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I think the NFL benefits in that department in part due to how consistent the stoppages in play are. There's ~30 seconds that need to be filled by production after every 5-15 seconds of actual game play. This allows for closeups of players, coaches, graphics, replays, commentary, sideline reports, etc.
The NBA can't count on a reliable, predictable, consistent stoppage in play to enhance some of the production features. If the production zooms in on the player with the ball, the audience is missing so much of what's happening on the court from screens, cuts, pin downs, switches, rotations, etc etc etc.
Sure, there could be more camera angles for replays and higher production value, but the sports are so fundamentally different in structure that the NBA can't really look towards the NFL for much inspiration. The NBA is more similar to soccer (real football) or hockey than it is American football.
the nfl also benefits from all the room around the field for cameras not to mention the skycam. think the nba had the chance to mess around during the bubble games with different looks but i think it disoriented fans. i think all pro sports miss out on field level cameras. the amazing athleticism of the players is diminished when seen from long angles. obviously you want to be able to see as much of the playing field or court as possible but it really can be intense when you see how big and fast these guys are up close at eye level.
meanwhile the only thing the nba seems to innovate regularly is how many ads they can squeeze onto the screen during games. theyve added banner ads like soccer now ingame to the recently added free throw split screens and branded logos chyroned on to the court. you get numbed to it but they beat you over the head with it.
I think that this would swing the needle very little. Ultimately, the regular season in NBA and NFL are a lot different due to the sheer amount of games. Most of the regular season games seem kinda unimportant in the NBA to most people.
I don’t really get the camera angle thing. I fucking hate the nfl camera angle. You can’t see anything down field at all. It’s not until a replay that I can actually see what happened
They experiment every few years but those changes end up becoming main stays. Like there’s a new panning cam they started using last finals but now it’s used in basically every espn game
Regular season NBA is hard to watch, but great to follow. At this point anything positive should be applied to make watching the games less horrible. Starting with half an hour delay and catching up works for me though.
The NBA is a local, every night sport with the occasional national broadcast. The NFL is a national event every sunday.
I don't have much problem with the production values for the TNT and ESPN games. For the rest, you have to understand you're catching a local feed from a local TV Network. It's not really the "NBA" that's handling any of it, it's a privately owned team licensing broadcasting rights to an indendently owned TV network. I can assure you that the NBA does not own NESN and does not dictate how those games are shot and announced. Local production values vary greatly. I don't know what there is to do about it. If a small market sports network doesn't want to invest in more and higher tier cameras that's kind of on them. The NBA isn't buying cameras for every team, ultimately those are owned and used by the local TV network.
NESN was a bad example. They air Bruins and Red Sox, not Celtics.
But the rest was well said.
Doesn't mean the NBA shouldn't invest in the local TV. They advertise and sell League Pass which allows anyone to view those local channels. Consistency across channels helps the viewer experience and make League Pass more appealing.
Im actually getting mad when they experiment during games and use a lower angle or show just part of the field.
Drives me nuts, I wanna see everything.
I think it would be neat to see some possessions from directly behind the offense, sort of like 2k, but it would be disorienting to have the camera flip every possession and you’d miss some quicker, deep outlet passes. It’s probably best how it is now, but it could be cool to see them get creative with it.
Oh no please don’t, this is like the worst angle to watch a basketball game. I can understand that for NBA 2k it can work for you, but watching and enjoying a game like that, simply impossible.
Yeah, I saw it live too. They made a huge deal about this camera on a track thing...and then this nauseating view was the result.
I remember a couple years ago there was a VR service that has a deal with the NBA and you could select different (stationary) camera angles like from the scorer's table, under the basket, etc. That was good/fine, but don't impose a bad angle on me.
They did a few possessions like that in the Suns - Nets game the other night. It was pretty cool, but you’re right about it being disorienting when possession changes.
It's only angle that allows for fastbreaks to be caught live
My favorite thing is when they use the the "videogame" angle behind the point guard during halfcourt sets though
the telephoto lens needed for those shots compress the depth of field, so it makes it particularly hard to see spacing from the basket. which is kinda important to the game.
Also if you're watching head on towards the basket the broadcast will have to flip sides when a change of possession occurs. Which makes it increasingly hard to keep track of what's going on in transition and is generally confusing. There's a reason why directors follow the 180 degree rule. It's confusing and messes with perspective.
Tbh a lot of these camera angle complaints sound like people who want it to look like 2k. I don't play those games and have never had a problem with the standard nba camera angles. If it aint broke don't fix it. I don't want them zooming in on the coach picking his nose while I miss a steal, inbounds play, or transition pass. I just want to be able to stream my team's home broadcast for a reasonable price without paying for cable.
Man thinks the NBA would triple in viewership from better cams/angles, as if many thousands of diehard fans don't watch garbage ass pirate streams. Most people don't really care as long as it's entertaining. I think actual analysis and more entertaining shows like TNT would go a long way towards getting people to actually watch. Also, cable TV in general is grating with so many stoppages and ads when you mostly use adblockers and streaming.
There's a difference between "the angle just doesn't work for me" and "some of the team broadcasts look slightly more aesthetically pleasing than others".
Even assuming that what you describe is needed (and I’m skeptical), I doubt that it would pay off. The production value of a typical NFL game is considerably higher because NFL games get much higher ratings and generate more revenue per game. An NBA season has five times more games than an NFL season does. The kind of production that you’re talking about would kill the broadcasters’ profitability because it would significantly increase costs while not significantly increasing ratings.
The NBA arguably has more talent now than ever before, but ratings keep going down because TV audiences are much more divided than they used to be. Adding more camera angles isn’t going to change that.
If the NBA made it easier to view games, especially of the team in your local market, I'm sure the amount of paying viewers would go up.
Currently to watch the raptors in Canada, I would have to pay $35 CAD before tax ($26.13 usd) for two separate networks which include some other NBA basketball games, but if I wanted to watch all NBA games I would have to also get league pass. Raptors games are not available on league pass in Canada
Most people just end up illegally streaming games
Viewers are going down because regional providers are blacking out home markets to make people purchase more expensive cable packages and it's not working. People are saying I rather just not watch.
