Denver Nuggets head coach Michael Malone said he struggled to sit through the entirety of the NBA All-Star game on Sunday, and apparently, he wasn’t alone.
Television ratings for the NBA’s 2023 mid-season showcase hit a record-low in the event’s history. The game averaged just 4.59 million viewers, a 27% decrease in viewership from last year. In 2022, the previous low for an NBA All-Star Game, 6.28 million viewers tuned in.
The 2023 game, held in Salt Lake City, drew fewer eyeballs than Major League Baseball’s All-Star game and the National Football League’s Pro Bowl events. Out of all three, MLB averaged the most viewership with 7.51 million average viewers. Not coincidentally, MLB’s All-Star game is also the most game-like out of the three major professional sports.
“It’s an honor to be here. It’s an honor to be a part of a great weekend, great players. But that is the worst basketball game ever played,” Malone said on Sunday after coaching LeBron James’ team. “I don’t know if you can fix it. I give Joel Embiid, Kyrie Irving credit. Those guys were like, competing. Joel was imploring some of the guys to play harder, to try to get some defense in. No one got hurt, they put on a show for the fans, but that is a tough game to sit through. I’m not gonna lie.”
Boston Celtics All-Star Jaylen Brown also criticized the game. Brown might have been a part of the most competitive sequence of the entire night, when he briefly matched up one-on-one with his Boston teammate Jayson Tatum. But other than that, a 184-175 game was anything but realistic.
Tatum ended up with the MVP, scoring 55 points on mostly uncontested dunks and shots.
“We got to figure out how to make the game a little bit more competitive,” Brown said. “It was just a glorified layup line.”
The NBA has been looking into making the All-Star game, and weekend, more enticing for fans. It has been common for top players to sit out of the event, like Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant did this year due to injury. The ones that do play certainly don’t try all that hard.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver spoke last weekend about adding a player draft before the game to add intrigue. That, as it would turn out, was the most exciting part of the evening on Sunday. Silver also suggested it was inevitable for there to be some drop off in viewership for All-Star events because star players and games are more accessible than they were in the past. It is no longer a novelty to see all the best players playing at once. He pointed to the dunk contest as an example.
“Back then, when you would see some of those great stars dunking, their games were not available on your phone, every single one of them, every night, and highlights weren’t available on multiple platforms 24/7 the way they are now,” Silver said.
Utah Jazz representative Lauri Markkanen, who was playing in his first All-Star game, was asked if the players like playing in a competitive game or just a scrimmage.
“Both. I mean, it’s fun to kind of get out there and do some dunks and stuff like that,” Markkanen said. “But we’re all competitors. I think everybody would enjoy too if we just play against each other and it gets competitive.
“Obviously, the game wasn’t close at the end really, so it didn’t get to that point. But both places, they have their good stuff about them.”
The NFL recently dealt with similar problems with its own Pro Bowl game. As a reaction, the league scratched the game altogether and instead had players put on in a flag football event on television. It drew 6.28 million viewers this year.
Some have asked if the NBA could go down that road. Could it eliminate the game in favor of a one-on-one challenge? Players were unsure.
“I think it would be exciting to watch,” Cleveland Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell said about the proposal. “I don’t know what you’ll get out of that. I think the best battles happen when none of you all are watching, to be honest. I think that’s something that as athletes we really keep as a group. I think if everybody wants to see it, we see it on Twitter all the time. Who would win? Who would do this?
“.. But I think the best battles come behind closed doors when there’s trash talking, there’s a little more grit to it. I think it would be cool, but I don’t know how much you would be able to get out of it, if I’m being honest.”
Other NBA All-Star events also saw a decline in viewership last weekend. All-Star Saturday night — which features the dunk contest and three-point contest — averaged 3.42 million viewers. That was its worst rating in 20 years. The Rising Stars game on Friday night drew 880,000 average viewers, down from 1.2 million in 2022.
Ironically, the celebrity game increased its viewership from last year to 1.4 million watchers.
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