Fixing the Finals

As I prepare to head to S.A. for me and Grady's longstanding Spurs close-out game ritual, I see that more than a few people feel like the NBA Finals needs fixing, mainly because no one cares about them, so no one's watching. While there's plenty I'd change about the league, when it comes to the Finals, the NBA probably doesn't need procedural solutions. It just needs to tell better stories.

We can thank the Cavs' particular brand of awful basketball for the recent calls for revolution, although it's not their fault the East sucks. But they're obviously outclassed. Supposedly this is why people aren't watching, because the basketball isn't competitive.

The assumption here is that a higher quality of product -- i.e., a better caliber of basketball -- would bring more consumers. Not so, I say. It's not like the quality of the games played in the Super Bowl or World Series increases from a normal game. The Super Bowl is not hugely popular because the football suddenly becomes so compelling. Really, ratings have nothing to do with gameplay. They're about everything that goes on in between plays. But the NFL knows how to dress up its product to get non-football fans to watch. They sell the spectacle. The World Series sells history (explaining why the Red Sox title had HUGE ratings, but Astros-White Sox set record lows). The NBA hasn't figured out what to sell since Michael Jordan left the league.

If ratings are the goal, then that's what this boils down to: there's no compelling narrative that non-basketball fans can tap into. Solve that, and the ratings would improve, regardless of the quality of basketball. But right now the league's choices of theme song (some a capella choir?) and playoff spokesman (fucking David Blaine?) show they're a long, long way from figuring their audience out.