The last 2 minutes of games can take 30 minutes is insane to me.

We still talking about ratings? This is a highlight league now

My favorite part of the game is when we see basketball every few minutes in between 3 hours of ads.

Yeah, its by design to get more ads in. Next question.

Adam silver recently commented on this.

”Basketball is basically a highlight game anyway.”

who watches full games anyway right Adam?

Yea between the constant tv breaks or all the foul baiting and free throw merchants I don’t have the desire to watch like I used to. I want to watch 5v5 basketball, not commercials and free throws.

Not that I disagree but I always find it amusing when people say there are too many commercials in other leagues but happily sit through three hour NFL games that have only 18 minutes of actual gameplay and 45 minutes of commercials, with the bulk of the rest of the time being filled by announcers they perpetually complain about.

The declining ratings have nothing to do with the on court product and everything to do with the changing economics of television.

TV Ratings have gone down across everything and every sport for years because of streaming and other modes of consumption.

The #1 issue in my view is simply how difficult it is to figure out how to even follow a single team much less the league. Even if you can get over the high cost / afford to pay, you still need to buy 3+ different products in many cases just to watch all 82 for one team.

Due to blackout rules and all kinds of other mumbo jumbo you can’t just buy one package and expect to reliably be able to view your team.

This is driving more and more people to 3rd party streaming which obviously doesn’t weigh into ‘ratings’.

Anyway the average fan shouldn’t give AF about NBA’s ratings - the league is HIGHLY profitable.

The average fan should care about the NBA being more available and affordable.

yes to all this

Its the reason I barely sit down and watch a game anymore. I don’t understand how a 75 second timeout ends up being 2 minutes of ads at the minimum.

Anytime anything exciting happens the game stops. I don’t understand how the nba have made a league of the best in the sport less fun to watch than a bunch of locals playing 2 20 min halves at the rec centre.

I wish they made rosters bigger and get rid of timeouts all together. Game would flow better.

People will cite free throw rates being lower in the past but not mention that the actual free throws themselves take WAY longer now. Guys get entire breaks to rest up, and some of them blatantly violate the 10 second limit as they please. That also kills the momentum.

League Pass with the arena feed is the best investment I’ve ever made… it’s always entertaining. I actually get disappointed when a game I want to watch is only available on national TV without a League Pass feed

I have held off posting this bitching. But might as well jump in. I am sad, because my love for the NBA is quickly dying. Between the facts of this post, the preferential treatment to stars, the ridiculous foul bating, NBA just diving in with the gambling, and now lately they are going to likely turn a blind eye to the obvious Clippers cheating, and Silver’s attitude about the highlight league.

It is ALL about the money. That should not be a surprise. And it was always a factor, but at this point, it seems they don’t give a shit about the game.

I divorced baseball a long time ago, and I no longer have a football team, so the NBA was my last sport that I got excited about. And that may be going away. It depresses me.

As TV in general, is becoming a little bit of content between ads.

Thus, watching on a delay using a DVR is a must.

Need 2 less timeouts per team. 14 potential timeouts a game is insane

Good take. Unfortunately for me its just more so the players.

What you said does have a part but not enough to dismiss the sport.

The players just get too much talk time. It was much more enjoyable to me when it was more focused on merrit and the game.

Now its become a fashion show that gives the players way too much mic time.

LeBron was my favorite until he started to talk too much about nothing and lying and saving face all the time

I always tape the games, and start watching at halftime, zip through commercials/timeouts and I catch up to live by the end of the 4th quarter. Takes about 1.5 hours to watch a game instead of 2.5. I don’t know how anyone can stand to watch in real time. Step 1: get rid of the coach’s challenges. Nice concept, terrible in practice. Adds another 10-12 minutes to the game, and the refs get it wrong half the time anyway. But now that they’ve started, the league will never drop those extra 10-12 minutes of commercials.

As a European fan, I’m happy to wake up at 2-3 AM for great games. This playoffs, I fell back to sleep 90% of games, because the amount and length of stoppages totally fucks the rythm of the game up. I stopped watching the NFL for this exact reason a while ago - it is just impossible to stay focused.

Watching modern sports without dvr functionality is impossible imo

There’s no way a nba timeout takes only 75 secs. Every time a timeout is called the game itself is stopped, at least 3 or 4 minutes.

It’s really anoynning to follow games, specially as a European were the games star at midnight the earliest. Then the game never start in time, always 15 min late.

A 48 min sport cannot take 2h30 To Finnish.