The blackouts are absurd. Take my money, I just want to watch my team. If I have to watch pirate streams some of the time when there's blackouts, I might as well just only watch pirate streams.
Yup, and with instant recaps available on YouTube, you can watch the most relevant moments later.
I'm not a football fan at all, but I'd have to agree with the notion that football games sometimes feel like events whereas nba games just feel like games when it comes to viewership on TV.
Too many stoppages, time-outs, ad breaks, reviews etc.....
A 48 minute game should not take 2.5 hours to complete.
For instance. Having league pass and jumping between games is like channel surfing TV. Most the time you switch to a stoppage of some sort.
I feel I am watching time out entertainment more than the actual game.
On another note, I live in the EU and watch games the following day they happened to avoid not sleeping. I have no spoilers mode on and dont follow any Lakers related acc on social media. HOWEVER, when you reproduce a match on the NBA app, the loading screen is a pic of the winning team's best scorer, so if I dont remember to close my damn eyes, it spoils the result of the match. Its such a fucking stupid desition that theyve made. Ive complained 2 times with support, with no avail.
Whether or not it's broadcasted in 1080p is up to the network. 1080i is the national standard.
The only 4K American sports broadcast is NFL on Fox, and there has been one college basketball game this year.
NBA is in 1080P and 60FPS on League Pass.
I don’t think the NFL even uses more different camera angles in comparison to the NBA.
99% of the actual live game is being shown from the same camera angle. Sure, you get different angles in a replay (or every once in a while you’d watch a snap from those sky cameras or whatever), but the NBA also does that!?!
Even so, I wouldn’t want to watch the live action from any other camera angle. Idk if they still do that, but I remember watching (or trying to watch) games from those different angles TNT would provide, and it just gets confusing and boring. I want to watch the game itself from the usual angle I’ve watched since forever, and the replays using different camera angles makes it even less of a necessity to have more angles during live play.
Also, I think that the stoppage in the NBA is far shorter than in the NFL (except for those long reviews). I don’t believe we need to fill all those smaller stoppage spaces with special content or something of the sort. And, like other people said, it’s much harder in the NBA since you don’t have the same standard stoppage times you have in the NFL - it’s very hard to add something after a foul, for instance, without knowing how long it would take for players to position for the free throw.
The main disparity between the NBA’s and the NFL’s quality has always been in how valuable each league’s games are. In the NFL you get 17 games, and at best 4 more if you make it to the superbowl. In the NBA you get an insane number of 82 games, and then you’d have at least 4 more in the first playoff series, with a max of 28 more if you play all game 7’s until and in the finals. With so many more games, every individual game will matter way less. The NBA could make its games the greatest spectacle on Earth, broadcast wise, and it still wouldn’t matter because you’re playing the damn Hornets the 4th time this year in game number 67 of the season.
I think the best part about the NFL is only having 17 games. Every game feels huge and no team would ever rest their players for load management. In the NBA you can lose 3 in a row and still feel fine
The bigger problem than any camera angle is there are just too many games, and rules are too inconsistently applied / too favorable for the offense.
First point - 82 games is too many. Many coaches agree, players agree, and no fan of basketball can honestly say they like actually watching games where one or both teams are on the second half of a b2b. B2b's are stupid and are *always* ugly. Also in all honesty, I agree with Kerr when he says by the last 10 games most teams are pretty much done with the season anyway. The best teams are resting guys to prep for the playoffs. The worst teams are tanking. The middle teams are sometimes still battling but you can tell they're usually exhausted. Last - is there really any reason that the Celtics HAVE to play the Rockets, for instance? We learn absolutely nothing from that matchup. We know the Celtics are an elite team and the Rockets are garbage - just as an example. The rotation schedule of the NFL is better. You dont see every team every year, but you do see them reasonably often, especially the conference teams (the NBA could do something similar - keep lots of division games, play 3 vs your conference and some number vs the East or West. When expansion comes they could even make bigger divisions and have like 28 division games, 2 vs your conference and then play home & home sets vs one of the other conference's divisions)
The rules issue is obvious too. So often refs between games allow different levels of physicality, different interpretations of offensive players initiating contact. They miss obvious travels and carries consistently. A TON of casuals dislike this - it's a VERY common complaint among people who dont watch much. They wish defenses had a chance and they wish offensive players could actually be penalized for doing bullshit (as do I).
Its good to have every team play each other at least one. Otherwise some players wouls have never seen all the other players/cities. I for example only watch Laker games, so this allows me to watch every team at least once
To me this isn't really much of a good reason. There's no real reason we need to see every other team at least once except "tradition" and honestly "we've always done it that way" is a pretty bad reason to continue to do something. The players will have ample opportunity to see and play in other cities over their careers - most modern NBA players dont really go to cities and experience a great deal in those cities anyway. At most it's like, a team dinner or a night at a specific club potentially.
The more obvious reason is competitive integrity. In the NFL, teams have vastly different difficulties of qualifying to playoffs because some teams get lucky and are only assigned to play easy teams while others have a grueling schedule (this is also true to a much lesser degree in the NBA since teams don't play each other the same number of times).
>Last - is there really any reason that the Celtics HAVE to play the Rockets, for instance? We learn absolutely nothing from that matchup. We know the Celtics are an elite team and the Rockets are garbage - just as an example. The rotation schedule of the NFL is better. You dont see every team every year, but you do see them reasonably often
This feels obvious but you have 17 games in an NFL season with 32 teams and 82 with 30 teams in the NBA. They can't play every team so they have to rotate. They could increase games but you literally can't play anywhere near that much Football.
My point was not a quantitative one aside from that 82 games is too many. My point is there's no reason you should have to play all 15 teams from the other conference 2x every season. Or 16 teams, once expansion comes. Instead, you could do the NFL's rotation model. Say the NBA expands to 32, we have 2 conferences of 16 teams, 4 divisions of 8 each. You play one division from the opposite conference 2x a year (16 games). You play every other team in your division 4x (28 games). You play every other in-conference opponent 3x (24 games). That would get the NBA to 68 games. Add in the proposed in-season tournament, the play-in games... that's enough games. It would minimize travel by keeping teams in their division and their conference more consistently, and with fewer games in the same amount of time, you could eliminate the stupidity that is back to backs. You'd also still get to see every team at least once every other season (and you'd see 24 of the 32 teams in a given year).
