We hate to beat a dead horse, but … wait, who are we kidding?! We love to beat dead horses on Tuesday Teasings! Not literally, of course, as we love animals, and horses are amazingly beautiful and strong creatures in nature. We need a new phrase … we hate to stomp on a dead spider, but we’re going to anyway—and yes, we know spiders do us lots of favors. We just don’t want them inside our houses. Fair enough?

Yes! The NBA Finals went to a Game 7, both predictably (TV revenue) and surprisingly (sabermetrically), and lo and behold, it was the worst-rated Game 7 on television—ever (9.3% market share, 16.35M viewers). What is amusing is that Game 7 on Sunday night basically doubled the viewership from Game 1-6 while still finishing way behind the prior record holder for Worst Game 7 TV Ratings Ever (Game 7, 2005 Finals). Ouch.

That Game 7 was a nadir for the NBA in terms of defensive bludgeoning, between the defending champion Detroit Pistons and the dynastic San Antonio Spurs. We remember watching the game on TV while in Cambria-by-the-Sea, California, vacationing with our then-honeybunny, who had no interest in sports whatsoever. The Spurs won, 81-74, in a horribly ugly game that left her wondering why we cared to view it.

See the point? No one really wanted to watch the Indiana Pacers and the Oklahoma City Thunder, and as a result, the overall Finals were one of the worst-rated television matchups in league history (5.4% average)—only the 2020 Finals (4.0) and the 2021 Finals (5.2) rated lower, and if not for the seventh game, this 2025 version would have been right down there even lower. Remember, 2020 was the Covid-delayed Finals, too.

That matchup between the Miami Heat and Los Angeles Lakers was played in early October, right up against college football, the MLB playoffs, and the NFL—so it’s hard to consider that seriously. Normally a matchup with those two TV markets would have been much higher. So, in essence, these were the second-worst TV ratings ever for the NBA Finals, saved only by the fact the series went seven games, basically.

Without the improved Game 7 ratings, these series were have posted an ratings average under 5.0 percent market share since no individual game topped that number through the first six contests. While this was to be expected somewhat due to the small TV markets for Indianapolis (25th) and OKC (47th), it also shows a problem the NBA has in general: the five worst-rated Finals on TV have all come this decade. That’s right.

Perhaps this is why the NBA started the inane NBA Cup a few years ago, to stir up interest in the game that is clearly not that big of a deal to most American TV watchers, even among sports fans. Basketball has global appeal as we saw in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, but the NBA does not even have domestic appeal. This is a problem for the league, and we’re not going to pretend we have the answer here at all.

Because we do not. We honestly haven’t watched much NBA on TV since the mid-1990s, because we felt even then it was contrived, manipulated, and rigged. We have favorite players, for sure, but we never see pro basketball as must-watch television. At most, we might tune in during the last five minutes to see some action, but rarely do we watch a game from the tip off to the final buzzer, unless we’re stuck with family.

However, these low TV ratings are hurting the league’s value and its prestige among sports. The NFL is still king, of course, but the NBA is in a battle with MLB for second place in people’s TV-viewing hearts, and at this pace, it’s not doing itself any favors. Of course, neither is MLB with its own top-TV market emphasis on spenders, winners, and (often) cheaters. It will be interesting to see where this rivalry stands in the year 2030.