There are certain limitations to nostalgia. The 1999 NBA Finals is rare in league history, in that it is beloved both by the victors and the losers. One might even go so far as to argue that the losing team is more beloved by its fanbase, as the 1999 Knicks were the last to make it so far — and the 1999 Spurs were followed by four more title teams.
The cherished memories of that 1999 series, and its proximity to the Jordan-fueled boom years that preceded it, might give the impression it was part of the NBA’s “golden era.” But that 1999 series came after a damaging lockout that shortened the season, was not exactly compelling on the court, and more to the purposes of this article was a ratings dud by the standards of the time.
The 1990s Knicks are royalty in New York despite never winning an NBA title, and their rivalries against Michael Jordan’s Bulls and Reggie Miller’s Pacers live forever in NBA lore. Yet when the Knicks made the Finals in 1994 and 1999, it was not exactly a ratings bonanza. Each game of the 1994 Rockets-Knicks and 1999 Spurs-Knicks series declined substantially from the prior year. The catch is that those comparisons are to years when Jordan clinched a threepeat in front of a record television crowd. Even so, viewership also paled in comparison to the subsequent years, neither of which featured Jordan. A Rockets-Magic sweep in 1995 comfortably outdrew the seven-game Rockets-Knicks in ’94. The six-game Lakers-Pacers in 2000 squeaked by the five-game Spurs-Knicks in ’99, if aided mainly by the additional contest.
For a now-beloved team in the nation’s #1 market, that might seem incongruous. It might start to make a bit more sense when one considers what those 1990s Knicks were about. The same thing that makes them beloved now, their bruising no-nonsense defensive style, has never been particularly attractive to a national television audience.
That may also start to explain why the San Antonio Spurs of that era were, to be frank, ratings poison. There may be no team in any sport that had a more consistently negative impact on the ratings for a championship event than the Spurs of Tim Duncan, particularly the Bruce Bowen-era version that won three low-scoring and lower-rated title series in five years from 2003-07.
In a 20-year span from 1994-2014, six of the seven NBA Finals to feature the Knicks or Spurs trailed both the prior year and the subsequent year — the only exception being the Spurs’ seven-game loss to the Heat in 2013. That means six times in 20 years, the Knicks and Spurs represented a ratings trough — the numbers were better before they got there and after they left.
In the ratings game, teams tend to retain certain characteristics over time. The Cowboys are an outsized television draw today, just as they were ten years ago, and 20 years ago, for example. The NBA is a bit different. Oklahoma City was a ratings driver in the days of Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, less so in the championship era of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Chet Holmgren. Cleveland spent years as either 1A or 1B on the list of most-watched NBA teams because of LeBron James. Superstars with the right personality and style of play can elevate any market and team into marquee status.
San Antonio won five titles and made six Finals in the days of Duncan, and it was only when serving as the foil for James’ “Heatles” in 2013 and 2014 that a substantial national audience tuned in. Now, in the burgeoning era of Victor Wembanyama, the same Spurs franchise whose Finals appearances were a biennial letdown outside of San Antonio is now the main reason why this year’s series seems to have so much potential.
The Spurs have played in nine of the 14 most-watched games this postseason through Saturday’s Western Conference Finals Game 7 against Oklahoma City. They played in the most-watched regular season game, a Christmas game against Oklahoma City, drawing more viewers on the holiday than the likes of LeBron James and Stephen Curry later that afternoon and evening. They played in the NBA Cup Final — against the Knicks — which was the most-watched regular season game on Prime Video. Some of these are a matter of playing in the highest-profile game windows all season, but it all points to a national relevance that few Spurs teams have ever experienced.
The Knicks do not boast a superstar on the level of Wembanyama, who has the potential to be the greatest player of his era, but they too have an advantage over the teams of the past. Simply put, the Knicks have lost for so long and spent so many years in the wilderness that they have taken on the air of a long-suffering team. Perhaps not on the level of a Cubs, or a Red Sox, but almost on the level of their NHL counterpart Rangers — whose run to the 1994 Stanley Cup snapped a 54-year drought. Game 7 of that Cup Final still ranks as the most-watched NHL game ever on cable, despite ESPN’s national broadcast being blacked out in New York City.