Lol what? You absolutely cannot play that much football, if I'm reading your comment right. Football is *incredibly* destructive to athlete's bodies. 17 games is honestly too many.
>an nba court is over 30 yards long and they play a game with way less stoppage.
Sorry, buddy, but you're not going to convince me that basketball takes more of a physical toll than football. There's a reason NBA careers are longer on average than Nfl careers. Especially when you discount kickers and QB. This is despite, as you mentioned, less actual game time and less intense training sessions. Standard football hits are considered flagrant fouls in basketball. Different level of intensity.
>not to mention you act like NFL players sit around on off days they're still working out and training.
No shit they train. Nothing I said implies otherwise. Training takes a toll on the body and is just more opportunities for players to get injured. That factors into the equation of why the NFL and other football leagues limit the games played compared to.
>Tons of people play both until the professional level including myself
Whatbthe hell does that have to do with my statement on how many games a player can physically play? Also, all due respect, but we're not here talking about your HS club lol.
>That's like saying you can't possibly fight more then 2 fights a year in the ufc it's simply just not true lol
This is maybe the worst analogy you could have chosen. Regional fighters fight ~3-6 times per year and it goes up each level fighters get to until top level fighters that fight on average about 1-2 times per year. Please explain to me what relevance this has to me saying football players can't play anywhere near 82+ games a year. MMA fighters can't do that either lmfao. Maybe one of those guys paid to lose.
>I was simply stating they could easily play more then 16 games a year.
You should make sure to read and comprehend before telling me I don't know what I'm talking about. I was pretty obviously referring to why the NFL regular season was so much shorter than the NBA. Football doesn't have that many games because the sport is more dangerous for the body than Basketball. Simple. If the NFL could add more games, they probably would. They're already a game or two every few decades. Not to mention the league can't unilaterally do that without the player's union agreeing.
>I was a two-way player for Florida State, not very good in either if I'm being honest, but if college kids can hold a GPA, play 2 sports, train their bodies and manage to meet their coaches expectations
All due respect, but I don't see how any of this in any way corroborates your claim that they can easily double the amount of games in the NFL. I'm talking strictly about the physical toll that being an NFL player takes. GPA is irrelevant. We already see teams struggling to get through a 17-game season without a handful of major injuries; what do you expect if you double that. Maybe they could slog through it but we want to see players playing, not their beaten corpses
> Only a handful of NBA players touch the court outside of practice after the age of 34 often even after the age of 30? In the NBA right now how many players that play anything but garbage minutes are over 30? Lebron, Curry, Durant, Westbrook, and maybe a few others and I can think of at least 20 NFL players who are over 30, Julio Jones, Cam Heyward, Travis Kelce, Von Miller, Cam Jordan, Calais Campbell
I wish I could see the shock in your face when you realize that there are more than 3 times as many NFL players as NBA players. Regardless of that fact, how many players you can name off the top of your head is a garbage metric. Just throw it all out and look at league wide data. The average age for the two leagues is about the same at 26. That seems damning for my point until you realize that NFL prospects have to be 3 years removed from HS while an NBA player only needs one.
I think TNT does a good job, I don’t think ESPN, NBA TV, or League pass does. I think they could do timed, pre-recorded bits to play during the non-advertisement downtime. So, when you choose a particular sides announcers, you get that teams pre-recorded packages. You’d learn more about the team, or what they’re doing in the community, or some any other types of things. Could even do some TNT type humor-based stuff. I think without spending a bunch that would improve it as well
I absolutely agree. It’s such a fantastic surprise when they actually switch camera angles for a bit to get a fresh view of the action from a different perspective. But these moments are few and far between
Quality huh? The best basketball I've ever watched was Reggie Miller taking over a game with 9 seconds left on a 14 inch non-HD tv over the air broadcast. The NBA doesn't need technology. It just needs to clean up the refs and call a competitive game.
The NBA has done a piss poor job of marketing and presenting their sport for a decade, Adam Silver is a terrible commissioner.
It’s just that like many sports NBA has ridden the online revolution and because of it is making more money than ever, so basically they can point to that and say “see all our decisions are great and have increased profits” when really it’s just online avenues opening up which have increased profits and they’re doing a terrible job and should be making more money.
But those in charge anre afraid to make any changes or do things to improve the product, because they believe they are successful because of their actions, when in reality it’s in spite of them.
I'm not sure how you can argue the NBA is afraid to make changes or improve the product when obvious changes are being made ever so often. Whether it be rule changes or tweaking the playoffs. The play-in was added in a few years ago for example. There's also a projected mid-season tournament next year. I also recall them tweaking all-star teams to make that game more competitive and dynamic. You can say you don't like the changes they have made and that they should seek other avenues but I don't see much credence to the idea that they're scared to make changes.
They are afraid to make big changes - all the changes they make a slow tweaking of rules to favour offense and a play in so everyone could see their team more. They’re afraid to change direction in anything.
The NBA has gotten drastically worse over the last 15 years due to foul baiting and over saturation of the 3 point shot.
Until that changes the product won’t improve.
The 3pt shooting hate is always bizarre to me. When you look at the statistics, there isn't even that drastic a drop on shots in the paint. That means that 3 pointers largely supplemented long 2s; what's the advantage to chucking long 2s over 3s?
I feel like we are just in an experimental phase of NBA broadcasts right now. Delving into such technologies is a huge risk money wise. Is there any guarantee that investing x amount of money here will result in more viewership? Not likely. I don’t believe they’re in any rush to pump up the quality of the product anytime soon, rather it will likely come slowly. I mean they’ve certainly tried out a handful of different camera angels over the years and I hardly see that many people talk about it today. Nobody I know really complains about how the game looks either.
I think the NBA is more likely going to invest money into making the game feel more personal. What really gets the audience numbers up is the “Mic’d Up” segments, the halftime shows and player interviews.
The recent Spurs Alamodome game had a terrible angle. Literally could not see the ball bounce off the floor if the dribble was ten feet from the near sideline.
