Nobody watched the NBA Finals

Posted on Mon Jun 18, 2007 at 09:25:00 AM EST in NBA
More on: NBA, tv, Spurs, Cavaliers, LeBron James (all tags)

I felt a little guilty because even though I'm a huge sports fan and I blog about sports, I couldn't bring myself to watch the NBA Finals. It wasn't like forgot the games were on, I even checked the scores now and then between checking on baseball scores -- I just couldn't even reach over two feet to get the remote. Instead of watching the television equivalent of Ambien, there were just so many other things to do, like watching the cars go by or defragmenting my PC again.

It turns out I wasn't the only one who had better things to do. The 2007 NBA Finals were the lowest rated finals in history. The four-game sweep finished with a 6.2 rating and an 11 share, which means only about 7 million people watched the games. Now, this isn't nearly as abysmal as the paltry 1.6 rating for the NHL Finals but do you really want to compare yourself to the NHL to feel better?

I'm not really sure what the NBA can do to fix this problem. First, the Spurs are just a boring team to watch with absolutely no one with a personality. Even trying to make a villain out of Bruce Bowen didn't help. I expect that next year, the refs will be "guided" to let more play go so that a running fun team like the Suns or the Warriors will get into the Finals from the West. As for the East, they are completely screwed. The Cavaliers were about the only watchable team in the East and they screwed the pooch in their Finals appearance. Perhaps next year, it's the Bulls turn as the young guns and perhaps they'll be able to represent the JV conference a little better.

Links:
[AP]: NBA finals suffer record-low TV ratings

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