Sure Jordan is the greatest but we still have awesome superstars in the league like Kobe, LeBron, Wade, Kevin Durant, Dwight Howard, Corey Maggette, etc. Is it really that hard for people to move on from the past that they don’t care about the NBA anymore once Jordan stopped playing?
Dude, I stopped caring when Kareem retired.
Moved from General Questions to The Game Room.
samclem, MOderator
Couldn’t you have fixed the title also?
I can not confirm or disprove that the league is less popular now.
However, it does seem that way to me, too. For me, it was the whole time that included Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, and a few other names as well.
They elevated the game a ton in the 1980’s and 90’s and it was just a great and exciting time to follow the game.
My take, anyway.
Corey Maggette? I didn’t even know who that was. That would be like me saying Tayshaun Prince is a superstar. Popular locally, but not a superstar.
While the NBA might not be as popular in America (debatable), it is growing quickly internationally. I teach in China and in the classrooms I teach, there are computers available. The students overwhelmingly try to sneak watching NBA games on the internet over soccer by a 3:1 margin (number pulled out of my ass). I think the NBA is more focused on growing its market around the globe instead of at home which might reflect some of the perception of America in the 00/10s versus the 80/90s.
My belief is that the only demographic in which the NBA is less popular is middle class white American males. In terms of total popularity, if you add in the international market, it’s popularity dwarfs that of the Jordan era. I just read a story today about a 15 year old from the Punjab region of India who was found and is now in school at the IMG academy in Bradenton, FL. He’s 7’1". The NBA is putting together a national league in India. Europe, China, and South America have embraced the NBA and Africa isn’t far behind.
My team, the Nuggets, start three international players and has two more as key reserves.
Sure, TV audiences in the U.S. are smaller, but I attribute that to, at the height of the Jordan era, there being only a couple of games on TV a week, and they were always marquee matchups. Now I can see every game the Nuggets play plus four or five more games a week on TNT.
I live in rural Midwest and I know no one that follows NBA basketball.
I got a lot friends who go to Cardinals, Rams, Titans games. No one goes to Memphis Grizzlies games, and it is the closest city.
Corey Maggette? Since when is he a star? But seriously, the NBA is not really in decline. In fact, last year was one of the best years for ratings and attendance. There have been a few blips in the recent past due to Jordan retiring, teams moving, and over-expansion, but in general the NBA is in great shape. The game is doing really well overseas in growing markets like China, and is really poised to become a truly global league. Basketball, in general, has a lot of growth potential. I can easily imagine a situation within the next 20 years where the NBA is a bigger global brand than the NFL. Even now, far more people know Kobe and Lebron than Peyton and Eli.
Yeah, as has been said, the NBA is actually doing really well now other than the lockout.
It went down after MJ retired, but has recently been on the rise.
The NBA will do just fine as long as the Lakers keep winning. 
The wikipedia article has some good data, and there are many ways to answer the question. But if you want to look at TV ratings as a measure of popularity, the decline is undeniable.
…missed my edit window
The issue, in my opinion, isn’t that the popularity has declined, it has just reverted to the levels that it was before Jordan/Magic/Bird. In the late 70s and early 80s, the NBA finals were broadcast on tape-delay at 11:30pm.
I think it is looking like I was kind of right. It isn’t just Michael Jordan, though his retirement ended a sort of era.
It’s Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, and a few others from that same time. They really elevated the game’s level and excitement.
One of these names does not belong…
Look at those other guys, namely Kobe and LeBron. They both had pretty bad moments that made them villains. Jordan was always kind of an a-hole, but never a villain. He had a Looney-Toons movie, for crying out loud.
Right after Jordan left, though, we still had Shaq, and he was kind of the face of the league for a while. Now, it’s hard to find someone to root for. Durant is a great player and a great guy, but he’s in such a small market. Otherwise, he could easily become the next face of the league. The NBA has just not done a great job of marketing itself in the post Jordan years. The league image has suffered from things like the Las Vegas All Star game, the dress code requirements, the lockout, and on and on. It’s missing a certain class that Jordan had.
This is a well worn mantra that gets repeated over and over and over… The NBA finals last year had the highest ratings in years. I follow it… my kids and all of their friends follow it really hard and heavy…
I would surmise strictly pullin this from my ass that Hockey fan keeps saying this over and over in the hope that ESPN takes them back… Derrick Rose versus Russell Westbrook is always gonna keep me up a couple of hours on a thurs night.
First of all, let’s consult some facts; in terms of attendance there is no evidence at all that the NBA is declining in popularity. There is no evidence at all that the departures of Bird, Johnson and Jordan had any negative effect.
In 1983-1984, the first great John-Bird Finals war, just before Jordan entered the league, per game attendance was 10,619.
In 1989-1990, when Jordanmania was at its peak, league per game attendance was 15,649, and that’s including the distorting effect of Minnesota playing in the Metrodome.
In 1999-2000, with Jordan either retired or old and useless - I don’t remember - it was 16,864, with more teams in the league.
In 2006-2007, the last season before the economic disaster, it was 17,730, with one more team again.
Since then it has slipped a bit - last season it was 17,290. I would expect that during a time of severe recession. But it’s still well above where it was when Jordan was at his peak. So let’s see; attendance after Michael Jordan went UP, ratings are as good as they’ve ever been… could someone provide me with the slightest indication that the NBA lost popularity? Any at all?
It is true that attendance rose dramatically as Jordan began his ascendance. How much of this is attributable to Michael Jordan, specifically, and how much is just that the league did a better job of running itself at about that time, I don’t know, but it should be noted tha tthe NBA did do a lot of things in the late 70’s and early 80’s meant to improve the game and its popularity. The addition of 3-pointers in 1979 caused a long march towards a much more interesting, wide-open brand of basketball, and David Stern became commissioner in 1984 and overhauled the marketing of the league. Given that Jordan was involved in just 82 games a year out of over a thousand, and presumably people going to a Warriors-Nets game were aware Michael Jordan would not be there, one has to assume there was something else at work. But it’s indisputably the case that that level of attendance has not only not been lost, but has since been improved upon.
Any analysis that compares today’s TV ratings to ratings from 20 or 30 years ago needs to take into account factors like the proliferation of cable and satellite channels and the internet. If it doesn’t, it’s just useless. Ratings for almost everything on TV are lower now than they were a few decades ago, so you can’t just say “ratings are lower now than they were in the '90s, so the game is less popular.” I think the Super Bowl might be the only exception to the ratings trend, but that depends on who’s in the game in any given year.
Kobe, Lebron, and… Maggette?
I know, right? I mean, how could you leave out Aaron Afflalo?