It might not seem like a big deal to the average fan, but it’s signaling something far worse. The Larry O’Brien Trophy decal missing from the court during the NBA Finals was just the final nail in the coffin for the lifeless presentation brought to you by the Worldwide Leader. And things only got worse when they superimposed graphics onto the court instead.
Bomani Jones argued on his The Right Time podcast that this isn’t really about the missing trophy decal itself. It’s about how ESPN’s presentation of the NBA Finals has made the games feel like just any other matchup instead of something that should feel monumental.
Jones pointed out something many might not realize: if the people presenting the event don’t make it feel like a big deal, then the audience won’t believe it’s a big deal.
Presentation matters. A lot.
And the ex-ESPNer laid much of the blame on the network’s approach to presenting the NBA, arguing that its coverage treats basketball like football, and it just doesn’t work.
“One of my chief criticisms of ESPN’s coverage of the NBA is that they treat the NBA like the NFL,” Jones said. “You can’t cover it the same way. People don’t want the breakdowns of strategic minutia in basketball the way that they want them in football, right? Basketball’s a little more loosey-goosey.. It’s a little bit more free. That’s how people more likely want to talk about it. You can’t do quick bullet-point discussions in the way that ESPN does.
“But what’s so interesting about that, to me, is the part that you can treat like football is making the games feel like big deals. And that’s the part that they don’t do. That’s the part that the league does not do. So when you come out here and you don’t have any signage on the court to indicate that it’s the NBA Finals, it already looks like a goddamn AAU tournament with the coaches wearing quarter-zips, and anybody wearing any old jersey that was clean. You can’t tell who the home team was just by looking on the floor. You gotta make this feel like something.”
While the missing trophy decal and muted presentation may seem small, they contribute to an overall feeling that the NBA Finals lack the grandeur they deserve. Presentation plays a crucial role in making sports moments feel important to viewers. ESPN’s approach, intentional or not, risks diminishing the spectacle that should surround the league’s biggest stage.
“And the part that people mess up on, and I think that this is somewhat part and parcel to the issue we’re discussing here,” Jones continued. “You’ll hear people talking about sports. That it’s entertainment. And that is not true. Sports is entertaining, but it is far more significant to people than entertainment. Yeah, there’s an occasional movie franchise that gets people lining up at night and they talk about it for days… but movies doesn’t mean the same thing to people. It doesn’t pass down through families in that way. It doesn’t transcend generations in that way.
“Sports are entertaining, not entertainment. Because the problem is if you treat sports like entertainment, then sports gets treated like the rest of entertainment right now, which is something that is not intended to be momentous, something that is not intended to be monumental, but simply something intended to occupy your time and attention. Just something for you to watch, not something for you to feel. Not something that captivates you, just something to occupy you. That is how entertainment is treated right now. You don’t want sports to be that. You don’t want to be so cynical to strip away all the larger things and act like it doesn’t matter.”
It does. It matters.
“Play up the pageantry,” Jones adds. “Play up the stuff around it. An audience needs it.”
ABC and ESPN need to do a better job telling the story from the jump. And as Jones says, treating the NBA like the NFL just doesn’t work. That’s why the Finals end up feeling smaller than they should.