No One Likes Lebron

Well that's not particularly true, but what is is that he's not bringing in the audience that the NBA was hoping. In fact they are down 24 percent from last year and posted 6.9 rating in comparison to last years 9.1. And while I definitely agree that the Spurs are not the most exciting team ever assembled, their appeal is no less than the Mavericks last season.

So why the miserable rating? There are a plethora of reasons lets count the ways:

1) This years playoffs lost all buzz the second Stern decided to suspend Amare and Diaw, it killed the most interesting series and took a lot of buzz away. But the rest of the playoffs were pretty much flat out uninteresting. The Warriors beating the Mavs was a cool story, but everyone wanted to see the Mavs in a battle for the Western Conference, not the Jazz getting pounded. Hell the Rockets losing hurt the NBA. And so did the exit of Shaq round 1. In essence there was no carry over effect into the finals.

2) No Shaq. It's really as simple as that. Shaq adds ratings. People like Shaq, he's funny, and it's enjoyable watching him knock the crap out of someone down in the paint.

3) The games start at 9:30 on a sunday night, a sunday night when everyone is wrecked from the weekend and wants to hit the sac relatively early in prep for another grinding 5 days at work. Why you would schedule a game late on Sunday night regardless of the opponents is just plain dumb. The West Coast doesn't have any work conflicts on a sunday afternoon at 4, start the game at 7.

4) Don't friggin schedule the game against the Soprano's Series finale, so what if it's a premium channel. Everyone with HBO was watching it.

5) I know that they deathly don't want to schedule a game on friday or saturday night, but still the extra day layoff cools down some of the buzz.

6) Despite Lebron, the Cavs just aren't that interesting a team. They never play dynamic offense and no one other than Lebron is evenly slightly intriguing to watch. If Lebron was off the team, I think I'd rather watch any squad in the NBA more than the Cavs.

7) People are sick of the Spurs winning. Eventually one team always winning gets old. We've seen this already, we've done the Spurs championship thing three times. It's old.

8) No one is expecting the series to be that competitive and it's living up to that analysis. No one is going to continue to watch a game with a 20 point deficit. All the people that flipped from the Soprano's to the finals, turned the game on to what was already a 20 point margin. Chances are a ton of those people on the east coast said screw it, I'm going to bed.

9) No one is expecting a competitive series because the Eastern Conference stinks, and the Western Conference is vastly superior. This problem isn't going anywhere with the draft to send two more future superstars to the Pacific Northwest. And in the near future we won't see the best two teams in the NBA meet in the finals.

My guess is game 3's rating are slightly better simply cause the Soprano's won't be on, and the game has to be closer and hold onto more of an audience. But it still won't come close to last year.

So what will the consequences be for the NBA? Really who knows. Maybe their ad rates will flatten out in the future and will not increase at the same percentages yearly. Perhaps, Stern and the NBA brass will start thinking about shuffling the start times of the games, to increase viewership in the Eastern Timezone, where the largest portion of Americans live, but that is doubtful.

I just can't wait to see the overnight ratings to see how badly it lost to the two Tony's, The Soprano's and the Tony awards. But atleast they can pride themselves in getting better ratings than hockey.