When I flipped on the Spurs-Jazz game last night after returning home from a long day on planes and in airports my wife expressed some surprise that basketball was still going on. She's not the biggest basketball fan in the world, although she's a regular visitor to the Garden to take in a night with the Knicks. Hmm, perhaps I'm not doing the best job I can of selling the game. At any rate, she likes the game but like many more casual fans of roundball was showing some dismay at the drawn-out playoff schedule.
She's not the only one. Phil Muschnick hit on the same topic in his column for today's Post.
To think that once upon a time, before the playoffs were stretched into late June, there was a rhythm, a beat, a keep-it-coming flow to the NBA playoffs. They were all elements that conspired to create a reason to watch and to keep watching.
Once you start sticking three days between games and try to post-up summer, you begin to challenge people to remain interested. And the NBA, in debt service to its partner national TV networks, has institutionalized that challenge.
Odd, while the NBA at-game experience is predominated by sounds and scenes that are designed to cater to fans with short attention spans, there will be three days between Game 1 and Game 2 of this year’s NBA finals. Outside of the fans in the two remaining teams’ cities, three days is exactly the right amount of time to lose the attention of nearly everyone else.
A San Antonio-Detroit final is limited enough in terms of mass interest but the way the NBA sets up the schedule is going to suck that interest dry to the bone. The weather's nice, school's out and people have more to do than wait for days to watch a matchup between two teams who play a style better suited to the cold winter months with nothing better to do. The NBA has taken hits this season on a variety of fronts but this is the most damning thing. You're just asking too much of your fanbase to keep their attention front and center for two months of playoff action when the product comes in slow spurts rather than a steady flow. You need to give people a reason to tune in and there just isn't a very compelling reason to in the NBA right now.
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