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Comment by Mistletoe | Hacker News Reader

Between all these recent gambling stories with coaches and players and the Kawhi thing I think I’m done with the NBA. The NBA’s gambling push has done nothing but gross me out. Greed unbridled. They saw the 1919 World Series and said “Let’s bet on this shit.”

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This plus a lot of the soft greed. The insistence on a foul-centric game that leads to over 50% longer games, the ridiculous lack of investment on its own broadcast infra, the refusal to shorten the season (which is the longest in pro sports, longer than baseball's season, despite being less than half the games), and the consultant-driven management decisions - I have so much contempt for Adam Silver for making me hate the game I love most.

Everything Silver did grew revenue fourfold. By every metric, he’s a good commissioner. And yet I don’t know a single person in real life who actually likes the NBA. People I talk to find the NBA anywhere from inaccessible to an outright turnoff, due to load management (and player pay), tanking, a glacial pace of play, and so on. And so the only way I can engage the game is by listening to podcasts about it. Podcasts that now belch gambling ads at me constantly.

That is _nuts_ that the basketball season is longer than the MLB season. I never would have guessed that.

Let's go Jays! Looking forward to this World Series.

Also not a fan of the constant inundation with gambling ads even if they have literally no interest to me. Just seems like a net negative for a society that realized cigarette ads are bad, but can't seem to figure that out for alcohol or gambling.

At least the public education campaigns have started earlier, I definitely see ads talking about where to get help if you're having an issue fairly frequently.

Public education is one thing. But kids aren't protected from the ads and can't even have reasonable discussions about it. They're just being brainwashed around it. They see superstars and celebrities endorsing it all. Then all the language around it is "play" and "game" and "fun" and "win" which has very specific appeal to children. The prominence also makes it seem vetted and okay in a kids eyes (if it were bad, it wouldn't be in these places). I'd legitimately rather my kids see ads for smoking cigarettes. The conversations to be had around it are much much easier. Gambling and other psychological addictions are tougher to convey, but potentially very damaging nonetheless.

I understand, and am against the constant advertising of it.

But it's also important to remember just how successful the smoking psa campaign has been. Especially given the cost! Rates have fallen dramatically, just by telling people to "watch out!" in public spaces that reach young folks ears.

I don't think it's easy to attribute it to any specific part of the 'campaign' -- it's multifaceted. Making it illegal to smoke in public spaces may be the single most important part of reducing smoking in subsequent generations. There's also taxes. And removing it from media (we hardly see people smoke on camera unless it's for a 'period piece'). And just straight up treating it like a health issue.

We could be doing equivalent things for gambling (and we have in the past) so this erosion will have consequences for decades.

Where is it illegal to smoke in public spaces?

NYers are out here smokin' bogeys and joints on our streets all day, and when I went to Florida the tables had ashtrays, even occasionally inside. Certainly was the same in Lisbon and France.

Also, taxes have increased on gambling recently, although prediction markets appear to be a loophole.

And I dunno, I guess people are gambling on the screen a lot but I completely missed it. I'm not sure, do people think gambling is cool? I definitely missed that one. But I can see people getting hooked on the fun part if that high is their thing

I believe, although I'm not going to look it up for you, that the public health campaign against smoking is well documented as exceedingly effective for dollars spent. But hey, in today's day and age, we all gotta do our own research!

I stopped watching a couple of years ago but I assume they're still doing this: dealing out every game to a different network. You needed like 4 sports subscriptions just to be able to watch the season, sometimes even to watch the championship. For me that was the bridge too far.

NFL isn't far behind

NFL Network, ESPN, Prime, Peacock, YouTube...

All that mainly because some streaming services are willing to pay a more competitive amount of money for single (albeit national) weekly game broadcasts to sweeten their offering and get more subscribers.

Of course the NFL isn't gonna turn down $1B per year from Amazon for TNF. They get ~$2B from CBS and Fox each for the combined 10 Sunday games, then another couple billion from NBC for one Sunday night game, and another couple billion from ESPN for Monday night.

I think it's unlikely a single broadcaster would spend $12+B/year for exclusive rights to all games.

A large portion of NFL games can be viewed on network TV. The same cannot be said for the NBA.

"for now" seems like a reasonable thing to add to that sentence.

The number of games you can watch on network TV is decreasing slowly but steadily.

There was over 90 free throws shot in 1 game yesterday

It was crazy

> which is the longest in pro sports, longer than baseball's season, despite being less than half the games

You are clearly referring to calendar time, in which case the NHL season is longer

This interview with a former Turkish NBA player who protested things happening in China with simple statements on his shoes convinced me the NBA has no morals whatsoever.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3LUPh7waoWtydoiwjEgP16?si=-...

Eh, even as a Celtics fan I would be cautious of taking what Enes Freedom has to say as gospel. He definitely has a narrative he’s pushing

What's the narrative? Human rights abuse is bad, speaking out about it got him fired? I have a hard time seeing some nafarious angle to what he talked about other than China doesn't want their shit called out.

It's been like that forever. Makes it very hard to take the NBA seriously.

NBA stopped being an interesting sports entertainment product to me by the year 2004. It has generated a handful of interesting narratives since, but not really enough to keep me engaged in the face of its enshitification.

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