No.
NBA superstar LeBron James will play in his first NBA Finals this year, saving the league from the ratings nightmare of a San Antonio Spurs/Detroit Pistons rematch. Spurs/Pistons, for a variety of reasons, would likely have set a new record low for the NBA Finals on broadcast television (the current low is 6.5 for Spurs/New Jersey Nets in 2003).
And while NBA Commissioner David Stern can breath a sigh of relief, there is no way that the NBA Finals between James’ Cleveland Cavaliers and the San Antonio Spurs draw better ratings than last year’s Finals, between the Miami Heat and Dallas Mavericks. In fact, ratings for this year’s series will be hard pressed to beat the ratings for the 2005 NBA Finals, between the Spurs and Pistons.
Quoting Houston Chronicle writer David Barron (who correctly predicted the ratings of last year’s NBA Finals):
San Antonio has appeared in three of the five lowest-rated series, including the record-low 2003 Finals against the Nets, and it’s hard to imagine a Cavs-Spurs series doing substantially better than the 8.5 Nielsen average for the Heat and the Mavericks last season. I’m guessing mid-sevens .”
America does not like the San Antonio Spurs. And America does not know LeBron James well enough to watch the Spurs play just because he is their opponent.
Ratings for the playoffs were down across the board this year, by fairly sizable margins. The NBA Finals will not suddenly draw big numbers, after a spring of medicore viewership. Ratings for the Eastern Conference Finals did perk up somewhat after James’ spectacular performance in Game 5; the 4.0/7 for Game 5 was down only 5% from the 4.2 for Suns/Mavericks Game 5 last year, and Game 6 drew a season-high 5.3 overnight rating on Saturday night.
It would take a spectacular performance by James to get the ratings above the 8.5 average from last year, and the league has to be hoping the eternally unmarketable Spurs do not sweep the series — as the ratings may very well tumble towards record lows. James has to do what Allen Iverson did in 2001: help his team steal the first game. The 2001 NBA Finals ended up with a 12.1 average — the highest of the decade — even though the series ended in five games. And while it helped that the teams involved were the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers and the Philadelphia 76ers, two teams from huge markets, the fact is that ratings would have been very poor had Iverson’s 76ers not stolen Game 1.
Markets are important. Competitive series are more important.
One need only look at the 2005 NBA Finals. For all the talk of what a ratings nightmare it was, it still drew an 8.2 average rating, thanks to high ratings for Games 5, 6 and 7 (which drew an 11.9 rating, still the highest rated NBA game of the past two years).
In the event that Cleveland is able to compete with the Spurs, look for the ratings to be at least close to last year’s numbers. However, if the Spurs blow the Cavaliers out in the first two games, look for the ratings to plummet significantly.
No matter what, this early in his career, LeBron James is not enough of a known commodity to single-handedly boost television ratings. So far in this year’s playoffs, James has been involved in two extremely low rated series, one against the Wizards and the other against the Nets. The second round series against New Jersey was one of the lowest rated second round series in many years; Game 6 drew a horrible 1.5 rating on ESPN. The first three games of this year’s Eastern Conference Finals drew poor ratings as well, as each game was down double-digits to the comparable Conference Finals games last year.
LeBron is not Michael Jordan, and the ratings reflect that. His simply being there is not going to help the NBA Finals recapture its former ratings dominance.
