The Slippery Slope of the NBA Becoming a “Highlight League”

Pricing, platforms, & the erosion of basketball’s full-game narrative

Ja Morant soaring on a fast break. Steph Curry drilling a deep three. Victor Wembanyama erasing a floater at the rim. These are highlights you can picture immediately. Highlights have always been — and will always be — a part of the NBA’s brand of basketball. As a sport with some of the best athletes in the world, short clips offer a quick glimpse of that greatness.

But is the NBA viewing highlights as the main show instead of a supplementary addition? Recently NBA Commissioner Adam Silver was asked about the rising cost of watching games as the league’s new media deal has divvied up broadcasts across multiple networks. Silver’s response was that “there’s a huge amount of our content that people can essentially consume for free”, and that the NBA is “very much a highlights-based sport”.

Silver’s comments have a definite “let them eat cake” energy to them, and display a disregard for how difficult it will soon be to watch NBA games while also discouraging fans from watching full games since in the league’s eyes, watching the highlights is good enough. The focus on highlights speaks to maximizing advertiser reach while disregarding the brand of basketball that the league plays. It speaks to the way that we watch basketball…