Exposing The DARK SIDE Of The NBA In-Season Tournament...

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Lebron James spent a lot of time testing out the grip on virtually every inch of the Lakers court.
And rightfully so, as he surely didn’t want to risk potentially injuring himself like some other NBA superstars.
Tyrese Haliburton almost does the full splits here and kind of tweaks his groin on the opening day of the in-season tournament.
Donovan Mitchell also fell down and that game looked more like it was played on an ice skating rink than a basketball court. This is literally an injury waiting to happen.
The league, and the media are trying to push it as a spectacle, but this project has a dark and ugly side. And players are starting to talk about it.
Similar thing happened to Jaylen Brown as well and it came at the end of a close game against the Raptors, after which he was hobbling to the bench.
Brown is the latest of a long list of players who fell and almost injured themselves on these new courts.
And after the game, he felt that he had to speak up.
The real problem gets exposed when you ask how could the NBA allow this? Wasn’t there any quality control testing during this process?
And the shocking answer is no, there wasn’t. Wait, what?
Well, ESPN published an article on October 30th detailing that 2 of the courts were still not finished.
With the tournament being just 4 days away from officially kicking off, the league still had not completed every court. And the finished ones were done just days before that.
The entire process was so rushed and chaotic, that there was literally no time for any testing or even fixing any issues.
So naturally, the next question is why did they have to do all of that, why rush it like this, and risk injuring the players.
And this is how we get to the spiciest part of the story. The money.
Speaking of money, when buying tickets I wanna get what I pay for and not get ripped off by paying for a nice seat and ending up in the nosebleeds which happened to me one time.
Now, here’s the background behind the in-season tournament that most people don’t realize. The NBA is at the tail end of the TV rights deal that was signed back in 2014. Back then the broadcasters led by ESPN and TNT agreed to pay a whopping 2 billion dollars for the games.
But as much as it sounds, there are rumors that the next one which would come 2 years from now, could reach close to 8 billion. A 4 time increase.
It’s going to be the first major deal after the widespread emergence of streaming, as more and more people move away from traditional cable TV. There’s going to be a lot of bidding between major streaming services and a lot of money on the table.
Now all of that is great but in order to be able to command such a high price, you need to deliver on viewership, and the fact of the matter is that the league is struggling during some periods of the year. Sure, the playoffs and the finals are the top of the top. There is also excitement during the start of the season, and peak moments Christmas day or the All Star.
But there are big chunks of November, January or March, where the NBA is heavily outperformed in terms of TV ratings by the NFL, college football or college basketball, especially during March madness.
Also, besides the big marquee games, the younger generation won’t sit in front of the TV for almost 3 hours to watch Orlando vs Utah on a random Tuesday.
82 games is a lot so the average fan doesn’t have time to catch every single one of those.
And this is ultimately what the league is trying to mitigate. Create more competitiveness, more drama and storylines and more reasons for the fans to tune in during times when they otherwise wouldn’t.
A random game between Orlando and Utah could become the quarterfinal matchup of the in-season tournament. Whoa, who’s gonna reach the semis. Find out tonight on TNT.
Or the deciding game of the group stage, such and such has to win tonight if they wanna advance to the knockouts. Tune in tonight on ESPN.
That’s why they painted the courts in all those bright colors that give you headaches.
1, to appeal to the younger audience where the viewership is slipping and declining the most. And 2, for you to instantly recognize while flipping channels that this is a quote special game, and hopefully you stay tuned and watch the game.
The league has 2 seasons to prove that this fancy new tournament generates more interest, and to sell it at a premium during the new TV deal. They made the decision to go ahead with it during the summer, and it was way too quickly for all the court designs and logistics to be sorted properly, so this is why they rushed it, and couldn’t properly test it. This is why we see players slipping and sliding all over the floor.
Worst of all is that it doesn’t seem to generate any added buzz besides the backlash on twitter about the aggressive paint job. And truthfully this is borderline unwatchable.