I disagree about your point that NBA isnt a good spectator sport, I think its better than the NFL personally. When watching on TV you can see the entire court vs the camera solely following the football which doesnt allow you to see the entire game unfold and hinders your ability to analyze the game as well .

Also in person you’re closer to the action in the NBA nor do you have to deal with inclement weather, and the action in the NBA is more continuous where as in the NFL you have a 30-40 second stoppage between every play.

Can’t they use more “in-game” ads?

Soccer has no time for commercials. The game never stops.

But ad revenue from TV is still enormous. The English Premiership was paid 4 year/$8.4B in 2023.

https://apnews.com/article/premier-league-tv-rights-sky-tnt-dc3c7eea7d96f5adc52549ddd8c25282

Hmm. On second thought NBA revenue is far more. 11/$76B.

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/45979978/nba-tv-rights-deal-2025-26-game-channels-how-watch

Instead of cutting to commercials when a challenge happens, it would be cool to see pre-recorded interviews of players in that game. For example, the Spurs office records Wemby talking about his experience training in kung fu.

The fouling, timeouts and ad spams make the end of games miserable

You could say this about literally any sport lol NFL has constant stoppages and ad breaks but it’s doing great. Timeouts are not the issue, what a weird post

Here’s the craziest part, despite the NFL having much more stoppages and pauses in play than the NBA, the NFL still has better ratings. And that’s because the action itself is so much more physical, entertaining, high energy, etc.

Currently each team gets 7 timeouts, and a challenge (second challenge if the first is successful) for a total of possibly 18 stoppages initiated by coaches. Teams can each save 4 timeouts for the fourth quarter and 2 timeouts for under 2 minutes left.

The simple solution is: each team gets 5 timeouts, and each challenge costs a timeout no matter what. Also can only save 3 timeouts for 4Q, not 4. Goes from a total of 18 possible stoppages to 10. Basically cuts 20 if not 30 minutes of game duration. Also 4Q is sped up by less timeouts being saved for it.

Now the counter is that there’s as many timeouts and stoppages as there is for ads. My suggestion is just stop with halftime shows and just make it a 15 minute ad block.

The NBA has a fundamental problem that most options miss: Basketball is an extremely physical sport and the incentives on offense & defense are unbalanced at their core.

Most sports don’t require players to be on offense or defense 100% of the time. Sports like hockey which require it feature constant rotation of players. I think stars in the NHL are actually on the ice for like 25 minutes per game in comparison to NBA stars who play MUCH more than that both in terms of minutes and percentage of game time. This creates two massive, massive hurdles for the NBA:

One: constant stoppages are required to give players a break from the demanding game.

Two: Without constant stoppages, star players would have to rest more frequently.

This is the biggest problem of all: The NBA is a star-focused league. It always has been. But most importantly, teams usually build around 1-2 players and spend the majority of their money on said players. If you change conditions of the game and require more physicality and less star playing time, star players are worth much less. That completely screws over teams who have invested in their star players for the next 5+ years.

The second major issue is the imbalanced incentives between offense and defense. Here’s the biggest problem with the current balance between offense and defense:

- Offensive players foul bait and we know that defensive players are left between a rock and a hard place: Either risk the foul or play softer and risk getting scored on. Both bad options.

- On top of this, the foul limit further incentivizes offensive players to be aggressive and defensive players to play less aggressively.

- The 3 point revolution forces the defense to cover the entire floor, fight hard through screens, etc. Much more taxing on the players.

- Free throws being a statistically preferable outcome than taking a contested shot from the floor

All of this contributes to lots of fouls (interruptions in play) and exhausted players who require more rest when the clock is stopped.

Until these two things are fixed I don’t see anything changing. Commercials have always been a part of the sport but the commercials aren’t the actual problem: The actual problem is that the game itself has become choppier by nature. Of course they throw more commercials when the ball is dead, why wouldn’t they?

So instead of targeting the commercials they need to target the flow of the game. And I’d personally accept a faster flow and longer but fewer commercial breaks. A few ideas off the top of my head:

- ‘Pitch clocks’ for free throws, after non-shooting fouls, etc

- Playing advantage on non shooting fouls (like in soccer)

- If the first free throw is missed on a non-3 point shot, it becomes a live ball. (Incentivizing offense to find better shots, incentivizing defense to save fouls until end of game)

Lastly, I’m sure the NBA can cut down on the last 2 minutes, but ultimately I think it’s less of a problem than many make it out to be. The tension and anticipation add to the entertainment value and makes close games extra intense. If flow is improved in the first 3.5 quarters I’d settle for a slower, more intense 4th every time.

honestly thought I was the only one who thought this, but what can you do? they are including strategy in the game… I guess if you limit those then everyone is at a disadvantage, which then means its still kinda equal, well then we would have to get ready to see some bonehead plays until they learn how to play around the lackthereof

Yes and commercials during the timeouts or a slight stoppage. I’m pretty much over the CFB at this point and the NFL isn’t far behind. Used to have some dialogue, banter and something not a commercial during a stoppage. Now it’s fast food and a political ads. GTFO.

