NBA Commissioner Adam Silver playfully zinged Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal for saying the “boring” quality of play in the league is weighing on TV ratings.
“There was so much diversity in Shaqi’s game, I can’t believe he said that,” Silver cracked during an appearance Wednesday at the Paley Center for Media‘s International Council Summit.
On a recent episode of The Big Podcast with Shaq, the host said TV ratings this season have declined “because we’re looking at the same thing. Everybody is running the same plays.” Golden State Warriors shooter Steph Curry, he added, “and those guys messed it up. I don’t mind Golden State back in the day shooting threes, but every team isn’t a 3-point shooter. So why [does] everybody have the same strategy? I think it makes the game boring.”
After his jibe about the bruising, low-post style of O’Neal, who stands 7-foot-1 and weighed about 330 pounds in his playing days, Silver turned more reflective. “I respect his opinion,” he said. “I think that we pay a lot of attention to what we see in our game. … Sometimes there’s more appreciation for a 12-foot jumpshot than a 30-foot jumpshot. When Shaq played, it was the exact opposite,” with critics complaining, “‘There’s not enough variation in your game – it’s all about dunking.’”
Today, he continued, “people say it’s all about these highly skilled shooters. … We’ve moved the 3-point line before back a little to make 3-point shooting more difficult. We could do that again. I’m not saying that’s on the table. This is a good opportunity this season as we’re about to enter into three 11-year television deals to step back and study the game a bit. … Our game has never been more popular. I’m not saying there aren’t things we could do. … There is something to what he’s saying. No one would want to see every team play the same offense.”
Warner Bros. Discovery will surrender rights to the NBA at the end of the current season, unless the company’s pending lawsuit against the league over the process of negotiating media rights is successful. Aryeh Bourkoff, a prominent media banker and moderator of the Paley session with Silver, did not ask Silver about the WBD case. He did ask the commissioner, not surprisingly, about the three megadeals with Disney-ESPN, NBCUniversal and Amazon Prime Video. The three pacts are valued at nearly three times the amount of the current deals with Disney and WBD, whose Turner Sports has carried NBA games for nearly four decades.
“We want to make sure the game is accessible,” Silver said, particularly given its ongoing global aspirations. Streaming (and here Silver took care to shout out all three of the league’s new partners equally and not just pure streamer Amazon) also enables “a bevy” of programming options. He said plans the league is drawing up call for alternate telecasts that are “like the Mannigcast on steroids.”