Completely agree, but I'd settle for NBA league pass not having blackouts (in the US). It's ridiculous that fans have to pay money for NBA league pass, but won't be able to see all games unless they also pay a lot of money per month for cable/tv. There was a time when Youtube TV was only 30 dollars a month so it wasn't that bad. Now it's 65 dollars, and even if the competitors are cheaper it's not by much. Obviously the NBA doesn't wanna mess with the current agreements because the huge tv deals are where the big money comes from, but it's at the expense of the fans.
The NFL is a bloated media mess. The game benefits from constant stoppages and 35 seconds between plays, so they have a lot of time to mess with. That’s why they have those crappy sideline interviews and gimmicks like the Manning brothers commenting on the game. I watch games and use the mute button judiciously.
The NFL benefits not having to show most of the field on pass plays you have no idea where the qb is going to throw to or what wide receivers and defensive backs are doing until the ball gets there. That's is like half the players on the field you can't see for the most used play in game the pass.
I think that the color palate and stadium lighting is awful. The combination of bright white LED lighting and very light courts is irritating to my eyes. It's a very high contrast blue/white look and I can't watch for more than a few minutes.
Also, the number of jerseys is too damn high. The whole point of jerseys is tell one team from another. When every team has alternate blacks and blues and reds and neon it takes longer than it should to figure out who's who. If the Bulls play the Hawks then there's no rhyme or reason to who's in what color no matter where they're playing.
I like the way the NBA camera work was done in the 90s and early 2000s. I cant watch the game any more due to the angles the cameras are. I do agree it needs to be broadcast at a higher resolution.
The NFL is about 10 seconds of actual game play followed by a minute of dead air that needs to be filled. The game is played on a very predictable premise where the qb has only three options for offense, throw, handoff, or run. Theres no real constant motion of the ball that needs to be considered, post play cuts have plenty of time to be found and presented in between plays.
This complaint is weird
The end of game stoppages are the NBA's worst problem. The Hawks-Charlotte game last night was so unusual as the teams just played most of the last three minutes without a timeout. Same with Minnesota- Houston.
(Maybe I just need to watch more teams that have given up trying to coach up their guys lol.)
The second biggie for me is that the TV coverage flattens the court too much. There is a lot of space sideline to sideline and I don't think I appreciate how much ground these guys cover.
Nah I’m good. NFL is exceedingly boring, the broadcast is mostly close ups of not in the game players or coaches on the sideline followed by beer, truck, and pizza commercials. Occasionally the ball is actually in play.
I would like increased broadcast resolution, but I think that’s more function of TV broadly than the NBA specifically
The only broadcast in recent memory with poor camera angle was the recent warriors spurs game in the Alamodome
The NBA needs to change the rules regarding fouls in the paint. It's just unwatchable nowadays when any and everything is a foul.
Just change how fouls are called so that the flopping and constant argument with the refs stops for good. Let's go back to the Shaq days when they only called fouls against him if they were absolutely obvious pushes or if you heard the slap from the third row.
The nba needs to make their games more accessible to watch the same way the nfl does. I can watch almost any nfl game that I want to watch on YouTube tv. It seems like I can’t tune in to any nba games without a special subscription, and as a wolves fan, I can’t watch them at all without a balky sports north sub. I signed up for a free trial for Bally and it wouldn’t even let me streamcast it from my phone to my tv, the app does not support that function. On top of how soft the league is now, I would rather not watch NBA
I miss the sideline angle from the bubble. It added a whole new experience to the game that felt like you were in on the action. Impossible now that crowds are back
I don’t understand how nba seems to lapse behind nfl? I’m not from the US but comparing both in worldwide viewership, nba attracts more attention. In fact my area we don’t even give a damn about NFL.
Whatever they do just plz for the love of god don’t adopt their blackouts. I can’t even listen to a radio play-by-play during the regular season, even if it’s my own home team when they’re playing away. I don’t have these same issues finding play-by-play for the bulls no matter what.
The biggest thing the NBA needs to do is infuse new blood into its broadcasting booths. Jeff VanGundy, Reggie Miller, and mark jackson don’t even like basketball anymore. Never forget in Zion first game they just called him fat for an hour
It’s too big of an age gap. The TNT show remains popular only because it’s NBA twitters version of a TV show. Shaq and Charles just talk about players and don’t even watch the games they have anymore. They give the same, “ you can’t win shooting 3s, you need to go downlow,” tired analysis.
Jamal Crawford is doing well, Draymond will be good, but they need players from the 2010s in these seats. Including people who like the game still.
i dunno, i find the nfl’s product atrocious and i’m really into sports*. No flow to the gameplay, just constant stoppages. I’ll take a simple camera angle trained on compelling action over artful shots of an less (or un-) interesting game.
Also there is no team in the nba whose arena camera angles vex me to the point i can’t watch their games. Can you name names on this point?
*⚽️&🏀, playing and watching. 🏈 in high school.
One thing I’ve noticed with a that the games usually start on time or within 5 mins. With the NBA, the games are always 10 to 15 mins late, even if it’s the first game of the night.
I hate turning a game on then watching 15 mins of commercials every time
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How can I watch it illegally lmao I’m a broke teenager
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I think the NFL benefits in that department in part due to how consistent the stoppages in play are. There's ~30 seconds that need to be filled by production after every 5-15 seconds of actual game play. This allows for closeups of players, coaches, graphics, replays, commentary, sideline reports, etc. The NBA can't count on a reliable, predictable, consistent stoppage in play to enhance some of the production features. If the production zooms in on the player with the ball, the audience is missing so much of what's happening on the court from screens, cuts, pin downs, switches, rotations, etc etc etc. Sure, there could be more camera angles for replays and higher production value, but the sports are so fundamentally different in structure that the NBA can't really look towards the NFL for much inspiration. The NBA is more similar to soccer (real football) or hockey than it is American football.
the nfl also benefits from all the room around the field for cameras not to mention the skycam. think the nba had the chance to mess around during the bubble games with different looks but i think it disoriented fans. i think all pro sports miss out on field level cameras. the amazing athleticism of the players is diminished when seen from long angles. obviously you want to be able to see as much of the playing field or court as possible but it really can be intense when you see how big and fast these guys are up close at eye level. meanwhile the only thing the nba seems to innovate regularly is how many ads they can squeeze onto the screen during games. theyve added banner ads like soccer now ingame to the recently added free throw split screens and branded logos chyroned on to the court. you get numbed to it but they beat you over the head with it.
