American TV-Watchers To Hockey Critics: "We Don't Care About The NBA, Either"

The NHL has a perfectly legitimate excuse for sucking in American TV ratings: very few people, per capita, play hockey in the US. It's not something your average middle- or lower-class kid plays in his/her free time. Basketball, on the other hand, has no such excuse. Everybody and their mother plays basketball in the US, and their mother can probably dunk on you. Hard.

So please explain this: the NBA Finals dropped 19 percent in TV ratings from the previous year. Even the participation of one of the greatest young players in the history of the league couldn't stop the heavy slide for a league that's been struggling for legitimacy since Michael Jordan retired (the first time).

Have you seen an NBA game recently? The final score is 180-176 and players literally stand still when they don't have the ball. Hockey columnists whine about the scores of NHL games being too low, but it's even worse when the scores of a sport start getting too high. Nobody takes it seriously anymore. Everybody understands that hockey is still a really tough sport---they just don't want to watch it on TV. Basketball, at least professional basketball, is now ridiculed for being far too easy and people apparently don't want to watch that anymore, either.

And you really have to feel sorry for LeBron James and company. Game 1 of the NBA Finals had to compete with a rerun of CSI in the same timeslot. That's just damn unfair.