5 ways I hope the NBA changes in the 2020s
From a better broadcast experience to support for the WNBA, here are some big-picture dreams for basketball in the next decade.
Happy New Year! Let’s basketball.
The City Rises, Umberto Boccioni (Moma.org, Public Domain)
With a new decade upon us, and having gotten all of the nostalgia out of our system, it’s time to look ahead at the years to come. In the spirit of hope for progress, here are five things I hope will happen in American pro basketball during the 2020s.
1. Completely rebuild the NBA broadcast
Critiquing how the league’s broadcast partners present the game and its stories has become chic, especially amid the current panic (and in some cases concern trolling) over falling T.V. ratings for the NBA. But that’s not really my aim here: I don’t really care about what ESPN covers or whether Charles Barkley trashes this player or that or the horrors of SKYCAM. I’m thinking more about how we watch the game, and how we could.
Think about how this has already changed in the 2010s, with the proliferation of highlights on social media, homebrew highlight packages by dedicated fan-producers, the linking of clips to advanced metrics through services like Synergy, the onset of boutique second-screen broadcasters.
Because of upheaval in broadcast television and streaming, the 2020s will decentralize the broadcast experience even more. Some team is going to get really creative with its next local T.V. deal and offer something on a Twitch-like service (surely owned wholly or in part by the team). This is going to be painful for some fans, but could help engage and retain younger fans who aren’t accustomed to ordering cable packages to follow their local team. Focused on a non-cable T.V. network platform, there are some obvious changes on how to restructure the broadcast — the pace and organization of commentary during action, screen-in-screen replays, the concept of halftime.
I don’t know exactly where this would go and how the NBA itself can influence it with rule changes to tighten the average game up, but it’s a really exciting frontier.
2. No more public subsidies for arenas
I am far less hopeful that this will happen than most items on this list, but we have definitely moved in this direction over the past decade.
One of the biggest reasons is the proliferation of billionaires among the NBA team ownership ranks. These aren’t your local magnates asking for help any more — they are out-of-towner financiers and techlords, all on the Forbes list, holding their hand out. The knock-on effects from the Occupy movement and its impact on our politics — particularly the discourse around the ultra-wealthy — has changed the calculus in important ways. Just look at the backlash to subsidies for Amazon’s second headquarters.
Having supported the bid to subsidize Sacramento’s new arena, and having seen the positive change that project brought to Downtown Sacramento, I still don’t think that I would support subsidies (even through parking and hotel fees) today, and I think the opposition to the subsidies in Sacramento would be much more organized and robust today. The conversation and moral calculus has changed. I can’t speak for Milwaukee or elsewhere, and we can’t know how the billionaires will get even more creative with funding ideas that use the public purse as a leveraging tool or backstop, but I do think this has changed and will continue to do so.
3. Equal opportunity in every position
As I’ve written before, getting a single woman into an NBA head coaching position will be an important moment for equality in American pro sports, but it can’t be the extent of progress. You can’t hype up a team hiring Becky Hammon as head coach and call it a decade.
Real progress is women and people of color having equal access to jobs in every sector of the sport — coaching, scouting, training, executive leadership, basketball operations, sales, marketing, social media. (That last one seriously matters, and it’s a spot where most teams are seriously behind.) We need the people in power in the NBA and with NBA teams to build pipelines and tend to them. I am actually hopeful this will happen. It’s up to fans and the media to hold the league and its teams to the ideals they espouse on this issue.
4. Invest in the WNBA
Alongside building the infrastructure of a diverse NBA workforce, there needs to be better investment in the infrastructure of the world’s best women’s basketball league. The NBA and its players’ union frankly have more money than they know what to do with. INVEST MORE OF IT IN THE WNBA.
The NBA supported the WNBA through its early years, but for most of the NBA team owners, this was at best reluctant or begrudging support. You can tell by how fast those NBA team owners divested from the women’s league when they could. (The Sacramento Monarchs — still the only high-level championship team Sacramento has ever known. The Houston Comets have won four more championship than the Houston Rockets since the mid-90s … and have been defunct for the past 12 years.)
NBA players could take an unnoticeable haircut and ensure WNBA stars are paid at least as well as NBA benchwarmers. NBA team owners could carve out a tiny slice of their national T.V. broadcast deal to help would-be WNBA team owners establish new franchises in gold-mine markets. Put a team in the Bay Area, put a team in Philadelphia and for the love of all that is Coop, BRING BACK THE HOUSTON COMETS. They only won the WNBA’s first four championships after all.
5. Increased stylistic diversity
The 2010s NBA is defined by the mass move toward shooting more three-pointers and abandoning long twos. Obviously, some teams have embraced the new style more than others. But in the macro sense, the shift has been enormous: per Basketball-Reference.com, in 2008-09, the average NBA team took 22.4 percent of its field goal attempts beyond the arc, and in 2018-19, the average NBA team took 35.9 percent of its shots from deep.
We’re getting to the point where many teams are playing pretty similarly. It’s not always great.
I defer to the Xs and Os experts on what tweaks could ~Bring Back The Post~ or de-emphasize the three-point shot without making the game less attractive. There are always going to be trade-offs, and I much prefer the mid-2010s Warriors style than most good ‘90s teams. I just don’t want to watch poor shooting teams fire up 40 threes, and I don’t want to know exactly what I’m getting eight games out of 10. If the NBA can find tweaks that increase the incentive to play differently than the current meta (esports talk for the “most effective tactics available”) to promote stylistic diversity without punishing teams for being good, I’m in.
Scores
Celtics 109, Hornets 92
Sixers 97, Pacers 115
Clippers 105, Kings 87
Cavaliers 97, Raptors 117
Nuggets 104, Rockets 130
Warriors 113, Spurs 117 (OT)
Mavericks 101, Thunder 106
Schedule
There is very little pro basketball happening on New Year’s Day. All times Eastern. Games are on League Pass unless otherwise noted.
Magic at Wizards, 6
Blazers at Knicks, 7:30, NBA TV
Wolves at Bucks, 8
Suns at Lakers, 10:30
Links
What a win for the Thunder! We’re a couple weeks away from “no one wants to face OKC in the first round” takes. Written by me.
Smart take on how the NBA biases officiating in favor of offensive players from Steve Kerr.
Teams are doubling James Harden in frankly ridiculous areas of the floor out of necessity, and Harden is fine with it.
Shams Charania says we’re looking at a January debut for Zion Williamson. Hurray!
David Aldridge ranks the top NBA moments of the decade for The Athletic.
Matt Ellentuck rated the 16 best individual basketball seasons of the 2010s. The Curry and LeBron seasons are so absurdly good.
Always read Kelly Dwyer’s recaps.
The ESPN NBA crew on whether certain trends will survive into 2020.
Chris Mannix on the Raptors as the biggest wild card of the trade season.
John Hollinger on the Pelicans’ start of something new.
Michael Lee on the biggest surprises of the 2010s.
Here’s to 2020. Thanks for your support. Be excellent to each other.