In the 1990s, the Knicks had gone 21 and then 26 years without a title. Now they’ve gone 53. It would take 33 more years for the Knicks to match the Red Sox’ 86-year drought, or about as long as it took to get from the 1994 Finals to now.
There is something about long-suffering teams and long droughts that tends to attract viewers. Baseball had two of them in the 2016 World Series, the most-watched since the Red Sox ended their drought in 2004. Horse racing’s Triple Crown went unclaimed nearly 40 years before American Pharoah ended the streak, and there was always a viewership ‘pop’ for the various near misses along the way. It remains to be seen if this year’s Knicks will have that impact on this year’s audience, but the potential is there. Perhaps the only potential fly in the ointment is if New York maintains the utter dominance it displayed during the Eastern Conference playoffs, laying waste to teams like few have in NBA history.
Much has been made of the NBA’s ratings this decade, and while much of the conversation has been made in extraordinary and shameless bad faith, the fact is that the NBA Finals has not really delivered since LeBron James and Stephen Curry last met in the Finals eight years ago. The NBA’s biggest event has featured series that seemed to be selected by a random number generator, few of which were foreshadowed during the regular season. There was nothing pointing to Lakers-Heat in 2020, or Bucks-Suns in 2021, or Heat-Nuggets in 2023 or certainly Thunder-Pacers last year as being the culmination of the season. Not surprisingly, those series were mediocre at best in the ratings.
In that way too, this series is different. For all the mockery it has engendered, the NBA Cup showed its worth this season, with three of the four semifinalists making the conference finals. Knicks-Spurs is not just a rematch of the 1999 series, but also of the NBA Cup Final in Las Vegas back in December. An audience of three million watched that game — far from a Finals-level audience, but as previously noted the most-watched game of the regular season on Prime Video.
Between the stars, storylines and recent history, there has not been an NBA Finals in some time with so much potential. There are reasons for caution, particularly the FIFA World Cup competition that begins in about a week. To avoid direct competition with U.S. World Cup matches, the NBA shifted its Finals schedule and in the process eliminated games on Sundays, the most-watched night of the week. The amended schedule includes a game on the least-watched night of the week, Saturday, for just the second time since 1981. (The other time came in the COVID-adjusted year of 2021.)
Beyond anything else, there is no reason to believe that any one matchup will send ratings back to 2019 levels. When the Finals had a prolonged viewership drought in the mid-2000s, even Lakers-Celtics did not immediately boost the numbers back to what had previously been the norm. That process will probably take more than one Finals.
With that said, this NBA Finals has perhaps the best opportunity to rank as the most-watched since 2019. It should have no trouble blowing past last year’s historically-low levels, and even the most-watched Finals this decade — 12.4 million for Warriors-Celtics in 2022 — did not set a particularly high bar. (As another reason for caution, note that the 2022 Warriors-Celtics series was also expected to mark a return to form for the Finals.)
Prediction
The prediction here is a six-game series. The first four games will need to set a strong pace because the World Cup competition figures to depress Games 5 and 6 (and 7, if there is one). Add to the other factors the Nielsen changes that have benefited every other sporting event in the past year and this year’s Finals has more going for it than most.
— NBA Finals: Knicks-Spurs (started Wed 8:30p ABC). Prediction: 12.99M viewers over six games.
— Game 1: 12.97M (Wed 6/3, 8:30 PM ABC)
— Game 2: 12.02M (Fri 6/5, 8:30 PM ABC)
— Game 3: 13.79M (Mon 6/8, 8:30 PM ABC)
— Game 4: 14.11M (Wed 6/10, 8:30 PM ABC)
— Game 5: 12.24M (Sat 6/13, 8:30 PM ABC)
— Game 6: 12.79M (Tue 6/16. 8:30 PM ABC)
