Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
In the early 1980’s, the NBA’s slogan was “NBA action. It’s fantastic!”
The national television commercial showed early 1980’s basketball stars Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and Julius “Dr. J” Erving in action. Mixed in among the highlights were happy NBA fans standing, cheering, waving towels, and whooping it up at a pro basketball game.
The slogan was a little bit cheesy, but it worked.
It helped to re-focus the public’s attention on the influx of some very talented younger players coming into the league back in the early 1980’s. After Michael Jordan joined the league in 1984, the NBA’s popularity in America and worldwide began to soar.
So did the players’ salaries and the owners’ value of their NBA franchises.
The decade of the 1970’s in the National Basketball Association was not very good for the sport. In most markets, sellouts were rare. Ticket prices were quite affordable, too.
I still have a 1976 ticket stub from a Houston Rockets basketball game played at the Summit. It cost $4.50 for a good seat in the lower promenade section of the arena which has now become home to Joel Osteen’s church.
Back in the 1970’s, the NBA struggled to find a national television partner (CBS). The NBA’s television ratings were so weak that the network tape-delayed Friday night playoff games and ran them after the local news at 10:30PM Central time. It didn’t help that pro basketball (the NBA and its competitor American Basketball Association) was losing fans as many talented players developed serious drug abuse issues and a recession deepened.
Such was the life for pro basketball players in an 82-game regular season in the 1970’s. Teams traveled via commercial airlines and bus to games and stayed in mid-level hotels by night.
In the 1970’s, NBA player salaries were still high compared those of the average American worker. Boston Celtics legend John “Hondo” Havlicek was one of NBA’s highest paid stars at $250,000 in 1977. The NBA’s average salary for players that year was about $130,000.
My first full-time job coming out of college in 1977 came with a salary of around $12,000 per year. Your brown-bag toting rookie office nerd was making about 10% of an NBA player’s salary.
Times have changed – at least for professional basketball players!
In 2022, one source indicated that the average college graduate was being offered a job paying about $55,000 per year. That includes all majors – from the engineers down to the history majors. It equates to about a 4x rise from my starting salary 46 years ago in 1977.
Last year, the average NBA player’s salary jumped to a whopping $9.6 million. That is a 73x increase from 1977!
Perhaps I should have worked a little harder on my defense and vertical jump during high school basketball season instead of my math, science, and English classes!
Thanks to increased bidding competition for the television rights for NBA basketball games from national cable outlets like ESPN, Turner Network Television, and others, the league’s team owners and the players have been sharing in a fast-growing pool of money.
Even though television viewership for the NBA’s regular season and playoff games seems range-bound, every new television deal adds more money to the pot for team owners and players to share together.
Teams now have their own private aircraft to fly players and coaches to out-of-town games. They stay in the most exclusive hotels. A training staff is always available to keep these multi-millionaires able to lace up their sneakers for as many of their 82-game regular schedule as possible.
Life is quite good for today’s NBA players, indeed!
So, why are so many of them getting angry?
Anyone who has ever attended or watched any sporting event in Philadelphia will tell you that the opposing team’s players (heck, even the home team’s players) are subjected to taunting and vulgarity from the Philly fans. This “tradition” has been going on for decades. As long as the players are not threatened or harmed, it is ugly but generally harmless.
Other NBA cities (particularly in the northeast and, of all places, Salt Lake City, Utah) have notoriously vocal and quite excitable fans.
I have noticed a different trend recently.
NBA players are increasingly stopping play on the basketball court, grabbing a referee, and pointing-out an obnoxious fan. The player asks the referee and arena security to eject the paying customer for hurling words which the basketball player may find offensive.
This is laughable.
Has anyone heard the back-and-forth taunts and personal insults which the players hurl at each other on the basketball court? The players may claim solidarity off the hardwood, but the trash talking which happens on NBA basketball courts are Rated X every night.
Courtside seats for attending an NBA game in 2023 can cost up to and more than $1,000 apiece – per game! Imagine being told to leave those seats just because you insulted one of the players.
Though it seems a bit harsh, the NBA home arenas usually allow such to happen. This is the warning given to unruly fans by the home arena of the Houston Rockets:
“Toyota Center may refuse admission to, or eject, any Holder, without refund, who is deemed to be disorderly or who fails to comply with the terms of this license or any and all security measures.”
In Orlando, Florida, Washington Wizards guard Bradley Beal (who earns $43 million/year or $524,000 per game) was involved in an incident involving a couple of local fans earlier this month.
Following the Wizards’ game against the Orlando Magic, Bradley Beal took offense as a local fan yelled (with an expletive to end the comment) that Washington’s loss had just cost the man $1,300. The Wizards’ guard (one of the ten highest paid players in the NBA) turned and walked toward the man and his friend. Bradley Beal swatted the hat off the head of the man’s friend and also struck his head.
As you probably guessed, both sides are getting lawyered-up for a possible tangle in the Orlando court system.
My Mom used to say, “Two wrongs don’t make a right, son”. Indeed.
LeBron James is one of the most loved and hated players in NBA history. Once his playing days are finished, he could make millions more on the professional wrestling circuit based on the positive and negative crowd reactions he receives in arenas around the NBA.
In 2021, James asked the arena security to escort a man and woman out of their expensive courtside seats in Indianapolis during a Pacers home game. The couple was apparently getting a bit too vocal with their dislike for LeBron. So, he stopped the game and pointed out the offending parties. The two fans were escorted out of the arena while being loudly cheered by the Pacers’ home crowd.
Whatever happened to that old saying about “Sticks and stones” these days?
In 2023, the NBA averages nearly 18,000 fans in attendance at each game played nightly. That equates to 96% of all NBA tickets being sold for every game during the 82-game regular season.
Prices for NBA tickets vary widely from team to team. If you attend an Orlando Magic game, it will cost an average (from courtside to the upper deck cheap seats) of $100 per home game. In Los Angeles, you will be asked to dole-out over $500 per ticket just to watch LeBron James and the Lakers play a home game.
That’s why I roll my eyes thinking about how silly the NBA players seem to be acting recently with regard to fan interactions.
Without such a large in-person paid gate for every game plus the two million fans watching a nationally televised NBA game at home on cable television, the value of franchises and player salaries would be much lower.
Financially speaking, it has never been better for NBA owners and the players. As long as the television networks continue to bid-up the broadcast rights, the outlook is terrific.
Remember this. Just 40 years ago, the average NBA team struggled to break even financially and sell more than half of their tickets for a home game. Just one NBA game was being nationally televised each week of the regular season.
Instead of stopping the basketball game to get a few inebriated foul-mouthed fans tossed from their $1,000 courtside seats, perhaps more of today’s NBA players should concentrate on playing four quarters of basketball and be thankful that so many people will show up to watch.
Wouldn’t it be great if one of the home team’s basketball players grabbed a microphone after the game and thanked all of the fans in the arena and those watching at home for their support?
Yeah, right! You can forget about that in 2023.
Today’s NBA has become “FAN-TOSS-TIC!”