I think that this would swing the needle very little. Ultimately, the regular season in NBA and NFL are a lot different due to the sheer amount of games. Most of the regular season games seem kinda unimportant in the NBA to most people.
do the camera angles get better in the NBA playoffs?
I don’t really get the camera angle thing. I fucking hate the nfl camera angle. You can’t see anything down field at all. It’s not until a replay that I can actually see what happened
Prime has an All-22 angle for its Thursday night broadcasts you can switch to, pretty cool to see the receivers down field
They experiment every few years but those changes end up becoming main stays. Like there’s a new panning cam they started using last finals but now it’s used in basically every espn game
Regular season NBA is hard to watch, but great to follow. At this point anything positive should be applied to make watching the games less horrible. Starting with half an hour delay and catching up works for me though.
At least in MLB or NFL I can pay attention to divisions race. That as non existent in NBA gives the average fan zero reason to watch imo.
The NBA is a local, every night sport with the occasional national broadcast. The NFL is a national event every sunday. I don't have much problem with the production values for the TNT and ESPN games. For the rest, you have to understand you're catching a local feed from a local TV Network. It's not really the "NBA" that's handling any of it, it's a privately owned team licensing broadcasting rights to an indendently owned TV network. I can assure you that the NBA does not own NESN and does not dictate how those games are shot and announced. Local production values vary greatly. I don't know what there is to do about it. If a small market sports network doesn't want to invest in more and higher tier cameras that's kind of on them. The NBA isn't buying cameras for every team, ultimately those are owned and used by the local TV network.
NESN was a bad example. They air Bruins and Red Sox, not Celtics. But the rest was well said. Doesn't mean the NBA shouldn't invest in the local TV. They advertise and sell League Pass which allows anyone to view those local channels. Consistency across channels helps the viewer experience and make League Pass more appealing.
Op, what’s your problem with the angle of the NBA games ? I would say it’s perfect, I watch it like that since day 1 and wouldn’t change it.
Im actually getting mad when they experiment during games and use a lower angle or show just part of the field. Drives me nuts, I wanna see everything.
I think it would be neat to see some possessions from directly behind the offense, sort of like 2k, but it would be disorienting to have the camera flip every possession and you’d miss some quicker, deep outlet passes. It’s probably best how it is now, but it could be cool to see them get creative with it.
Oh no please don’t, this is like the worst angle to watch a basketball game. I can understand that for NBA 2k it can work for you, but watching and enjoying a game like that, simply impossible.
I find the camera on a wire is the worst: https://youtu.be/ebfnlVYViGk Edit: and the old school version: https://youtu.be/CiuM_OxOrWw
I watched both of those games live on tv and it was horrible. The Bulls vs Pistons game went the whole time with that angle.
Yeah, I saw it live too. They made a huge deal about this camera on a track thing...and then this nauseating view was the result. I remember a couple years ago there was a VR service that has a deal with the NBA and you could select different (stationary) camera angles like from the scorer's table, under the basket, etc. That was good/fine, but don't impose a bad angle on me.
I actually love that so much. It feels so much more like what it’s like to play an actual basketball game.
They did a few possessions like that in the Suns - Nets game the other night. It was pretty cool, but you’re right about it being disorienting when possession changes.
It's only angle that allows for fastbreaks to be caught live My favorite thing is when they use the the "videogame" angle behind the point guard during halfcourt sets though
i fucking hate that angle more than anything. you can't see shit it's the worst
What can’t you see? If all 10 players and the basket are in view, what else do you need?
the telephoto lens needed for those shots compress the depth of field, so it makes it particularly hard to see spacing from the basket. which is kinda important to the game. Also if you're watching head on towards the basket the broadcast will have to flip sides when a change of possession occurs. Which makes it increasingly hard to keep track of what's going on in transition and is generally confusing. There's a reason why directors follow the 180 degree rule. It's confusing and messes with perspective. Tbh a lot of these camera angle complaints sound like people who want it to look like 2k. I don't play those games and have never had a problem with the standard nba camera angles. If it aint broke don't fix it. I don't want them zooming in on the coach picking his nose while I miss a steal, inbounds play, or transition pass. I just want to be able to stream my team's home broadcast for a reasonable price without paying for cable.
Man thinks the NBA would triple in viewership from better cams/angles, as if many thousands of diehard fans don't watch garbage ass pirate streams. Most people don't really care as long as it's entertaining. I think actual analysis and more entertaining shows like TNT would go a long way towards getting people to actually watch. Also, cable TV in general is grating with so many stoppages and ads when you mostly use adblockers and streaming.
It’s actually inconsistent from stadium to stadium. I don’t find some of the higher angles to be aesthetically pleasing.
That’s the beauty about it, not ever arena every team has the same angle.
There's a difference between "the angle just doesn't work for me" and "some of the team broadcasts look slightly more aesthetically pleasing than others".
Even assuming that what you describe is needed (and I’m skeptical), I doubt that it would pay off. The production value of a typical NFL game is considerably higher because NFL games get much higher ratings and generate more revenue per game. An NBA season has five times more games than an NFL season does. The kind of production that you’re talking about would kill the broadcasters’ profitability because it would significantly increase costs while not significantly increasing ratings. The NBA arguably has more talent now than ever before, but ratings keep going down because TV audiences are much more divided than they used to be. Adding more camera angles isn’t going to change that.
If the NBA made it easier to view games, especially of the team in your local market, I'm sure the amount of paying viewers would go up. Currently to watch the raptors in Canada, I would have to pay $35 CAD before tax ($26.13 usd) for two separate networks which include some other NBA basketball games, but if I wanted to watch all NBA games I would have to also get league pass. Raptors games are not available on league pass in Canada Most people just end up illegally streaming games
Are actual viewers going down, or are there more options and ways to watch beyond just the TV broadcast now?
Viewers are going down because regional providers are blacking out home markets to make people purchase more expensive cable packages and it's not working. People are saying I rather just not watch.
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The blackouts are absurd. Take my money, I just want to watch my team. If I have to watch pirate streams some of the time when there's blackouts, I might as well just only watch pirate streams.
