The Explorer wrote:I wouldn't say players just stopped trying as a blanket statement, but in general defense has been at an all time worst the last couple years. Coaches like Finch and Kerr have been on record stating that defense has been legislated out of the game. Players like Doncic and others have also stated it's much easier to score in the NBA than in euro league.
Lots of people say lots of things that despite having tremendous expertise in their field, do not know what they're talking about. Offense is basically 8% better now, and the gap is basically all explainable through data by 3 point shooting and more early offense, officiating has an extremely small impact on that.
While they may complain about those things, they're simply wrong about it being causal. You can objectively measure the causes, and I've looked at the actual data to do so. That isn't the problem. It may be a problem, but it isn't the problem with scoring.
It definitely is a problem. You can go by any number of measures. Take TV ratings in the Finals or all star games, where we've had some of the lowest rated programming the last few years. Every team pretty much plays the same style, and there is no intrigue or clashing styles like there used to be.
Ratings in the finals are down massively from the Warriors dynasty, but they're up from 4 years ago, 3 years ago, and only slightly down from the previous year. The all star game is an entirely different animal, and has nothing to do with it. Ratings numbers in general are also swept up into all kinds of other issues, and there's no reason to think more offense is causal in that either.
There's a massive change in how people consume sports generationally and interest in TV in general, and all kinds of other things happening across the landscape. A better question to ask first would be "why are ratings down". I'd be absolutely floored if the answer were increased offense, increased pace and all teams looking the same.
The vast, vast majority of fans wouldn't even notice the difference in play or understand the playbook enough or watch enough games or watch enough variety of the NBA games outside of their local team to have any clue about those things anyway (even if we just take the base assumption that this is more true now than it was in the past which I also would disagree with). Higher pace and higher offense have historically been linked to more viewership across almost all sports, so to assume we've hit some threshold because it is now 8% higher that everyone hates it seems pretty wild as a way to fully define this.
Do die hard people hate it? Certainly seems like a lot of them are concerned about it, so maybe, but that's a god awful way to look at how ratings are formed.