Why Does NBA's Popularity Suffer When Bigs are the Best Players?

[TheGeneral99]

I mean I think we have a good balance now:

Shai is a guard who just won MVP and FMVP.

Jokic is a historically great center who is also one of the most exciting players to watch given his crazy high IQ and passing ability.

Luka kind of reminds of me a modern reincarnation of Bird and Magic...a 6'8/6'9 guy that can do it all offensively.

Giannis is a freak.

And then of course you have exciting up and coming players like Edwards, Cunningham, Wemby, Banchero, J-Will etc.

[Doctor MJ]

Personally, I've always found post-up play more entertaining than pull-up jump shots and dribble drives. Something about the pivoting & back to the basket elements.

I think it's good to talk about where the enjoyable complexity is in a style of play.

There's a "chess match" aspect of post offense that builds as the seconds unfold, and which doesn't built with either quick shots or the umpteen dribbles the driver took before he decided to stop resting and attack.

For me, the problem with the NBA during it's peak post-play era (basically Hakeem-to-Shaq's eras), was in what the other 8 guys were doing. What were they doing? The short answer would be "Not much.", while a long answer would give a dissertation on Illegal Defense rules that fans never really understood which implied that the other players were actually doing what they were supposed to be doing, even if they weren't actually expending much physical or mental energy as they waited to see how the chess match mere feet away played out.

This then to say, from a perspective of team dynamics, I think the Illegal Defense era was an ugly crippling of the sport that did not have the effect that its designers intended, which is pretty funny given that the fact that as coaches, you'd think they know best.

But none of this takes away from the beauty of the chess match if you can just zoom in on that. What Olajuwon did out there was like dancing.

Agreed on all points. The Illegal Defense Guidelines (1981-2001) had short-term benefits that precipitated the NBA's cultural zenith, but were inherently flawed and arguably did more damage to the game in the long run. It just got more exploited as time passed, influencing the team strategy & tactics, the valued skillsets, and ultimately the personnel. Hence, the Danny Fortson, Reggie Evans types - a product of the Dead Ball Era.

I do think there are some interesting parallels between the '70s and the Dead Ball Era. The state of the game was a focus point and the NBA introduced several rules to improve offensive play. Hand-checking (1979, 2005), Illegal Defense (1981), Defensive Three Seconds (2002), Restricted Area (1998), etc. I remember a passage from Bill Simmons' book talking about why Illegal Defense was introduced:

The new wave of coaches made defenses sophisticated enough by 1981 that the league created an “illegal defense” rule to open up the paint. Here’s how referee Ed Rush explained it to SI: “We were becoming a jump-shot league, so we went to the coaches and said, ‘You’ve screwed the game with all your great defenses. Now fix it.’ And they did. The new rule will open up the middle and give the great players room to move. People like Julius Erving and David Thompson who used to beat their own defensive man and then still have to pull up for a jump shot because they were being double-teamed, should have an extra four or five feet to move around in. And that’s all those guys need.”

And a 1979 NY Times article discussing the original hand-checking ban. There was initial backlash from the players:

The National Basketball Players Association says it will work toward the removal of the rule. Most of the players feel the rule is not working for them and is making the game dull for the fans.

Larry Fleisher, the general counsel of the players’ association, said:

“People want to see players work harder to get their 2 points. The thrill of seeing a guy take a 20‐foot jump shot, glide to the basket or stuff a ball is over. What the fan cries out for is hardnosed defense and team play. It's clear the ban on hand‐checking makes it more difficult and you have to go through a whole new learning process to play defense.”

Some players liked the change:

Abdul‐Jabbar agrees with the ban. The change has freed the 7‐foot‐2‐inch Abdul‐Jabbar to unleash his total offensive arsensal.

“For the first time in years,” said Abdul‐Jabbar “we're back to playing basketball. Last season Artis Gilmore would push me out of the way to post up. Now he's reluctant to do that, because they're calling fouls on the contact, which is the way it should be.

