It is no secret that the quality of play and the overall product which has been televised this season has been subpar. A myriad of problems can explain for this. In my own opinion, every season the NBA regular seasons feels less and less important. When the playoffs come around the level of play is almost unrecognisable to the the basketball we had just spent the last 6 months watching. To date, I never really thought the problems which have plaque the leagues product would impact the upcoming TV rights negations (and frankly speaking what I am about to say problems still wont impact these negotiations). However, tonight I painfully watched two blowouts which were nationally televised on ESPN (thank god for trashy league pass so I could watch another game on the desktop). Both games were over seemingly at the first TV timeout. The only hope of the NBA making significant changes to the structure of the regular season is if the new TV rights deals is a major disappointment from the NBAs side. A new deal which comes in at a lower value than currently projected/expected may finally give the owners and commissioner the kick in the butt they need to make some drastic changes to an outdated regular season structure which includes too many, meaningless, games.
Again, the likely outcome is nothing changes. Media companies will fight each other and ultimately have to pay what the NBA demands to secure the rights and we will continue to watch games from October-April which mean less and less as the seasons go by.
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