Shaquille O'Neal believes he has identified the biggest reason for the recent decline in NBA TV ratings.
As discussed in a recent article – Artist: Terrible Announcement and front office sportsthe start of the NBA season didn't grab viewers' attention from opening night.
On DraftKings Network's “Big Podcast,” Shaq believes the most important reason is that there are too many 3-pointers in the game and not enough of the other factors.
“I'm depressed because I'm seeing the same thing,” O'Neill said. “Everyone's making the same plays…Steph Curry and those guys messed it up. I don't care that Golden State shoots three-pointers back then, but no team is a three-point shooter. So why does everyone use the same strategy? I think that makes the game boring.”
There are many other reasons for the decline in NBA viewership — fewer subscribers to cable and satellite bundles, fewer regular-season games, and fewer regular-season games in an 82-game season featuring 10 teams from each conference. The postseason and many of the games, frankly, don't feel like meaningful competitive tournaments where all the players are doing their best to win.
Nevertheless, O'Neal pinpointed the outrageous amount of 3-point shot attempts that disrupted the natural flow of the game.
“This game was already perfect when it was created,” Naismith insisted. “This new era of humanity has messed it up…Golden State has come in and changed it, and you make a great point, it's a copycat league. Everyone's Stephen Curry. Everyone wants to be Stephen Curry, but ratings are going down. But these people need to wake up, because when ratings go down, so does their income. ”
This is the drum that legendary NBA writer Bob Ryan has been beating for more than a decade, and he took a victory lap during a recent appearance on OutKick's “Don't @ Me with Dan Dakich.”
“To me, the 3-point shot is the worst thing that ever happened in basketball. So let's look back at a little bit of history. Yeah. The ABA didn't introduce the 3-point shot. The ABA didn't introduce the 3-point shot. It was a 3-point shot. You know, it was a gimmick by the promoters. It wasn't asked for by anyone in the NBA. It was a ploy by the promoters. Abe Saperstein, the promoter of the Globetrotters, founded a league called the American Basketball League in 1961, hoping to compete with the NBA. That league lasted a year and a half. “He broke down in his second year. But he needed a gimmick, so he took the 3-point shot,” Ryan said.
“I've said for a long time that 4-point shots are probably going to be successful in my lifetime, but 3-point shots aren't going anywhere. And that's the game here. It's distorting the game on every level. Obviously the Postman's influence has diminished. We don't have Kevin McHale anymore, folks. , you have to look for a movie, you have to go on YouTube. You can't do that again, and the game has changed. I just want balance.”
