Shaq Says The NBA Is Unpopular Because 'Everybody Is Soft," Blames Steph Curry
The decline of the NBA in 2024 has become undeniable, even for its most hardened fans. Ratings are catastrophically low, down nearly 50 percent from prior years. The midseason NBA Cup has been a failure, with little interest, open seats, and no ratings boost.
Retired legend and current commentator Shaquille O'Neal has some thoughts as to what's behind the NBA's significant problems. And he blames one of the league's biggest stars.
On his "Big Pod With Shaq" show, he explained one of his theories: that fans are bored of watching the same style over and over again on every team. As an example, he referenced that every team has one strategy in the modern game: to shoot as many three pointers as possible.
"I think everybody's looking at the same thing," Shaq said. "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."
He also said that the league is "soft," because everybody's doing the same thing. In response to a question, Shaq said "it's soft" and "it drives me f***** crazy."
Shaquille O'Neal. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images for Carnival Cruise Line)
Shaq Has A Point, But It's Worse Than That For The NBA
Yes, the league has changed for the worse. Yes, the "hoist up a three-pointer no matter what" strategy is boring, takes defense out of the game, and gets extremely repetitive. Even if it makes more sense from an expected scoring perspective.
But it's also that the NBA told half the country that it doesn't want them watching. What did they expect would happen as a result?
Gregg Popovich spends much of his time talking about far-left politics. So does Steve Kerr. The star players, at least the few that remain, have openly talked about their support for left-wing ideology. The Black Lives Matter movement became the core focus of the league in 2020 and beyond. That's fine, players can support whoever and whatever they want. But there are going to be people turned off by it, whether that's on the right in this case, or the left in others.
What the NBA fundamentally didn't and doesn't understand is that most sports fans lean right. So their target audience was turned off by politics, and the modern game has given them no reason to come back. It's all of it.
There are no new stars in the NBA, because the only skill that matters is three pointers, and three-point shooters, outside of Curry, aren't really that fun to watch. The league is in serious trouble, and it has no one else to blame but itself. And the movement that realized after decades of basketball that three points are worth more than two.