The NBA has an advertising problem, and it’s entirely of its own making. Game 1 of the NBA Finals was a thriller featuring yet another improbable Tyrese Haliburton game winner, but there was one problem: if you were just shown a random clip of the game, you’d never know you were watching the Finals. No trophy decal at center court, no “NBA Finals” logo anywhere ... heck, even the ESPN scorecard didn’t mentions the Finals. The only sign was the occasional digital pop-up on the scorers table.
The NBA Finals look like a regular season game in January. ESPN and the NBA have to do better.https://t.co/Amlv4uCHrY
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) June 6, 2025
After “hearing” the backlash after game one, the NBA/ESPN responded with some truly pathetic digital Larry O’Brian trophies on the Thunder’s court in Game 2. Not only were they small and glitchy but also poorly placed, plus it goes without saying that they would have done nothing for the fans soaking up the atmosphere in the arena.
There are now NBA Finals (digital) trophies showing on the court for the ESPN on ABC broadcast of Pacers-Thunder Game 2. https://t.co/aroKp9NPNY pic.twitter.com/Cdpssa5Rvc
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) June 9, 2025
I’ll be honest, if the Spurs were in these Finals, I’d be insulted. Some may recall back in the 2000’s, there was a giant Larry O’Brian trophy at center court. There was never any doubt what you were watching, and the atmosphere matched the moment.
NBAE via Getty Images
By 2014, the NBA had removed the stick-on trophy decal because it was deemed slippery and a safety hazard, but you still knew this was the Finals due to the giant, scripted “The Finals” logo on each side of the court. Not quite the same, but it still gave the atmosphere a certain aura that differentiated it from the regular season and rest of the playoffs.
Surely that decal covers little enough surface area that it isn’t too slippery, but for whatever reason, it too went away after the 2022 NBA Finals. Adam Silver finally addressed the backlash over the weekend and implied they will look into future improvements, but his wording didn’t instill a lot of confidence.
“Maybe there’s a way around it,” (Silver) told a small group of reporters during an NBA Cares charity event at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Oklahoma County. “To be honest, I hadn’t thought all that much about it until I (saw) it (on social media). I’m nostalgic, as well, for certain things. And also, I think for a media-driven culture, whether it’s people watching live or seeing those images on social media, it’s nice when you’re looking back on highlights and they stand out because you see that trophy logo or some other indication that it’s a special event. So, we’ll look at it.”
That quote that “he hadn’t thought much about it” is where the problem lies, especially when you consider how much time, effort and money has been put into his mostly-meaningless pet project: the In-Season Tournament. Alternate uniforms and entirely new courts (some serious eye sores) complete with a massive trophy at center court has led to a spectacle that, from an advertising standpoint, puts the Finals to shame, even though not everyone has gotten behind it. Here is Silver’s justification for the difference in representation:
“We have the opportunity to plan well in advance and to design a specific neutral court for a Cup championship game, and the teams design their own Cup courts,” commissioner Adam Silver said Friday. “And it actually takes a significant amount of time to create new courts in terms of how they’re painted, et cetera.”
That makes sense, but here’s the thing: players have also complained about how slippery the painted courts are. Is that not a safety hazard? If not, then what would be so hard about taking a blank space on the two Finals teams’ courts, painting and sealing “The Finals” or trophy on it, then replacing that part of the court by next season? As I heard Brian Scalabrine suggest on the radio this morning, they could then sell or mount that peace of court, and it would be pennies out of the team or NBA’s pocket to replace — certainly much less than those entire tournament courts.
Another option would be to make the tournament courts convertible between the In-Season Tournament and Larry O’Brian trophy, and it doesn’t have to be every team. Even if the league waited until the All-Star break to get a general idea of which teams could reasonably make the finals, that would leave plenty of time to start making adjustments to the tournament courts for the finals. (Some may be an eye sore, but they would be more than nothing at this point.)
Silver said in the same interview that his goal is to make the market size of the teams irrelevant, which I’m sure Spurs fans appreciate after essentially getting scolded by David Stern for being good during their dynastic run. In a way, that goal is being achieved with a guaranteed 7th straight different champion this season — not all of whom have been big markets — but Game 1 of OKC vs. Indiana was the least watched finals game since 1988 outside of the awkward, fan-less COVID Finals.
Obviously, there’s still a ways to go in getting big market fans to tune it to watch heartland teams, but the least the NBA can do is meet them halfway and make it feel like they’re watching THE NBA Finals. We’ll see if there’s any improvement in Indiana for games 3 and 4 and when they inevitable return to OKC for Game 5 but right now, it just feels like any other game.