Don't Look Now But The NBA Is Making Baseball Their Bitch
Flex on em Adam Silver! To be honest I was a little surprised to learn this was the first time ever that NBA franchises had a higher average value than the MLB. I figured with the way the league has blown up pretty much since Adam Silver took over that this happened a long time ago. People may say baseball is the national pastime, but I think we’re seeing that leagues like the NBA are slowly taking over. Every rich dude and their mother wants in on the NBA, which is definitely a different story than what the league was dealing with just a few years ago when it seemed like they couldn’t give a franchise away. Now obviously nobody will ever catch the NFL because in this country football is and will always be king, but as a basketball guy I’ll take a comfortable #2 position.
When you think of why this may have happened it’s not exactly rocket science. No league has embraced the 21st century quite like the NBA. Adam Silver gets it, he understands that the more people that see his product the better. That’s why they don’t care if you rip highlights and share them on your social, because for them it’s just free advertising. You add that with all the marketability the players have combined with how close the fans are to the court, the NBA provides an experience most leagues can’t. Go ahead and try and share a clip of a baseball game and see how long your account lasts before you get suspended. It’s not exactly news that the MLB stinks out loud with this issue, but now we’re starting to see it hurt their bottom line as the NBA becomes more and more popular.
Then you have to factor in the cultural impact. The NBA and it’s players are just cool. They are trend setters in today’s culture and when you watch them play you can actually see them show emotion. You have old farts that get their panties in a wad every time someone pimps a homerun or something in baseball, imagine if that existed in the NBA? Like Giannis comes down and posterizes someone and he couldn’t celebrate? That would be so weird. The reason people love this league so much isn’t even because of the product, because let’s face it sometimes NBA players don’t always try. Instead people are drawn tot he personalities of the players which they are encouraged to show both on and off the floor.
So I’m sure this may be hard for the baseball hardos to accept that their beloved sport is being passed by us basketball guys in both interest and value. It wouldn’t shock me if eventually they start nipping at the NFL’s heals especially with all the shit surrounding the future of football. I don’t know what Adam Silver is doing but it sure looks like he may go down as the greatest NBA commissioner of all time. There’s a reason the NFL tried to get him to replace Roger Goodell, the man is an absolute force.