Then Rudy Gobert tested positive for coronavirus and the league disappeared from TV sets for nearly five months. Through incredible effort, Adam Silver and company allowed the show to go on. In interviews leading up to the bubble opener, Silver conveyed a sense that America was desperate for this sort of entertainment. “For the country, it will be respite from enormous difficulties people are dealing with in their lives right now.” That’s a commissioner’s gloss, but it didn’t sound so far-fetched. Maybe basketball’s return could be this big national moment, one might have thought. People had been starved for entertainment. The novelty that was “the bubble” received a ton of sports media coverage. It would have made sense if the NBA, by returning through a logistical miracle, resonated in a way not seen since Michael Jordan.
Instead, very few watched. The bubble viewership
has been even lower than the NBA’s pre-COVID averages in this ratings disaster of a season, with the NBA’s most-watched game of last week trailing golf, NASCAR and wrestling. This, despite an incredible run of exciting games in Orlando. So far, the NBA built it but very few came.