“Admittedly, it makes the game tougher for everybody. You have to play defense the way it should be played, instead of relying on pushing, shoving and elbowing. When a player does that now, he can expect to hear whistle and have a foul called on him.”

Jerry West, the Laker coach, echoes his star center's words.

“The ban on hand‐checking would have been great when I was .playing,” said West. “That's one thing I despised more than anything, was the ‐pushing and shoving. The ban has helped the finesse players. I was taught that to play defense, you had to learn to handcheck. But I never liked playing that way. I've always believed that the best way to play defense was to move your feet, not your hands.”

While others didn't:

Most players, feel the ban cramps their style.

Tom Henderson, the Washington Bullets’ backcourt man, has complained:

“They're ruining the game, calling all this hand‐checking. “We have been hand‐checking since we've been in the league and it isn't an easy habit to break.”

Bob Lanier, the Detroit Piston center, said: “I didn't hand‐check much anyway so it didn't make much difference to me on defense. But when you've got to play Kareem, Walton and Gilmore, you've got to rely on hands. How else are you going to stop them?”

M.L. Carr of the Pistons said that the ban benefits the offensive player and it shouldn't be that way. He added: “I don't think the fights were directly attributed to hand‐checking anyway. Mostly they are caused by frustration. A player is upset with himself and he swings out at the nearest guy because he's frustrated.”

Paul Silas, the Seattle SuperSonics’ forward and president of the players’ group, said, “ It is a non‐contact rule in a contact sport.”

With time, we've learned that the three-point shot was the true solution/antidote. It just took a few decades for the basketball world to realize that.

Oh my goodness Frodo, I love you bringing in these quotes! I'm glad you're here.

I think you put a bow on it nicely:

Illegal Defense was implemented to try to mitigate for an identified problem, but in doing so it caused other problems, which led to the NBA (spearheaded by Colangelo) to advocate for stripping down the actual rules and have faith in a path forward that was based on a new style of play exemplified by European basketball.

On a certain level, trying something to fix a problem is a good thing, and so is the humility to recognize that the attempt is causing more problems than it solves, and I agree with them that the '70s NBA would have been more fun to watch if Dr. J had the kind of space to operate with that Jordan would later have (let along the generations after).

But something that I have to push back against their reason is this: The cold math we have access to in the 21st century tells us that the '70s were not actually a dead ball era, as leave average ORtg was generally increasing from the birth of the NBA until the '90s. They may have perceived new defensive strategies to have been "too good" a la the great NHL innovation of allowing the goalie to wear enough pads he can basically block the whole goal, but that's not what was actually happening.

Doesn't mean it didn't make sense to try to make rule changes to favor future-Ervings to try to make offense even more successful, but the complaints of the time really don't seem to hold up holistically. Rather, it seems like the NBA was thrashing in the dark trying to figure out how to re-gain popularity, and mistook the decreasing pace for actual decreasing offensive effectiveness.

They then implemented a strategy that they thought would help perimeter-oriented scorers, but once NBA strategy adapt to take advantage of Illegal Defense, what it really did was emphasize interior post-scorers, which really wasn't the intention, and was in many ways a step backward.

Last note: Love the comments about the first explicit hand-check point of emphasis - I'll use that terminology because I think that's the right way to look at it given the NBA's use of the "point of emphasis" term nowadays, meaning it's less about actual rule changes and more about directing the gaze of the refs - coming in the late '70s as this brings up a bunch of important points:

1. In the wake of the 2004 hand-check point of emphasis, the sheer coincidence of the Suns acquiring Nash that year to go all in on D'Antoni's offensive philosophy (which he'd hand since the '70s playing in Europe, then coaching in Europe, and then during his brief stint in Denver) led people to think that that particular 2004 move was the key to everything, implicitly assuming that elite basketball hadn't done this a number of times before through the decades.

