IMO, the real issue with basketball right now is that it has an efficiency problem. Everyone is trying to make everything about basketball as efficient as possible. Its taken some of the flair away from the sport for some people, and those people then need supporting data to help back up their overall claim.
NBA ratings are down because watching basketball on a day-to-day basis is a convoluted mess, and the league has no incentive to fix it because basketball is a volume sport as
pmatic
always says. I have League Pass and its not what it could be. Too many blackout games, which are the premier games. Nothing to do with the sport itself IMO.