in the world and their thirst for hoops, opened up revenue streams and goodwill worth billions of dollars for the NBA in good times. Disney and Turner, meanwhile, pay $2.6 billion a year to show the league’s most marketable stars in the biggest regular and postseason games.
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At the time of Morey’s tweet, the Lakers and Nets were about to spend a week in China to play two exhibition games. The Chinese government, so angered by Morey’s tweet, pulled the NBA off of state TV and millions of dollars in corporate sponsorships were lost. In the meantime, two rosters full of stars – includng LeBron and Anthony Davis and Kyrie Irving – felt trapped in a foreign land, embroiled in a serious political problem not of their doing.
The political problems quickly spread in the states.
They arose for Silver, who was criticized for his tepid initial response (people felt he could have come out more forcefully for Morey and for the American values Morey was espousing).
They arose for Warriors coach Steve Kerr, who is outspoken about American political and social justice issues and who tried to explain there was at least some nuance to Chinese history and politics that maybe we in the U.S. didn’t understand. It didn’t go well for him.
And they arose for LeBron, who was seething for two reasons. One, he was upset (as were numerous other players) that Morey would not face any discipline for doing something that would cost the NBA a lot of money, whereas if a player did something similar he would at least be forced to answer questions about it from the media, and maybe punished. LeBron also felt that Morey didn’t understand the bottom-line consequences of what he said — a sentiment that didn’t land well from a player like LeBron who, like Kerr, is often outspoken about American political and justice concerns.
We would learn later that the loss of business in China following the tweet cost the NBA between $300 million and $400 million.
Morey was never punished, but he drew the ire of players, GMs and owners throughout the league, including from his boss, Rockets chairman Tilman Fertitta.
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“Speaking up on an issue in America and speaking up on an issue somewhere else in the world are two different matters,” Fertitta said in a recent CNBC interview, comparing players’ responses to George’s death and what Morey said about Hong Kong. “When it comes to an issue like this (police brutality) you should absolutely speak out. I encourage all my employees to speak out.”
David Zalubowski / Associated Press
Just as the situation stateside was starting to settle down for the NBA, the Pelicans announced that Williamson, the No. 1 pick from June and the most-hyped rookie since James, would have knee surgery and be out for months. The Pelicans, generating so much buzz primarily because of Zion, were scheduled for 20 national TV games — mostly during the first part of the season.
Before October was out, on the 30th day of the month, Aron Baynes fell on Curry and broke his hand. The Warriors, already without Klay Thompson for the season and having lost a number of their core players (like Kevin Durant and Andre Iguodala), were already showing cracks. But when Curry went down, and didn’t return until March, Golden State was finished. The Warriors were scheduled for 30 national TV games. They won 15 games the whole season, after going to five straight Finals. It was a collapse for which the league was not prepared.
Ratings are another complicated issue and are impacted by people cutting cable cords, getting highlights on social media, and the growing, general belief that an 82-game regular season just isn’t that important. But the NBA is marketed primarily by its individual stars, the names on the backs of the jerseys rather than the front. National TV schedules are set in August, and for the biggest games, like on Christmas or ABC’s Saturday night showcase, there are few or no options for replacement games when a marquee player goes down. Last season, it was LeBron and his injured groin on Christmas. This year, Zion and Steph. The damage: Viewership of both nationally and locally televised games dropped by 13 percent, according to Sports Media Watch.
David Stern, Yao Ming and Kobe Bryant at the NBA Cares Special Olympics Basketball Clinic in October 2013. (Eugene Hoshiko / Associated Press)
David Stern, the former league commissioner credited with the proliferation of the NBA across the globe, suffered a brain hemorrhage in December and died on New Year’s Day. He was 77. It was a sad time for the thousands of people throughout the sport he touched. Kobe Bryant’s death, on the other hand, profoundly impacted the NBA, its fans, the city of Los Angeles and more.
On Jan. 26, a private helicopter carrying the Laker legend Kobe, 41, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, and seven others crashed on a hillside in suburban Los Angeles.Bryant’s death led to Irving sitting out of Brooklyn’s next game. It led to the postponement of one of the most important games of the year, between the Lakers and Clippers, and brought thousands and thousands of people to downtown Los Angeles to pay their respects. He was eulogized by Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal, among many others, in a stirring memorial service at Staples Center, a month after his death. Bryant’s reach seemed limitless. The league’s players and coaches are still mourning his loss.
“He can bring out the best in you, and he did that for me … when Kobe Bryant died, a piece of me died,” Jordan said.
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Taken together, the passing of Stern and Bryant cast a pall over the NBA. To the league’s credit, Silver and the players crafted beautiful tributes to both men during All-Star weekend in Chicago. Changing the scoring system and rules for the fourth quarter of the All-Star Game itself made for a riveting event. A tiny, microscopic consolation for losing two legends.
The NBA knows it took a beating politically this season, beginning with China and ending with the Jazz procuring virus tests for its entire team from Oklahoma officials that March night before the team could return home, when testing was not available to most in the general public. League officials insisted the sport would not return without proper COVID-19 testing for its players, but those same officials also said the NBA would not leapfrog the general public to get those tests, at a time when available testing in the U.S. was insufficient.
The NBA’s money problems began with the fallout from Morey’s tweet but were exacerbated by the virus, which wiped out the chance for fans to go to any more games this season and maybe next. It could cost the league $600 million or so in lost ticket revenue for this season alone. The NBA can’t make new money by finishing its season, but it can protect its national and regional TV revenues that have already come in by playing games.
“If we go 16 teams directly to playoffs, do those teams get paid more for the risk and carrying this year’s revenue after (coronavirus) and China?” Nets guard Spencer Dinwiddie tweeted last month, who was with Brooklyn in China for the fallout from Morey’s statement.
The disruption caused by the virus has opened a door for Silver to address at least one underlying cause of his ratings problem. No, the NBA will not be changing how it markets itself, nor will it make its stars invincible. But by dramatically shifting the league calendar, and starting the 2020-21 season in December, the league could largely distance itself from the NFL – a huge drain on NBA TV ratings. One of the most important nights of the week for the NBA is Thursdays (on TNT), which is also a night for NFL football. By Christmas, the NFL’s Thursday series is over, and the regular season for football is pretty much over by New Year’s.
The most daunting task ahead for the league is, of course, keeping hundreds of employees safe from the virus for two months at Disney World. The league’s plan to return is audacious, and its safety measures in the face of no virus or therapy drugs are by no means foolproof. Luck is just not a thing on anyone’s side in 2020.
But if the NBA can somehow navigate the end of its season without any further disaster, it would be a nice way for the sport to rebound from the worst of times.
(Top photo: Ben Margot / Associated Press)