I remember sitting in a hotel room watching the Alabama-Clemson championship game. At some point the game had progressed about 5 minutes and 40 minutes ticked off the alarm clock. I went to bed.

Honestly like how I can tune into Soccer or F1 knowing it’s going to be about 2 hours and go on with my day.

The NBA just needs to get back to the game and no bullshit stuff. We probably have the best NBA athletes playing on rosters, top to bottom. Big men banging 3’s, lights out defense. JFC, the NBA just needs to showcase the players and the game.

NFL has this and ratings are great

Just wait till they see what subscription based viewing does

Who knows if ratings are actually declining overall. It’s a global game now. Hard to say

I’d sit through ads if the games weren’t spread across 100 different services.

I fully agree.

Really we need to stop all time outs in the final 3 minutes of each quarter. And each team gets one time out per quarter. They don’t rollover.

So a maximum of 8 time outs per game. Plus quarter breaks and half-time.

Op you forgot how it takes over 30 seconds to get through the first free throw and games not starting on time.

I care far less about timeouts as a fan and more about the fact that I have to spend copious amounts of money over like 5 different platforms if I want access to all the games

Oh and the fact that the leagues commissioner doesn’t give a shit or see that as a problem, because it’s just a highlights league!

People have been bitching about this for decades, it’s never going to change

I like that post. I grow tired with watching live games already years ago. Still often hang through it in the middle of the night over here in Europe.

But watching a full NBA game live is a pain the ass because of all the breaks - not only because of the breaks stopping the game but also because the breaks are filled with advertisements or in LP the Arena TV. Both options are just awful.

NBA games take 3,5 hours sometimes and it’s full of obnoxious arena TV entertainment and advertisements, game break after game break.

Good part of the reason I don’t watch

The NBA should hire you

They won’t. They’re busy negotiating weird under the table contracts… but please leave your name and number and someone will get back to you if there’s a fit

Nfl and NBA are both so bad with the breaks. Every time I go to a game I’m shocked at how often nothing happens for 3-5 minutes at a time.

Has nothing to do with time outs.

The NFL game is only 60 minutes long with maybe 20 minutes of actual game play. NFL has no issues.

Its is simply the refs. You can make excuses all you want but until the refs call fair games people dont care.

Really thoughtful analysis and argument, OP. This is quality content and likely to get buried under memes and other shit but know there’s a few sickos out here that really appreciate it.

Also funny how half a decade ago the NBA reduced the number of timeouts from 18 to 14 to say like “Hey here, there will be less stoppages, better for the fans!” but in turn removed 20 second timeouts and increase duration of all timeouts to 75 seconds so the total duration of 14 timeouts is the exact same as 18 before lol

I agree with you on most of your points

But you brought up one blatantly false talking point that I would like to put to bed

NBA free throws are at an all time low and fiba basketball is a FT party

The lowest year in nba history for FT/FGA is .189, that was last year. Last season 53312 Fts were taken which is the lowest of any season that had 82 games since 1980. 1990, a season that everyone longs for the physicality of had the most FTs per team of any year.

FIBA isn’t better, Luka averaged 14 fts a game in 33 minutes SGA “FTA” average 8.8 in 34. In eurobasket 3060 FTs were attempted. There were 76 games, 2 teams per game so that means they were averaging 20.1 FTs per game in 40 Minute games, the NBA averaged 21.7 in 48 minutes. And the good teams take even more fts (partially because bad teams are fouling players they can’t guard) but the 8 quarter final teams averaged 22.5 FTs a game (more than an nba game with 8 less minutes)

But that’s not all cuz the games are also slower paced so there were 9626 shots taken in eurobasket and 3060 fts which means a FTA/FGA ratio of .318 compared to the nbas .189 that’s literally 68% more free throws per shot

I also disagree with you on variant of play because the nba is so varied now with play styles if you just know what you are watching for it’s just long 2s are 3s now. This is another talking point that is frankly untrue but this comment is long enough and I need to get back to work

I’m with you. when I get together with friends for a game there are so many stops by the 2nd half we’re all talking over the game about something else and someone has to yell “they cut the lead in half!” To remember there’s even a game going on.

