With NBA Finals Game 7, league gets the night and spotlight it's been seeking

New York Times

3 hours ago

When the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers tip off in a winner-take-all game Sunday for the NBA title, it will not just be a coda to one of the most thrilling NBA seasons in recent memory. Game 7 will also be a capstone to a years-long drive by the league to make this kind of scenario possible.
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This is the game that the NBA has long wanted.
The NBA and commissioner Adam Silver have spent the last decade trying to make things more competitive and more egalitarian. To make market size less determinative and chaos more predictable. The league has centralized its media strategy and nationalized its opportunity, where any team with enough luck, pluck and competence has a chance to make a title run. It is the NFL-ification of the NBA, for better or for worse.
The NBA came to prominence as a mostly bi-coastal and big-city league. This year, it has the smallest market finals ever, a testament to the effects of successive collective bargaining agreements and what the league wants to entrench, Mark Walter's billions notwithstanding. The 2023 CBA installed a second-apron payroll threshold, which is considered a hard cap by many around the league. It imposed punitive monetary penalties for luxury-tax repeaters. It pushed to squeeze teams into the financial middle.
'It was very intentional,' Silver said when the NBA Finals started. 'It didn't begin with me. It began with (longtime commissioner) David (Stern) and successive collective bargaining agreements that we set out to create a system that allowed for more competition in the league, with the goal being having 30 teams all in position, if well managed, to compete for championships. That's what we're seeing here. The goal is that market size essentially becomes irrelevant.'
Whether it's the Thunder or the Pacers, the NBA will have its seventh different champion in seven years. Eleven teams have made the finals since 2019; eight teams reached the finals in the 13 years before that.
It is fitting that this series will give us the first NBA Finals Game 7 since 2016. That night was the apotheosis of the superteam era. LeBron James won a title as the centerpiece of a constellation of stars for a second franchise. The Golden State Warriors, after they lost, added Kevin Durant to a 73-win team a few weeks later.
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The Thunder may well add a championship to a 68-win regular season, but they are about to enter a few years of hard financial and team-building questions. If they don't win, they can add months of soul searching to that list.
The Pacers, if they win, will be one of the most unlikely champions ever: a No. 4 seed that upset a 64-win team (Cleveland Cavaliers) and the country's biggest media market (New York Knicks) in successive rounds. If they beat Oklahoma City, it will be the biggest upset in finals history, as no team has ever won a ring with a bigger difference in regular-season victories (18).
This series was supposed to be a Thunder coronation; instead, it is the final chapter in one of the most dramatic playoffs ever. The on-court product has not suffered, and the basketball has been amazing. The league is in its parity era and loving it.
There are trade-offs, of course. Big markets and big fan bases still help business the most. The TV ratings for this series have been at record lows, and there has been plenty of clamoring for better production of the game itself. While the NFL can throw any two teams into its championship and get dozens of millions of people to care, other professional sports leagues can't. Dynasties built the NBA, and some argue are still best for it, but those are now harder to build and to maintain.
The league already has its next media-rights deal, with $76 billion accounted for, and next season will begin its arrangements with ABC/ESPN, NBC/Peacock and Amazon Prime Video. But the league needs to consider where it's going in the future, where ratings won't be the only thing that matters. The NBA will have to drive Peacock subscriptions and get people to pay for, potentially, a local league pass in their market. For that, it matters whether the neighborhood team is not only competitive but also has a chance to win big. A Thunder-Pacers finals sells hope.
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It also sells Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Tyrese Haliburton, and Jalen Williams and Pascal Siakam. Gilgeous-Alexander may win MVP and a title in the same season, which can turbocharge his profile. Haliburton can conclude a hero's tale, not just with his litany of game-winning daggers but by helping the Pacers notch their final two wins on a creaky calf.
The NBA needs a reliable cast of stars, now and certainly in a few years when James, Steph Curry and Durant retire. The next generation of stars isn't as big and isn't as culturally relevant. Time will tell whether that's for now or for good. Maybe Victor Wembanyama can be the next global pillar, but reaching that level seems harder. The monoculture is dead, and the league's media partners have focused their broadcasts and shows on drama instead of promotion.
On Sunday, though, what matters is the game, the Larry O'Brien Trophy and the team that will lift it at the end of the night.
This is what the NBA has been looking forward to, and now, it gets to revel in it.
(Top photo of Adam Silver: Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)