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NBA needs to bring back old-school presentation for Finals
NBA needs to bring back old-school presentation for Finals
The 2025 NBA Finals between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers tipped off Thursday, with Game 2 slated for Sunday night.
If Game 1 was any indication of how exciting this series will be, well, we’ll be in for quite the treat. However, one trend that the NBA has been drifting away from over the last several years is the actual presentation of the marquee event relative to other rounds of the postseason. That shouldn’t be the case.
I think the NBA did a poor job this year–worse than it has in previous years–marketing the event. Who cares if neither were “big markets” without star talent–the narrative, while existing, is downright false; we have the league MVP playing in the Finals–the NBA Finals are the NBA Finals. Thus, the two weeks they exist, the league should be doing whatever necessary to market it and present it as such.
We’ve lost the plot. Remember the pre-game intros where both starting lineups were announced?
Or when the trophy logo was plastered behind the home team’s logo across halfcourt?
Or when the courts had the special NBA Finals on both ends of the court? Or when players had the iconic patches in front of their jerseys (which is filled by team sponsors now).
Obviously a few of these are little details. But now, we have Youtube TV–a corporate sponsor, of course–with more logos on the screen than the actual Finals itself.
Every other major American sport has the marketing and presentation for the biggest events.
All of us basketball heads watching the NBA Finals know it’s the NBA Finals, though there’s a certain nostalgia, a certain “vibe” that the NBA used to present to make the Finals actually look like the Finals. Could a casual fan tell you any difference between the NBA Finals versus a regular season game between the two teams? What about a young fan tuning in to watch the highlights if they missed the game live?
The NBA needs to figure out a way to make every minute detail meaningful and memorable for all fans, especially when these are the seven most important games on the league’s calendar.
Football fans know when the Super Bowl is, just like baseball fans know when the World Series is, yet there’s still a ton of over-the-top presentation done for both. Heck, the NBA makes a huge deal about the In-Season Tournament with the court designs.
While I’m pro-In Season Tournament, why have more presentation done for that than the actual NBA Finals itself?!? Why are we making the NBA Finals look closer to a regular season game than ever before? As awesome as the basketball is on-court, the entire Finals experience shouldn’t be just that–for now and the future.
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