2. The reality is that basically ever since the finesse ball of emphasized by Phog Allen and his allies in the college game won out over the cage ball of the pros in the 1920s, elite basketball has been making rule changes (and emphases) to make basketball more of a finesse sport than a bloodsport, and while that hasn't led to a straight line where every year is less violent than the previous because the arrival of ever stronger giants led to moving targets, it does mean that elite basketball has basically had a century-long stance that I might describe as this:

Normal-sized humans operating primarily from the perimeters shouldn't be allowed to get shoved when they are handling the ball, because normal-size humans operating on the perimeter generate more fan excitement than anything else.

Incidentally, I'd point to a particular player, Stanford's Hank Luisetti from the late '30s - a 6'2" guy with outlier shooting, passing, athleticism & instincts relative to contemporaries, and who through his time in the military continued to outshine all comers through 1944 and led him to be the intended first star of the soon-to-exist New York Knicks before falling prey to the spread of meningitis across the military led him to retire from the game, as the guy both the NABC and later the NBA saw as the archetype for basketball popularity, and when the NBA-precursor BAA banned zone defenses midway through their first season in '46-47, it was with future Luisettis in mind, with guys like Bob Cousy & Paul Arizin then benefitting from that change as well as things like key-widening.

This then to say, I might call the broad trend here as the "Luisettificaton" of the game of basketball.

3. But perhaps the most interesting thing I got from the quotes you posted, was the idea that forbidding hand-checking would undermine the guarding of interior post scorers. The fear makes sense based on the idea that hand-check mitigation would be applied to all on the court equally... but of course that's not how it played out. In practice, the NBA essentially created two sets of rules, one for dribble/drivers and one for interior postmen.

That disconnect is something that today confuses not just fans, but players, coaches, and referees, but it does seem like it mostly gave the NBA what they wanted to this point. As I say all of that, the elephant in the room here is probably Giannis Antetokounmpo who has adopted a style of play that essentially lets him get ref'd like guards while having the size (and momentum) of a big, which allows him to play the game like a bloodsport without consequence.

[dhsilv2]

Personally, I've always found post-up play more entertaining than pull-up jump shots and dribble drives. Something about the pivoting & back to the basket elements.

I like both...but there's a reason we're here and not the average Jersey buyer which I think is the biggest metric that shows the general lower interest in big men. Especially the more post oriented ones.

[Mephariel]

I think this is more narrative than actual truth, Michael Jordan was more popular than Kareem for a lot of reason. Basketball really hasn’t existed long enough to observe trends like that, we’re really just talking about a handful of dynamic players. Like would Michael Jordan be less popular if he was 7 foot, would he be more popular if he was 6 foot? Or was Michael Jordan popular because he was uniquely himself?

It is absolutely the truth. When was the last time a big guy dominated jersey sales or conversations? I been watching since the 90s and everyone in schools talks about Iverson, Jordan, Kobe, T-Mac, Lebron, Carter, etc. Shaq was the only big guy people mention.

[TheGeneral99]

I think this is more narrative than actual truth, Michael Jordan was more popular than Kareem for a lot of reason. Basketball really hasn’t existed long enough to observe trends like that, we’re really just talking about a handful of dynamic players. Like would Michael Jordan be less popular if he was 7 foot, would he be more popular if he was 6 foot? Or was Michael Jordan popular because he was uniquely himself?

It is absolutely the truth. When was the last time a big guy dominated jersey sales or conversations? I been watching since the 90s and everyone in schools talks about Iverson, Jordan, Kobe, T-Mac, Lebron, Carter, etc. Shaq was the only big guy people mention.

Kareem, Shaq, Dwight, Giannis, Hakeem, Ewing, Garnett, Barkley, Dirk etc. were all pretty damn popular.

Obviously the average fan is going to identify with crazy athletic explosive players like VC, Lebron, MJ etc. or smaller incredible players like Nash, Iverson, Steph etc.

I think Wemby is pretty high up in jersey sales.

[7seventynine9]

Nowadays, it's probably because a lot of people don't like 7 footers playing on the perimeter.

Also, bigs generally aren't making many circus shots and people like acrobatics.