I haven't given it much thought. Probably to no surprise to you, I don't spend much time trying to break down things that are vague and up to a lot of interpretation. I think all the things you listed are reasonable. Social media engagement, viewership variables, q-score, and many other factors would probably need to be added. How do you weight those, especially when comparing different decades? No clue! Does a rookies populartiy matter to the popularity at their peak? No clue! I think it's safe to say MJ's popularity grew exponentially from 1984 to 1999 (the peak of NBA ratings). It's also safe to say the access, competition, etc for eyeballs is very different between the 2020's and the 1990's. Some to the advantage of the NBA, some to the disadvantage. Attempting to confirm the leagues popularity is most strongly associated to one or two variables would seem overly simplistic to me. To get this back on topic. I don't think scoring being up (or down) is the main variable to league "popularity". If I had to use data over the last decade or two, I would guess there is a weak positive correlation between scoring increasing and NBA viewership. I would not be comfortable concluding that more scoring would mean increased ratings or games in the low 90s would increase ratings. Seems like the pluses/minuses are much bigger than scoring.
LeBron had the highest jersey sales in his rookie season. The NBA hasn't released jersey sales yet for 2023-2024. LeBron was a phenom. I think you're forgetting how insane the hype was around LeBron.
I kinda thought so. Unless you were suggesting there is a correlation between the leagues peak popularity in the 90's and scoring being down. I wouldn't feel comfortable drawing that conclusion.
I think this is another great point of the complicated issue comparing Jordan in the 80's/90's with todays NBA. The league is far more popular internationally than it was back then.
I'm having a hard time following the arguments here. I think the league statistically has never had a larger following or a larger portion of the earth's GDP that it is taking in. I think despite that, in terms of being able to put a monetary global value (relative to the year it was happening in) on a player's popularity Kobe and LBJ were more popular than Wemby in their rookie seasons... Yao probably was too. MJ is hard to tell but I'm going to bet he was way bigger than Wemby will be in his sophomore campaign. I hope I'm wrong because I want the league to be in good hands after LeBron leaves and it will be, I just doubt that for at least a little while the league will so securely rest in the hands of one global superstar player.
No. I think the league was at its most popular when Jordan was winning titles. 39 million people watched Jordan’s last game against Utah. Nothing has come remotely close to that ever since. The games now in the finals get like 12-13 million viewers.
there's a lot more media coverage in the NBA now then compared to the 90's. It's always good for business to get the brand name out there. I find it hilarious when the army of "basketball experts" are completely wrong. The media hit squad spent hours telling us how the Timberwolves are in a horribly sad state of affairs. Fast forward a few months, and Minnesota is playing some of the best basketball in franchise history. So much hype is pumped into Boston, and we watched a barely .500 Heat team crank up the hustle, and dang near swept the "mighty Celtics" in the playoffs. the NBA media likes to control the narrative of basketball more so in the good ol' days. Everyone spent all summer getting daily headlines of a fake Lillard to Miami trade, while Denver's first championship was won in complete dominating fashion, and the Nuggets miracle got shoved into a non-talking point for some odd reason. We can still follow all the teams, but we gotta take backroads and stay off the mainstream NBA highway to get the proper input.
This was the era when more people recognized Michael Jordan than Mickey Mouse. It's hard to overstate how famous Michael Jordan was back then (I think we in particular understate it because we fell victim to him)
Soo many 3 balls get triggered, sometimes it surpises me when a player steps in for a deuce. "That guy's open! Kick it for threeee !! ...oh, you missed that guy, wait what... going for a 2 pointer, okay."
