Earlier this week, Adam Silver wasn’t ready to blame the NBA’s style of play for its current ratings decline.
Enter his most famous and beloved player.
Speaking to the media ahead of the Lakers’ game in Sacramento on Thursday, LeBron James was asked about the All-Star Game’s format switch to a four-team mini-tournament. He answered directly before hinting at the league having more serious problems than All-Star weekend.
“I have my ideas of what could possibly work, but I’m not going to do that,” James said. “You got to do something. Obviously the last couple of years have not been a great All-Star Game on Sunday night. But it’s a bigger conversation. It’s not just the All-Star Game; it’s our game in general. Our game—there’s a lot of fucking threes being shot. So it’s a bigger conversation than just the All-Star Game.”
Kevin Durant and Ja Morant both expressed their displeasure with the new All-Star format, but declined to go into the state of the game while doing so.
NBA teams often copy the reigning champion, and the Celtics have doubled down on their three-point philosophy since beating the Mavericks in June’s Finals. The Celtics are averaging 51.1 three-point attempts per game, five more than the previous record held by Mike D’Antoni’s 2018–2019 Rockets.
A year ago, the Celtics were the lone team to score more than 40% of their points from three, finishing at 41%. This season, seven teams are scoring 40% or more of their points from three, with the Celtics leading the way at 47.5%, which would be a record if it holds.
James declined to elaborate on his thoughts after reporters pressed him, but his comments echo those of other critics who blame the threes for the NBA’s ratings dip. That drop is currently sitting at 19% compared to last year. It can easily be attributed to several things, including a general drop in cable subscribers and non-NFL sports ratings, but the shift in the NBA’s product has remained stubbornly in the discourse.
James’s former teammate, Shaquille O’Neal, was eager to blame threes earlier this year. “We’re looking at the same thing,” O’Neal said on his podcast in November. “Everybody’s running the same plays. … I don’t mind Golden State back in the day shooting threes, but every team is not a three-point shooter.”
On Tuesday, Silver said the league is looking into the game’s current style of play and doesn’t see any changes coming such as a widening of the court or adjustment to the three-point line.
The league moved the three-point line ahead of the 1994–1995 season from 23 feet, nine inches to 22 feet across the court. Three years later, it moved it back to 23 feet, nine inches (22 feet in the corners) after the first change didn’t impact scoring the way the league thought it would.
“Whether there’s some tweaks we should make, and my sense is I do think we should take seriously this notion of more diversity in offense,” Silver said Tuesday. “I watch as many games as all of you do, and to the extent that it’s not so much a three-point issue, but that some of the audience, some of the offenses start to look sort of cookie-cutter and teams are copying each other. I think that’s something we should pay attention to.”