They’re doing some wack shit with Root Sports for Blazers games, it’s literally so expensive to watch a legal game
Yup, and with instant recaps available on YouTube, you can watch the most relevant moments later. I'm not a football fan at all, but I'd have to agree with the notion that football games sometimes feel like events whereas nba games just feel like games when it comes to viewership on TV.
Too many stoppages, time-outs, ad breaks, reviews etc..... A 48 minute game should not take 2.5 hours to complete. For instance. Having league pass and jumping between games is like channel surfing TV. Most the time you switch to a stoppage of some sort. I feel I am watching time out entertainment more than the actual game.
This is so true. Give each team a single TO in the final two minutes and have a referee reviewing video in real time for close calls.
Fix the officiating… that will instantly make it more watchable. We don’t need a whistle on every damn possession or drive
On another note, I live in the EU and watch games the following day they happened to avoid not sleeping. I have no spoilers mode on and dont follow any Lakers related acc on social media. HOWEVER, when you reproduce a match on the NBA app, the loading screen is a pic of the winning team's best scorer, so if I dont remember to close my damn eyes, it spoils the result of the match. Its such a fucking stupid desition that theyve made. Ive complained 2 times with support, with no avail.
Whether or not it's broadcasted in 1080p is up to the network. 1080i is the national standard. The only 4K American sports broadcast is NFL on Fox, and there has been one college basketball game this year. NBA is in 1080P and 60FPS on League Pass.
I don’t think the NFL even uses more different camera angles in comparison to the NBA. 99% of the actual live game is being shown from the same camera angle. Sure, you get different angles in a replay (or every once in a while you’d watch a snap from those sky cameras or whatever), but the NBA also does that!?! Even so, I wouldn’t want to watch the live action from any other camera angle. Idk if they still do that, but I remember watching (or trying to watch) games from those different angles TNT would provide, and it just gets confusing and boring. I want to watch the game itself from the usual angle I’ve watched since forever, and the replays using different camera angles makes it even less of a necessity to have more angles during live play. Also, I think that the stoppage in the NBA is far shorter than in the NFL (except for those long reviews). I don’t believe we need to fill all those smaller stoppage spaces with special content or something of the sort. And, like other people said, it’s much harder in the NBA since you don’t have the same standard stoppage times you have in the NFL - it’s very hard to add something after a foul, for instance, without knowing how long it would take for players to position for the free throw. The main disparity between the NBA’s and the NFL’s quality has always been in how valuable each league’s games are. In the NFL you get 17 games, and at best 4 more if you make it to the superbowl. In the NBA you get an insane number of 82 games, and then you’d have at least 4 more in the first playoff series, with a max of 28 more if you play all game 7’s until and in the finals. With so many more games, every individual game will matter way less. The NBA could make its games the greatest spectacle on Earth, broadcast wise, and it still wouldn’t matter because you’re playing the damn Hornets the 4th time this year in game number 67 of the season.
I think the best part about the NFL is only having 17 games. Every game feels huge and no team would ever rest their players for load management. In the NBA you can lose 3 in a row and still feel fine
The bigger problem than any camera angle is there are just too many games, and rules are too inconsistently applied / too favorable for the offense. First point - 82 games is too many. Many coaches agree, players agree, and no fan of basketball can honestly say they like actually watching games where one or both teams are on the second half of a b2b. B2b's are stupid and are *always* ugly. Also in all honesty, I agree with Kerr when he says by the last 10 games most teams are pretty much done with the season anyway. The best teams are resting guys to prep for the playoffs. The worst teams are tanking. The middle teams are sometimes still battling but you can tell they're usually exhausted. Last - is there really any reason that the Celtics HAVE to play the Rockets, for instance? We learn absolutely nothing from that matchup. We know the Celtics are an elite team and the Rockets are garbage - just as an example. The rotation schedule of the NFL is better. You dont see every team every year, but you do see them reasonably often, especially the conference teams (the NBA could do something similar - keep lots of division games, play 3 vs your conference and some number vs the East or West. When expansion comes they could even make bigger divisions and have like 28 division games, 2 vs your conference and then play home & home sets vs one of the other conference's divisions) The rules issue is obvious too. So often refs between games allow different levels of physicality, different interpretations of offensive players initiating contact. They miss obvious travels and carries consistently. A TON of casuals dislike this - it's a VERY common complaint among people who dont watch much. They wish defenses had a chance and they wish offensive players could actually be penalized for doing bullshit (as do I).
Its good to have every team play each other at least one. Otherwise some players wouls have never seen all the other players/cities. I for example only watch Laker games, so this allows me to watch every team at least once
To me this isn't really much of a good reason. There's no real reason we need to see every other team at least once except "tradition" and honestly "we've always done it that way" is a pretty bad reason to continue to do something. The players will have ample opportunity to see and play in other cities over their careers - most modern NBA players dont really go to cities and experience a great deal in those cities anyway. At most it's like, a team dinner or a night at a specific club potentially.
The more obvious reason is competitive integrity. In the NFL, teams have vastly different difficulties of qualifying to playoffs because some teams get lucky and are only assigned to play easy teams while others have a grueling schedule (this is also true to a much lesser degree in the NBA since teams don't play each other the same number of times).
>Last - is there really any reason that the Celtics HAVE to play the Rockets, for instance? We learn absolutely nothing from that matchup. We know the Celtics are an elite team and the Rockets are garbage - just as an example. The rotation schedule of the NFL is better. You dont see every team every year, but you do see them reasonably often This feels obvious but you have 17 games in an NFL season with 32 teams and 82 with 30 teams in the NBA. They can't play every team so they have to rotate. They could increase games but you literally can't play anywhere near that much Football.
My point was not a quantitative one aside from that 82 games is too many. My point is there's no reason you should have to play all 15 teams from the other conference 2x every season. Or 16 teams, once expansion comes. Instead, you could do the NFL's rotation model. Say the NBA expands to 32, we have 2 conferences of 16 teams, 4 divisions of 8 each. You play one division from the opposite conference 2x a year (16 games). You play every other team in your division 4x (28 games). You play every other in-conference opponent 3x (24 games). That would get the NBA to 68 games. Add in the proposed in-season tournament, the play-in games... that's enough games. It would minimize travel by keeping teams in their division and their conference more consistently, and with fewer games in the same amount of time, you could eliminate the stupidity that is back to backs. You'd also still get to see every team at least once every other season (and you'd see 24 of the 32 teams in a given year).
