Why the NBA Feels Broken—and Why the League Can’t Fix It
5/29/202658 min
The NBA’s vibes have been unusually awful recently. There has been widespread hand-wringing about the homogenization of modern offenses and the league’s notoriously weak regular-season TV ratings. A tanking crisis saw about a third of teams purposely try to lose games in a race to secure the top pick in the 2026 draft. A barrage of gambling scandals took out a head coach and several players. And the playoffs have brought relentless complaining from fans about foul-baiting and flopping, tactics that have often been rewarded by the referees.At the center of this is Adam Silver, who was once the most popular and celebrated commissioner in all of sports. In recent years, though, his reputation has soured. Fans have begun to wonder: Why isn’t he addressing the problems that everyone else seems to see? Is the right guy running the league?In a profile of Silver for The Atlantic, the journalist Tim Alberta wrote, “Companies take on the personality of their leader.” Today, Alberta joins Derek to talk about the state of the modern NBA, whether the league has optimized the fun out of basketball, and what the impact is when a sport stops being treated like a game that exists to remind people that there is more to life than work and money. Visit https://www.uber.com/safety to learn more. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: Tim AlbertaProducer: Chris SuttonAdditional Production Support: Ben GlicksmanLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:00
A rich life isn't a straight line to a destination on the horizon. Sometimes it takes an unexpected turn, with detours, new possibilities- Cheers. And even another passenger. Woo! Or three. And with 100 years of navigating ups and downs, you can count on Edward Jones to help guide you through it all, because life is a winding path made rich by the people you walk it with. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones, member SIPC.
Derek Thompson· Host0:30
[percussive music] Today, what's the matter with the NBA? Let's start here. The NBA is incredibly blessed. In the last 12 years, the average value of an NBA team has not doubled, it has not tripled, it's grown by a factor of about seven. In an age when entertainment analysts predicted the death of cable, the league still signed a TV deal worth nearly $80 billion. The NBA's talent pool is more international than football. Its most popular players, including LeBron James and Steph Curry, are more famous than anybody in hockey or baseball. The NBA is richer and more talented than ever. So why are NBA fans so mad about the sport? The vibes around basketball in the last few years, the last few months in particular, have been unusually awful, even for a sport whose fans have always loved to complain. This year kicked off with Pablo Torre's Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation