LeBron Has Turned The NBA Toxic And Sent Loyal Fans Packing
Did you watch as LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers cruised through the @#NBA Finals? No? Then you have a lot of company.
Game 2 of the Finals saw a collapse in TV viewers, with just 4.5 million viewers— down 68 percent from last year’s Game Two, when Toronto’s media market was not even counted in the U.S. domestic ratings. It’s the least-watched NBA Finals game on record (with teams from the No. 2 and 16 media markets in U.S.) .
It’s also an extension of the entire COVID-19 postseason. Year-over-year, the first round of the NBA playoffs was down 27 percent. Furthermore, the first round’s 1.94 million average is down 40 percent from two seasons ago. And that’s with meal ticket LeBron playing.
(Some of the decline is a reflection in the increase in digital transmission and other viewing platforms. But the difference is not reflected in ratings declines for other sports. The NFL is down 14 percent, MLB 35 percent and the NHL down 25 percent in the postseason.)
No doubt the bubble-city format in Orlando and the Covid-19 inspired tapering-off in sports interest is also partly responsible. But, as we wrote on June 15, a significant part of the NBA turndown is likely from fans put off by the politicization of the NBA.
Led by its hyper-progressive commissioner Adam Sliver the NBA has become the best buddy #BLM ever had. In a league that is 80 percent black, Silver figured he had to get with the grievance culture fostered by its star players, its broadcasters and its major sponsor NIKE. (Forget that any struggle in American now is not racial but class. We’ll come back to that in the next few weeks.)
Pretty soon the league was obsessed with branding the deaths of George Floyd, Breanna Taylor and Jacob Blake as deliberate genocide. Black Lives Matter was painted at centre court on all courts used in the playoffs.
Just as overbearing were the slogans the Marxist organization urged on player jerseys. Among the subtle offerings: Say Their Names; I Can’t Breathe; Power to the People; Justice Now; Say Her Name; See Us, Hear Us, Respect Us, Love Us; I Am A Man; Group Economics; and How Many More.
As the beer ad says, those who like it, like it a lot. Otherwise, Joe Six Pack is not impressed with guys making tens of millions a year lecturing them on social awareness while bricking a three. Silver, however, defends the moves. “These are unique times, and I think that given the circumstances, I still firmly believe it was and is the right thing to do.”
Naturally the water carriers are fulsome in LeBron love. Yahoo’s Chris Haynes sees a conspiracy in the pushback. “LeBron James has even been blamed for the drop in viewership because of his willingness to speak freely.”
Chris, meet Jason Whitlock, the black iconoclast at Outkick media, who calls James the Black Trump: “His descent into politics and full-on embrace of Black Lives Matter have devastated the game. He extinguished the TV-ratings torch he inherited from (Michael) Jordan. The league that had dreams of matching the NFL’s relevancy is now toxic, polarizing and reliant on rigged Twitter algorithms for traction.
“LeBron fashions himself as a dignified statesman, role model, political activist and champion of racial equality. He is every bit as crude, undignified and inarticulate as our sitting president. James writes and speaks at a third-grade level. The athletic privilege he’s enjoyed since about age 10 has spoiled and pampered him the same way wealth (and) privilege spoiled and pampered President Trump.
“What’s worse is James’ actions and public pronouncements are far more racist and racially divisive than the president’s.”
Whitlock points to James’ feeble jest turning the fly that landed on Mike Pence’s head during the VP debate into a juvenile shit joke. If Pence had made the joke, says Whitlock, he’d be endlessly pilloried as a racist. “There would be a conga line of black liberals tap dancing for butter biscuits from Rachel Maddow, Anderson Cooper, Chris Hayes and Don Lemon.”
But LeBron? Crickets from the #BLM apparatchiks on ESPN and the Woke folk of the press box.
Certainly James’ performance on suppressing criticism of China and its billions in NBA support was as far from Michael Jordan as you can get. Not that you noticed from the Hosannas poured down on James after winning the NBA title on Sunday.
To those who wonder why so few in the NFL were interested in extending QB Colin Kaepernick a platform to air his political grievances James’ constant prostilytizing supplies an answer. While the NFL has beclowned itself by putting Blake’s name on helmets and playing alternative national anthems, it has not found its on-air product highjacked by #BLM dogma on a daily basis— as James has done. There are dissenting NFL voices, but no one like James herding the vote.
“He’s turned black athletes secular,” says Whitlock, an unapologetic Christian. “He’s turned them away from a Biblical understanding of the world and towards a white liberal’s understanding of it. White liberals believe they are the masters of the universe and that they can solve problems that only a submission to the will of God can truly solve.”
For now, it appears that Silver wants to remove the slogans from the uniforms next season and cut back on the extremist language of players in #BLM’s thrall. Perhaps he thinks that, under a Biden presidency, he’ll be allowed to ease up on the hectoring with friends in the White House. Maybe he’ll get an ambassadorship to China?
But fans have long memories, and they’ll take their sweet time forgetting how the NBA’s white fans are blamed for the alleged ills of America while LeBron and is pals cozied up the to the CCPP politburo. Someone should tell Bron-Bron there is no glory without honour.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his next book Personal Account with Tony Comper will be available on BruceDowbigginBooks.ca this fall.