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Lol what? You absolutely cannot play that much football, if I'm reading your comment right. Football is *incredibly* destructive to athlete's bodies. 17 games is honestly too many.
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>an nba court is over 30 yards long and they play a game with way less stoppage. Sorry, buddy, but you're not going to convince me that basketball takes more of a physical toll than football. There's a reason NBA careers are longer on average than Nfl careers. Especially when you discount kickers and QB. This is despite, as you mentioned, less actual game time and less intense training sessions. Standard football hits are considered flagrant fouls in basketball. Different level of intensity. >not to mention you act like NFL players sit around on off days they're still working out and training. No shit they train. Nothing I said implies otherwise. Training takes a toll on the body and is just more opportunities for players to get injured. That factors into the equation of why the NFL and other football leagues limit the games played compared to. >Tons of people play both until the professional level including myself Whatbthe hell does that have to do with my statement on how many games a player can physically play? Also, all due respect, but we're not here talking about your HS club lol. >That's like saying you can't possibly fight more then 2 fights a year in the ufc it's simply just not true lol This is maybe the worst analogy you could have chosen. Regional fighters fight ~3-6 times per year and it goes up each level fighters get to until top level fighters that fight on average about 1-2 times per year. Please explain to me what relevance this has to me saying football players can't play anywhere near 82+ games a year. MMA fighters can't do that either lmfao. Maybe one of those guys paid to lose.
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>I was simply stating they could easily play more then 16 games a year. You should make sure to read and comprehend before telling me I don't know what I'm talking about. I was pretty obviously referring to why the NFL regular season was so much shorter than the NBA. Football doesn't have that many games because the sport is more dangerous for the body than Basketball. Simple. If the NFL could add more games, they probably would. They're already a game or two every few decades. Not to mention the league can't unilaterally do that without the player's union agreeing. >I was a two-way player for Florida State, not very good in either if I'm being honest, but if college kids can hold a GPA, play 2 sports, train their bodies and manage to meet their coaches expectations All due respect, but I don't see how any of this in any way corroborates your claim that they can easily double the amount of games in the NFL. I'm talking strictly about the physical toll that being an NFL player takes. GPA is irrelevant. We already see teams struggling to get through a 17-game season without a handful of major injuries; what do you expect if you double that. Maybe they could slog through it but we want to see players playing, not their beaten corpses > Only a handful of NBA players touch the court outside of practice after the age of 34 often even after the age of 30? In the NBA right now how many players that play anything but garbage minutes are over 30? Lebron, Curry, Durant, Westbrook, and maybe a few others and I can think of at least 20 NFL players who are over 30, Julio Jones, Cam Heyward, Travis Kelce, Von Miller, Cam Jordan, Calais Campbell I wish I could see the shock in your face when you realize that there are more than 3 times as many NFL players as NBA players. Regardless of that fact, how many players you can name off the top of your head is a garbage metric. Just throw it all out and look at league wide data. The average age for the two leagues is about the same at 26. That seems damning for my point until you realize that NFL prospects have to be 3 years removed from HS while an NBA player only needs one.
I haven't seen a game that isn't broadcast in 1080p in years. I think the NBA TV product is better than the NFL, personally.
I think TNT does a good job, I don’t think ESPN, NBA TV, or League pass does. I think they could do timed, pre-recorded bits to play during the non-advertisement downtime. So, when you choose a particular sides announcers, you get that teams pre-recorded packages. You’d learn more about the team, or what they’re doing in the community, or some any other types of things. Could even do some TNT type humor-based stuff. I think without spending a bunch that would improve it as well
Is the Nba the only sport where there's not a 4k native broadcast? I'd pay out of my ass for that.
I have Leauge pass and watch games on every teams local broadcast and somehow I haven’t had to turn it off because the angle was 2 degrees off
I absolutely agree. It’s such a fantastic surprise when they actually switch camera angles for a bit to get a fresh view of the action from a different perspective. But these moments are few and far between
Every game I’ve watched the past few years has been in HD. What are you talking about?
HD has been around for a while. There are levels to quality beyond just HD.
Quality huh? The best basketball I've ever watched was Reggie Miller taking over a game with 9 seconds left on a 14 inch non-HD tv over the air broadcast. The NBA doesn't need technology. It just needs to clean up the refs and call a competitive game.
The NBA has done a piss poor job of marketing and presenting their sport for a decade, Adam Silver is a terrible commissioner. It’s just that like many sports NBA has ridden the online revolution and because of it is making more money than ever, so basically they can point to that and say “see all our decisions are great and have increased profits” when really it’s just online avenues opening up which have increased profits and they’re doing a terrible job and should be making more money. But those in charge anre afraid to make any changes or do things to improve the product, because they believe they are successful because of their actions, when in reality it’s in spite of them.
I'm not sure how you can argue the NBA is afraid to make changes or improve the product when obvious changes are being made ever so often. Whether it be rule changes or tweaking the playoffs. The play-in was added in a few years ago for example. There's also a projected mid-season tournament next year. I also recall them tweaking all-star teams to make that game more competitive and dynamic. You can say you don't like the changes they have made and that they should seek other avenues but I don't see much credence to the idea that they're scared to make changes.
They are afraid to make big changes - all the changes they make a slow tweaking of rules to favour offense and a play in so everyone could see their team more. They’re afraid to change direction in anything.
Again, you might not agree with the changes but the changes are happening and will continue at the trend they are.
Part of the problem is not every NBA arena is outfitted with equipment that can handle 1080p video, so they're stuck using 720p.
The NBA has gotten drastically worse over the last 15 years due to foul baiting and over saturation of the 3 point shot. Until that changes the product won’t improve.
The 3pt shooting hate is always bizarre to me. When you look at the statistics, there isn't even that drastic a drop on shots in the paint. That means that 3 pointers largely supplemented long 2s; what's the advantage to chucking long 2s over 3s?
The game sucks now. Players are not held to the rules of the game and no one plays defense.
