The Pacers-Thunder NBA Finals, which Oklahoma City leads 3–2, could be basketball’s first seven-game finale since the Cavaliers and Warriors in 2016. Yet heading into Monday’s critical Game 5, much of the coverage was around the Grizzlies trading Desmond Bane to the Magic in exchange for Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Cole Anthony, four first-round draft picks, and a pick swap. 

The NBA is different than most leagues. What happens off the court often draws more interest from fans than what happens on the hardwood. Once their season is over, the 28 teams not playing in the Finals can swing trades in preparation for their next season. That can take some of the spotlight away from the Finals—The Association’s marquee event. 

Take Sunday’s blockbuster Bane deal. The first megatrade of the NBA offseason was the talk of the sports world Sunday night. On Monday morning, NBA Finals media partner ESPN opened the Get Up morning show with the “huge” news of the trade, and its implications for Grizzlies superstar Ja Morant. 

It wasn’t until a full 38 minutes into Get Up that the cast addressed Monday’s Game 5 in Oklahoma City. 

ESPN’s First Take did take the opposite approach. With both Stephen A. Smith and Brian Windhorst on-site in Oklahoma City, the show opened up with an in-depth breakdown of Game 5 among Smith, Windhorst, Jay Williams, and Molly Qerim. Over on X/Twitter, the Bane deal was one of the top trending stories, along with J.J. Spaun’s U.S. Open victory at Oakmont Country Club and a midseason trade of Rafael Devers by the Red Sox.

It’s hard to imagine the NFL or MLB allowing trades to take the spotlight away from the Super Bowl or World Series, respectively. During the 2024 NFL season, for example, the league’s 32 clubs could not make trades between the Nov. 5 trade deadline and the official start of the new year on March 12, 2025.

MLB, meanwhile, prohibits trades of players under contract between the July 31 trade deadline and the conclusion of the World Series. What’s more, there’s an unspoken agreement not to let player and team news overshadow postseason action, according to my FOS colleague Eric Fisher. In the same vein, MLB clubs are discouraged from making manager and general manager hires during that period. When super-agent Scott Boras announced during the 2007 Red Sox–Rockies World Series that Alex Rodriguez was opting out of his Yankees contract, he was denounced for hijacking the Fall Classic. The New Yorker dubbed him “The Extortionist” for his talent at media manipulation.

On the other hand, you could argue the Bane trade helped keep the NBA top of mind on a day when the sports world should have been fixated on Spaun’s 64-foot walk-off putt to win the Open.

NBA insider Jake Fischer, who writes for Marc Stein’s The Stein Line, told FOS that the past week of these supposedly boring NBA Finals has generated the Substack site’s best subscription revenue in a “long, long time,” he says. Granted, the site has done plenty of offseason reporting between games.

“People are just looking to consume NBA content in between the 48 and the zero on the clock, too,” Fischer says.

The NBA continues to step up its belated efforts to remind fans they’re watching the Finals and not an ordinary game. 

Ahead of Monday night’s Game 5, ABC aired the introductions of the starting lineups for both the Pacers and Thunder, the first time it had done so at the Finals since 2013. The plan to air the intros was first reported by ESPN. Sources told Front Office Sports that ABC will continue to do so for the remainder of the series.

The Thunder beat the Pacers 120–109 on Monday night to take a 3–2 series lead. Oklahoma City will have a chance to clinch the title in Indianapolis on Thursday night. 

Through five games, the Finals have been a competitive series. Off the court, though, ratings have dipped, and fans have bemoaned a lack of pageantry. The move to air the intros—and add a digitally imposed Larry O’Brien Trophy logo to the court—shows that the league is plugged into the online discourse about its product.

The trophy logo was removed from Finals courts after 2009, and fans have complained every year since.

“I’ve seen some of the chatter on social media about on-court decals,” commissioner Adam Silver said before Game 3. “People don’t realize, they went away a decade ago because there were claims, Kendrick [Perkins] knows … they were slippery when we had them on the court. We’re back to adding them virtually.”

The NBA and ESPN did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The ad space right before tip-off is valuable inventory, and airing introductions would eat into that ad time.

Michael McCarthy contributed reporting.

When Caitlin Clark is on national TV, the ratings go boom.

Saturday’s game between the Fever and Liberty averaged 2.2 million viewers on ABC. ESPN announced that viewership peaked at 2.8 million and was the third-most-watched WNBA game ever on ABC. The matchup drew 76% more viewers than the average regular-season WNBA game on ABC last year. 

Clark had missed five games with a quad injury, during which time WNBA ratings sagged—although Indiana games even without Clark still did pretty well, all things considered, as Front Office Sports’s Colin Salao documented. 

Clark scored 32 points, 21 of which came on seven three-pointers, in her return after missing games for the first time since high school. 

The viewership numbers have been especially stout when Clark and the Fever compete on broadcast TV this season. Fever-Liberty also drew 2.2 million viewers last month for a Saturday afternoon game on CBS. Fever-Sky, featuring the rivalry between Clark and Chicago forward Angel Reese that dates back to college, drew 2.7 million viewers for ABC in the regular-season opener.