[Senator Clay Davis]

The NBA's competitive balance is probably the best it's ever been though, a combination of both the extreme amount of three point shooting leading to more variability between games and the punitive nature of the salary cap now with the aprons making it harder to keep teams together. The bigger issue is the quality of the on court product is quite bad, driven partially by the extreme amounts of threes, but also the growing lack of effort in the regular season. But when you have scenarios like the East right now where four teams are gonna make the play-in with losing records, so why try hard when 34-48 can get you a ticket to the playoffs?

NBA media doesn't help either. If you watch ESPN the only thing that matters is a Lakers/Celtics or Knicks NBA Finals to "save the season". NBA suffers badly from its own network partners, ESPN specifically, doing an abysmal job of promoting the league as a whole. I get that they badly overpaid for the TV rights and are hoping every Finals is Lakers/Celtics or Knicks to try and salvage some of that, but it's incredibly off putting. Hate watching also isn't what it used to be, I got no qualms skipping a Finals with the Lakers, which I never would back in the day.