GARBAGE

BY MIKE RIFKIN

One thing about the NBA and Stanley Cup Playoffs that separated them from MLB and NFL was at least in the first round you’d get to listen to your local broadcast do the games. Well, the NBA decided against that. The NBA playoffs begin on Saturday and they just released the schedule and on Saturday there will be four games played, three of them on Amazon Prime. So if you’re a fan of the Raptors, Cavs, Timberwolves, Nuggets, Hawks or Knicks you better have Prime. 

Knicks announcer Mike Breen said during Sunday’s final game of the season : “ first time ever the entire playoffs exclusive to National TV… Poor decision fans want to hear their home team’s announcers, at least in the first round… Part of the family, I get networks pay a fortune… but fans deserve to be thrown a bone, this is our final telecast of the season.” Breen is absolutely correct the fans deserve to be thrown a bone. Now, look this isn’t just a crusade against the NBA, I hate the fact that you have to have three streaming services to watch the NFL too. 

Fans pay to watch and attend these games (which is also a fortune), and what do they get in return? And for the NBA of all the leagues to do this, while we can clearly see that they have teams tank is absurd. Fans develop a relationship with their local broadcasters, it’s bad enough they only get to hear them for the first round, but now fans have to pay a streaming service in order to watch their team in the playoffs is wrong. The NBA signed a 11 year 19.8 Billion dollar deal with Amazon Prime and a 76 billion dollar deal with Peacock (at least some of those games are on tv). 

When will a Super Bowl or NBA Finals be streamed? Yes, this is the way the world is going at the moment, but the fact that hard working people who want to open a beer and watch the playoffs, can’t unless they have these services is a bunch of nonsense. Once again if these leagues truly cared about their fans, they’d give them something, instead they don’t care about the fans, they just care about their money.