Could the NBA finally be paying the price for its woke ways?

It’s certainly paying the price for something. The early-season TV numbers tell the tale. Across the networks with rights to broadcast league games, ESPN, TNT, and ABC, viewership is down 18 percent so far this year. That number includes the much-hyped NBA Cup, a pointless in-season tournament for which franchises repaint their floors in wild colors to inject excitement into their games. The numbers for that fiasco are down double digits from its inaugural iteration one year ago, and its final game this year drew approximately 1.5 million fewer viewers than last year’s final — 2.99 million to 4.58 million.
Each team launches the ball from the three-point arc, on average, 37 times a game.
The downward trend is mere exacerbation to what amounts to a decade-long drop in TV ratings. Since 2012, viewership for the league has declined by 48 percent, and of the five most sparsely viewed NBA Finals of the past 30 years, four have come in the last four years.
Whether the recent dip is due to woke ways is up for debate. The “woke” part of that question is not in doubt, though. The NBA, the wokest of American sports leagues, has been leading the outrage parade since 2012 — since LeBron James and teammates donned hoodies to honor Trayvon Martin.
Then came slogans scribed on players’ shoes and the backs of game uniforms — like “Say Their Names” or “I Can’t Breathe” — followed by much somber national-anthem kneeling and courts emblazoned with “Black Lives Matter” slogans during the “bubble” playoffs in 2020. Shortly after the death of Jacob Blake, a black man who was shot by police in an altercation in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020, the entire league canceled games when players boycotted.
James, the de facto commissioner of wokery in the league, has since shown his true political colors. In 2021 he tweeted an anti-police message after a Columbus, Ohio cop shot a woman who was lunging at another woman with a knife, thus sa...