Small Ratings Don’t Hurt Big Picture

A not-so-funny thing happened when the NBA canceled last season’s first three months with a lockout. It wasn’t the money the teams and players lost. It was the question they posed in the minds of their fans:

“What if there were no NBA in November, December and January?”

When the answer came back, “No biggie,” they were in trouble.

Now they’re back to an 82-game season, without Michael Jordan, in uniform, anyway, and--Surprise!-- attendance is soft, NBC’s ratings are off almost 20% and TNT’s almost 30%.

“When they came back last year, they came back to a shortened season that was a sprint to the playoffs,” says Rick Burton, director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon’s business school.

“And our first reaction was, ‘Wow, people still love basketball, look at this, business as usual!’

“I think now in retrospect, it might be, when we had to play a full 82-game season, that maybe the season’s too long. Maybe the residual effect of the lockout stirred up some emotions in some people. Maybe tickets cost too much. Maybe the loss of Jordan is a lot.”

The NBA was on a Jordan-induced high in the ‘90s and must level off at a more realistic level in the ‘00s, surrendering its precious distinction as the hot league that kept gaining ratings while others’ were fraying, or diving.

Not that anyone is in actual trouble, unless you’re a fan who would like to take a family of four to a game for less than $500. Or as David Stern told the San Francisco Chronicle’s Chuck Nevius:

“I am concerned about the mortgage you have to take out on your house to afford season tickets.”

Stern, is, of course, all over the Bay Area, explaining away the present in the sure knowledge a Better Tomorrow is coming. The NBA just held its first “technology summit” here, full of digitized plans to market itself online and exploit its popularity overseas. Forget about international play: who cares about playing abroad when you can stay here and harvest their francs, pesetas, lire and yen?

Not that it will be critical money for the league, either.

In this era of astronomic TV rights fees, the NBA’s business end is secure. Baseball, which may be heading for another labor war, just interrupted a nasty court fight with ESPN to sign a big extension with the cable network. The NCAA basketball tournament, which lost more than 25% of its ratings in the ‘90s, signed a fat extension with CBS. When the NBA’s deals are up in two years, ratings should have leveled off (since they can’t get much lower, can they?) and it’ll be Jackpot City.

“It’s one of the reasons I feel pretty good about the future of the professional leagues,” says Neal Pilson, the former head of CBS Sports and now a marketing consultant.

“It is that, the issue is not any longer ratings. Obviously they are part of the story, people talk about them, but the NFL got a huge increase with a ratings decline. The NCAA got a huge increase with a ratings decline. Hockey got a huge increase and their ratings declined. And the World Series hasn’t exactly been performing that well and yet the baseball money continues to go up.

“That’s because people in the business realize it isn’t ratings, it’s assets. It is strategic acquisition and the element of scarcity. When you get all finished, there’s only one NFL, only one NBA and if you have it, your competitors don’t have it. That becomes more important as you move to the 1,500-channel universe. Relatively speaking, major sports properties are going to get more valuable in the 21st century because they differentiate one carrier from its competition.”

Nevertheless, the sight of empty section upon empty section has had a salutary effect, prompting the league to mandate a (token?) number of low-priced seats held back for day-of-the-game sale and (lame?) rules changes to enhance scoring.

NBC is so eager, it’s sticking its mikes into timeout huddles and wiring up players and coaches in today’s All-Star Game, perhaps on the theory it can’t get in too much trouble with Charles Barkley retired.

What’s next, Ahmad Rashad running out to the free-throw line to get Shaquille O’Neal’s thoughts, after he misses the first of two?

The NBA, it needs you back fast.

FACES AND FIGURES

Miami Coach Pat Riley, bemoaning his team’s lack of spirit: “I noticed the other night, Voshon Lenard made a jumper to win the game against Washington and there was nothing. He just walks back to the bench and there might be a high-five. We have gotten to the point where the expectation to win is so high that when we win, it’s nothing special . . . never good enough. The only thing we can do is fail. It felt the same way for me in Los Angeles and New York. The only thing you can do is win and when you win, you don’t get any credit and get criticized. And when you lose, it’s, ‘Oh my God, you’re going to be sent off to Afghanistan!’ And our players have to learn to deal with it, the swirl of second-guessing, trade rumors and all this, and get some life back into their game and approach.” What Riley means is: Just because I tried to trade most of them and it got in the papers is no reason for them to give up.

Some incarnations, it goes like that: Boston’s Rick Pitino, who traded Ron Mercer last summer for Danny Fortson, traded Fortson to Toronto last week, caught flak for it in the local papers--then had to take Fortson back when Alvin Williams failed his physical. In the meantime, Fortson told Toronto writers that in Boston, “the ship is kind of sinking pretty fast.” . . . And Pitino, pressed for a commitment on Antoine Walker: “Without a shadow of a doubt, on Feb. 25, Antoine Walker will be a Celtic. He will be a Celtic for the whole year.” What Pitino means is: As soon as summer comes and Walker’s salary-cap restrictions are off, it’s him or me.

Joe Kleine, on deciding to play another season in Portland: “It’s pretty simple. I was sitting at home at the end of August and somebody called me up and said, ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’ I said, ‘I do.’ And they said, ‘Is that your final answer?’ I said, ‘Let me call my lifeline.’ So I called Dana [his wife] and she said, ‘If you don’t take it, I’ll kill you.’ ” . . . One born every minute: Phoenix President Jerry Colangelo recently noted, “I hate to use the term ‘stuck.’ . . . If you are obligated to certain people, you extract what you can.” Those people are thought to include Tom Gugliotta, making $9.3 million and averaging a career-low 13.2 points, and Luc Longley, making

$5.2 million and averaging 6.5.

Portland’s Scottie Pippen, averaging 12.7 points, on not making the all-star team: “You can’t tell me that Utah deserves to have two players more than us when we have the best record in the league. And it’s an insult to me, not to put me on the all-star team. I guess I should have settled for sixth place [Houston’s standing in its division] and scored more. If you want me to score 20 points a night, I can do that.” In case you were wondering, Pippen averaged 14.5 in Houston last season. . . . Orlando Coach Doc Rivers on Dennis Rodman’s latest comeback: “Running from nightclub to nightclub, I’m sure he got himself in wonderful condition.”