Shaquille O’Neal wants the hardcore NBA days to come back. Back in his time, teams challenged for the ball more often and had a knack to dunk more. However, the trend has fizzled off quite a bit and O’Neal is not happy about the league getting ‘soft.’ What’s more? He also knows exactly how this has happened!
Big Shaq recently appeared in an episode of ‘Big Pod With Shaq’. Speaking about the NBA teams taking more three-point shots, O’Neal expressed his frustrations about the defense getting involved significantly less with each passing game. And he blames Steph Curry for starting the trend.
“I think everybody’s looking at the same thing… And Steph Curry and those guys messed it up. Like I don’t mind Golden State back in the day shooting threes, but every team is not a three-point shooter, so why everybody has the same strategy, I think viewership will continue to go down unless we switch things back up.”
Shaq believes NBA viewership is down because everyone wants to shoot threes
— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) November 7, 2024
(🎥 @bigpodwithshaq / https://t.co/FRGChSptKO) pic.twitter.com/RDwog4gtAx
Well, Shaq is not entirely wrong here. Most of the teams did in fact, switch to three-point shooting that allegedly made the game ‘soft.’ On the other hand, the NBA ratings are at an all-time low now. Compared to previous years, the ratings have come down by nearly 50%. Meanwhile, the NBA Commissioner had a different take on the matter.
Adam Silver Contradicts Shaquille O’Neal’s Theory
Now, this is not the first time that Shaquille O’Neal has pointed fingers at the three peat shooting style. But as per the NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, the actual reason for low NBA ratings were entirely different. Speaking with Alex Schiffer of Front Office Sports, Silver mentioned that there were two major happenings this season that took away the focus from the league. One was the Yankees vs Dodgers’ World Series, and the other was the Presidential elections.
Adam Silver believes the World Series and the election played a role in the NBA’s low ratings to start the season
— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) November 19, 2024
“I think we’re just looking at a couple weeks of ratings, there’s always some unique things, this year we were up against a World Series … you had a presidential… pic.twitter.com/TDus1qVtll
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“This year we were up against the World Series, Dodgers-Yankees, two very attractive teams, they brought in a big audience. You had a presidential election which was commanding an enormous amount of attention,” said Silver.
He also stated that the low ratings were just for a couple of weeks, and there were no major changes in viewership otherwise. Thus, with the NBA ratings going through a temporary lean phase, it remains to be seen what happens next.