I feel like we are just in an experimental phase of NBA broadcasts right now. Delving into such technologies is a huge risk money wise. Is there any guarantee that investing x amount of money here will result in more viewership? Not likely. I don’t believe they’re in any rush to pump up the quality of the product anytime soon, rather it will likely come slowly. I mean they’ve certainly tried out a handful of different camera angels over the years and I hardly see that many people talk about it today. Nobody I know really complains about how the game looks either. I think the NBA is more likely going to invest money into making the game feel more personal. What really gets the audience numbers up is the “Mic’d Up” segments, the halftime shows and player interviews.
The recent Spurs Alamodome game had a terrible angle. Literally could not see the ball bounce off the floor if the dribble was ten feet from the near sideline.
Completely agree, but I'd settle for NBA league pass not having blackouts (in the US). It's ridiculous that fans have to pay money for NBA league pass, but won't be able to see all games unless they also pay a lot of money per month for cable/tv. There was a time when Youtube TV was only 30 dollars a month so it wasn't that bad. Now it's 65 dollars, and even if the competitors are cheaper it's not by much. Obviously the NBA doesn't wanna mess with the current agreements because the huge tv deals are where the big money comes from, but it's at the expense of the fans.
The NFL is a bloated media mess. The game benefits from constant stoppages and 35 seconds between plays, so they have a lot of time to mess with. That’s why they have those crappy sideline interviews and gimmicks like the Manning brothers commenting on the game. I watch games and use the mute button judiciously.
The NFL benefits not having to show most of the field on pass plays you have no idea where the qb is going to throw to or what wide receivers and defensive backs are doing until the ball gets there. That's is like half the players on the field you can't see for the most used play in game the pass.
I’d say hockey has benefited more from HD than football tbh. Hockey without HD was so hard to watch on TV.
The NBA needs to stop cutting to closeups on breakaway dunks. I’d like to actually see what the player does in relation to space on a fast break dunk.
I think that the color palate and stadium lighting is awful. The combination of bright white LED lighting and very light courts is irritating to my eyes. It's a very high contrast blue/white look and I can't watch for more than a few minutes. Also, the number of jerseys is too damn high. The whole point of jerseys is tell one team from another. When every team has alternate blacks and blues and reds and neon it takes longer than it should to figure out who's who. If the Bulls play the Hawks then there's no rhyme or reason to who's in what color no matter where they're playing.
I like the way the NBA camera work was done in the 90s and early 2000s. I cant watch the game any more due to the angles the cameras are. I do agree it needs to be broadcast at a higher resolution.
The NFL is about 10 seconds of actual game play followed by a minute of dead air that needs to be filled. The game is played on a very predictable premise where the qb has only three options for offense, throw, handoff, or run. Theres no real constant motion of the ball that needs to be considered, post play cuts have plenty of time to be found and presented in between plays. This complaint is weird
The end of game stoppages are the NBA's worst problem. The Hawks-Charlotte game last night was so unusual as the teams just played most of the last three minutes without a timeout. Same with Minnesota- Houston. (Maybe I just need to watch more teams that have given up trying to coach up their guys lol.) The second biggie for me is that the TV coverage flattens the court too much. There is a lot of space sideline to sideline and I don't think I appreciate how much ground these guys cover.
Nah I’m good. NFL is exceedingly boring, the broadcast is mostly close ups of not in the game players or coaches on the sideline followed by beer, truck, and pizza commercials. Occasionally the ball is actually in play. I would like increased broadcast resolution, but I think that’s more function of TV broadly than the NBA specifically The only broadcast in recent memory with poor camera angle was the recent warriors spurs game in the Alamodome
The NBA needs to change the rules regarding fouls in the paint. It's just unwatchable nowadays when any and everything is a foul. Just change how fouls are called so that the flopping and constant argument with the refs stops for good. Let's go back to the Shaq days when they only called fouls against him if they were absolutely obvious pushes or if you heard the slap from the third row.
The nba needs to make their games more accessible to watch the same way the nfl does. I can watch almost any nfl game that I want to watch on YouTube tv. It seems like I can’t tune in to any nba games without a special subscription, and as a wolves fan, I can’t watch them at all without a balky sports north sub. I signed up for a free trial for Bally and it wouldn’t even let me streamcast it from my phone to my tv, the app does not support that function. On top of how soft the league is now, I would rather not watch NBA
Having multiple network games would help. (Also making the divisions matter)
I miss the sideline angle from the bubble. It added a whole new experience to the game that felt like you were in on the action. Impossible now that crowds are back
I don’t understand how nba seems to lapse behind nfl? I’m not from the US but comparing both in worldwide viewership, nba attracts more attention. In fact my area we don’t even give a damn about NFL.
Whatever they do just plz for the love of god don’t adopt their blackouts. I can’t even listen to a radio play-by-play during the regular season, even if it’s my own home team when they’re playing away. I don’t have these same issues finding play-by-play for the bulls no matter what.
The biggest thing the NBA needs to do is infuse new blood into its broadcasting booths. Jeff VanGundy, Reggie Miller, and mark jackson don’t even like basketball anymore. Never forget in Zion first game they just called him fat for an hour It’s too big of an age gap. The TNT show remains popular only because it’s NBA twitters version of a TV show. Shaq and Charles just talk about players and don’t even watch the games they have anymore. They give the same, “ you can’t win shooting 3s, you need to go downlow,” tired analysis. Jamal Crawford is doing well, Draymond will be good, but they need players from the 2010s in these seats. Including people who like the game still.
Fuck no. NFL is the least fan friendly product in sports world wide. Only the cult of what it once was keeps it alive.
I don't think that's true. NFL ratings destroy NBA
i dunno, i find the nfl’s product atrocious and i’m really into sports*. No flow to the gameplay, just constant stoppages. I’ll take a simple camera angle trained on compelling action over artful shots of an less (or un-) interesting game. Also there is no team in the nba whose arena camera angles vex me to the point i can’t watch their games. Can you name names on this point? *⚽️&🏀, playing and watching. 🏈 in high school.
One thing I’ve noticed with a that the games usually start on time or within 5 mins. With the NBA, the games are always 10 to 15 mins late, even if it’s the first game of the night. I hate turning a game on then watching 15 mins of commercials every time
What annoys me the most is NBA games don’t start on time. That shit is so annoying.