Removing the ability to call timeouts during live play would do a lot for the NBA

Ae Euroleage season ticket holder I know it always starts on time and the game is over in under 2 hours unless there is overtime or a bunch of lengthy reviews.

Watching the Euro Finals really Shows you how amazing Basketball can be. Commercials between quaters and nothing Else beides nailbiting Basketball.

I’m a huge basketball fan. This is exactly my problem with the NBA

League doesnt care about ratings. They just got paid on old ratings. They wont give a shit until a couple years out from contract renewal.

The nba just signed a monster new deal. I think they’re ok. Second biggest league in the world by revenue. Franchise values shooting up. You’d think they’re barely making it by what the talking heads and random social media posts say.

NBA, too many 3s

Super Bowl with as much hype and commercials is longer than the game.

Hockey with two 20 min breaks.

They should drop quarter length

Watching football lately, the last two minutes flows, and is usually wrapped up in 5 minutes or so. Basketball does take too long.

But american football has like 10 minutes of gameplay in a 3 hour broadcast.. I dont think this is a big issue. The bigger issues are nobody wants to pay to watch it when they already pay for their 4 other streaming services. Not to mention today’s NBA where we just watch constant 3 point competitions. There’s less grit in the paint, rivalship, in my opinion. But im dumb so who knows.

Well “Timeouts: aren’t the problem, so we can cave that issue. Euroeague is completely different from the NBA in terms of production because of the smaller market its in. Stop blaming the NBA for commercials and timeouts, they don’t control the Networks or Network production.

I’m really hoping the Amazon games cull at least SOME of the bloated ads on TV. I am, you know, PAYING for Prime; it’s not a network TV channel.

Cable has always been a scam, and you are a fool if you pay for it.

I want the focus of the league to be the sport, not to squeeze the maximum amount of ad money out of the league.

It costs way too much to go to a game. Plus then you have to pay for parking, and food and drinks.

The only time I’ve been excited to follow teams or sports is when I can actually watch them. If I can’t watch my team without paying a ridiculous amount of money (either live or on TV), I don’t care.

The intensity of the games would ramp up exponentially if team timeouts were eliminated or at least drastically reduced.

Two (three?) years ago the league let people play defense again to start the season and allllll the stars had gripes with the officiating and things were back to normal by mid season. Seemed like the fans enjoyed it while it lasted, though it showed that such a change is unlikely to stick

additional “fix” for the traditionalist.

2 and 2.5 point shots.

Close the gap on the delta between a 3 & 2 point bucket. Bring back the big man as focal point of the offense.

Yup. I stopped watching a couple years back after being a die hard for a decade. I still follow the league closely, but don’t watch any games until playoffs. Even then it can be a tough watch.

maybe shooting more 3s will fix the problem….

ratings

What century is this?

What about no timeouts in the last three minutes of the game and any challenge comes from the league not the coaches?

The NBA has a terrible product, any other basketball league is better. 

From the moment they started advertising on the jerseys, which is supposed to be the untouchable honor(dk the right word) of the NBA’s history, even David Stern knew to leave it alone, I knew the floodgates would open for blatant profiteering of everything.

Maybe it’s because I live on the other side of the Atlantic and watch 99% of games the following morning on League Pass as they’re on in the middle of the night UK time, but I can safely say that never in my entire life have I given a shit about the TV ratings of the game I’m watching.

The league can’t actually increase the physicality of defence in the regular season without a sharp upitcj in injuries just look at what happens every playoffs where half the series either have a star player either miss games entirely or be hobbled badly or both.

The frequent interruptions is a valid and real issue that makes watching the games unenjoyable, even for a lot of die hard basketball fans. Add on top of that the amount you have to pay to legally watch those games just to have endless ads thrown in your face is absurd

games also never start on time

every eurobasket game i watched this summer started exactly at the time it said it would start at

Reviews and especially challenges are so fucking painful to sit through

I 1000% agree with you and have been saying this to my buddies for years. Timeouts are great for strategic plays and all that, but there’s too many and it slogs end of games down.

Take my upvote you earned it!

One of my dads old friends worked at a French sports network. I asked why soccer is more popular in Europe than in the US and he said that by the time TV and radio came along, soccer was so established they had to put it on. It wasn’t in the US, so the media pushed sports with natural commercial breaks, like baseball and boxing. Basketball doesn’t fit that mold as well, so the NBA made it worse to make it more media friendly. To a network programming is just space between the ads

Do Ishow Speed, Kai have ratings? Like who watches TV?