The NBA season has started, and yet again the league enters a season with major problems.
Since 2003, the NBA has endured more controversy than any other sports league. From a massive brawl between players and fans, to one of the pre-eminent stars of the league being accused of sexual assault, to a referee betting on games, the NBA has gone through almost every possible scandal in the past several years, with each new controversy more damaging than the last.
Here is a quick timeline of what the NBA has endured in the past five years.
- 2003 — Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant is accused of sexual assault.
- 2004 — Indiana Pacers player Ron Artest enters the stands to fight a fan, sparking a massive melee between Pacers players and Detroit Pistons fans.
- 2005 — Most of the postseason is overshadowed by talk of a possible lockout.
- 2005 — Commissioner David Stern institutes a new dress code, which overshadows the start of the 2005-06 season.
- 2006 — Stern introduces a new microfiber ball, which is roundly disapproved of by the players.
- 2007 — Referee Tim Donaghy is found to have bet on NBA games he officiated, sparking a gambling investigation that eventually found that most of the NBA referees had violated league gambling rules.
During that same span, from 2003 to 2007, the NBA Finals have drawn record low ratings twice (in 2003 and 2007). The 8.2 average rating for NBA Finals games in the past five years is a 37% decline from the 13.0 average rating for NBA Finals games during the previous five years, from 1998 to 2002.
Certainly, the NBA is not alone in having PR nightmares. Baseball has been clouded by steroid issues for the past five years as well, while the NFL dealt this past offseason with a nightmarish sequence of player arrests. The NHL had an entire season canceled by a lockout.
While the other three major sports have gone through various pitfalls, no league has had to deal with so many issues in such a short span. Steroids, player arrests and lockouts are all damaging — but they were all singular events for baseball, the NFL and NHL, respectively. Those scandals were the only serious ones this decade for each sport — though the NHL did go through the Todd Bertuzzi/Steve Moore controversy in ’04.
The NBA is currently working on its third major scandal this decade, and fourth since the second retirement of Michael Jordan, if one counts the 1999 lockout. When one factors in all of the smaller scandals — from the controversial suspensions of Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw during the Suns/Spurs series to the embarrassing sexual harassment lawsuit against the New York Knicks and Isiah Thomas, it seems as if the league cannot go more than a month without some new damaging headline.
How has that affected the league? It would be false to say the scandals have been the lone agent in the league’s declining television ratings. Various factors contribute to that; three of the past five NBA Finals featured the ratings-nightmare San Antonio Spurs, ratings are down across the board for all sports, and the television deal instituted in 2003 relegated the majority of NBA games to cable. Still, there is no question that all of the bad news has had at least some effect on the league’s popularity.
The scandals have had an effect on the league’s image. NBA-haters have never had more fodder than they have today. And while the NBA’s various critics have always been irrelevant, it is the true fans of the league that David Stern should be worried about. The Tim Donaghy scandal, coming on the heels of a very unpopular suspension during the Suns/Spurs playoff series, has soured some of the league’s defenders — beyond Suns partisans.
The fact that Stern did not handle any of the pressing issues fans were concerned about during the offseason has not helped matters. There were no overhauls in officiating in the wake of the Donaghy scandal, there was no addressing of the playoff format after a dreadful 2007 NBA Playoffs, and there was no change to the leaving the bench rule that tainted the Suns/Spurs series. Stern has done very little to address the issues facing his league, almost adopting a “if you ignore it, it will go away” strategy that may not be very advantageous to the future of his league.
But then again, Stern may not have to handle these issues with a very heavy hand. After all, the league has weathered all of these controversies, from the Pacers/Pistons brawl to the Kobe sexual assault case. The NBA is strong — not as it has ever been, but still strong. And while the chinks in the armor are showing, and growing, the league may be able to stop the bleeding if it can avoid more scandal in the future.
Unfortunately for Stern and the NBA, history tells us avoiding scandal will be difficult to achieve.
