How the NBA Can Raise Its Dwindling Ratings

Professional basketball players are some of the best athletes in the world.

This was reinforced to me on Sunday, when my unusually quick return home from the Finals gave me a chance to watch the final day of golf's U.S. Open — and see a man who was visibly overweight and smoking in between shots claim one of the top prizes in sports.

Yet despite the brilliance of the NBA's talent relative to other sports, fans are staying away from its marquee event in droves. The TV ratings for the 2007 NBA Finals were dreadful — the worst ever, in fact. Viewership was down 28% from the previous year — which itself was one of the worstrated Finals ever — as San Antonio's mundane and entirely predictable sweep of Cleveland left viewers unenthused.

Demographics certainly play a role here. San Antonio is among the league's smallest markets, and Cleveland is, at best, a midsized one. So it's no surprise that the two worst-rated Finals of the past decade — this one and the Spurs' 2003 win over New Jersey — came with the help of smaller TV markets participating in the Finals.

Additionally, there's an anomaly here with San Antonio. While dominant on the court and exemplary off it, the Spurs don't have that magical X-factor that draws in viewers. Their best player, Tim Duncan, is fundamentally sound but hardly spectacular, while the team has won with a vice-like defense rather than highlight-reel offense.

Nonetheless, the league must be concerned. For starters, the global icon failed to move the needle. It was thought that LeBron James's first-ever Finals would help reel in viewers, but even in Game 1 — when the outcome of the series still remained in doubt — there wasn't much interest from the national audience.

Plus, it's not like this was a oneshot deal. The five lowest-rated NBA Finals have taken place during the past six seasons, with this season's being the worst one yet. So the trend is pretty clear: Viewership is dropping for the big event, and dropping pretty fast.

In part, this phenomenon extends far beyond the NBA. Two decades ago, viewers had three channels to choose from; now they have 300. It's only natural that some of the audience is siphoned away by the hordes of cable channels. But it's decidedly unnatural for a random filler show like Fox's "So You Think You Can Dance" to get as many viewers as the NBA Finals — something that nearly happened the night of Thursday's Game 4.

So what's the problem? Let's take a look at a few of the reasons and what the league might do about it:

POOR EXPOSURE: As the league negotiates a new TV package with partners ABC, ESPN, and TNT, they have to consider the possibility that the current model isn't working. Here's the problem: The league has almost no free-TV games during the regular season, relying mainly on Thursday and Friday doubleheaders on TNT and ESPN.

That doesn't hurt the league's standing with its core audience — as shown by the fact that attendance went up once again this year — but it doesn't play as well with Joe Sixpack in Peoria. Thus, when the Finals come around and ABC takes over, the lure for the more general audience is limited. A stronger national TV presence throughout the season seems the obvious cure, though it's uncertain whether ABC would bite on such a proposal.

Also, some have suggested ABC's gimmicky presentation is turning off viewers — particularly its addiction to the use of a nausea-inducing moving camera that adds little to the presentation. At least that's an easy fix — just ditch the sideshow and show us the freaking game.

POOR MATCHUPS: As long as the imbalance between East and West remains so glaring, it's going to be tough for the league to generate much enthusiasm for its finale. The Western Conference team has been an overwhelming favorite in every Finals since Michael Jordan retired, and even though the West failed to win two of them in that period, the perception undoubtedly has put a dent in the audience size.

Sadly, the league missed its best opportunity to address this problem, as Greg Oden and Kevin Durant both are headed to the Western Conference as a result of the lottery. Thus, the imbalance between the conferences will only get worse and, one fears, the Finals matchups only more one-sided.

The best remaining option is to reseed everyone once the playoffs start, or perhaps after the first round, so that it's possible for two Western teams to meet in the Finals. However, the league seems a long way from endorsing this idea, so we may have to put up with a few more snoozers the next few Junes.

STAR-BASED PROMOTION: The league has gone out of its way to promote the likes of LeBron James and Kobe Bryant, but one wonders if that's been at the expense of its best teams. The two best clubs of recent years have been the San Antonio Spurs and Detroit Pistons — neither of whom possesses a highly marketable superstar (Duncan, for all his greatness, remains oddly unfamous). As a result, both teams have been undermarketed, and when they make their annual appearance in the conference finals, the league is left to promote in June what they've hardly mentioned from November through May. Meanwhile, Bryant and (until this year) James have been knocked out of the hunt relatively early.

While I'll be the first to admit it's much easier to promote an individual than a quintet, it appears the league is doing itself a disservice here. If they spend the whole season educating us that there are only five or 10 players worth watching, and one or both Finals teams have no players from that group, then they can't be upset when folks turn their sets off.

A TERRIBLE SEASON: Look, let's be honest here. The 2005–06 season was the best campaign the league has had in a long time, both regular season and playoffs. By comparison, 2006-07 was a dog. It started right from the get-go, with the defending champion losing its opener by 42 and the league's stillborn attempt to introduce a new ball, and went downhill from there. Between the mostly one-sided playoff series, the blatant end-of-season tanking, and the controversy over the suspensions in the Suns-Spurs series, among other things, it's no surprise that fans weren't tuning in by June.

Of all the solutions, maybe that's the easiest of all. While the Finals were hurt by some factors beyond the league's control, improving the product remains the easiest cure, and one that's entirely doable inhouse. In light of another year of poor TV ratings, I'm interested to see what steps the league takes on that front this summer.

jhollinger@nysun.com