The NBA is going to be completing its new In-Season Tournament later this year during what 104.5 The Zone host Buck Reising believes is a really inopportune time.
Reising said Thursday on The Buck Reising Show that if the NBA hoped to capitalize on a TV audience, they shouldn’t be going head-to-head with an important part of the NFL regular season.
“It is such a farce what the NBA is trying to do in an effort to stave off the NFL,” Reising said at the start of his show. The semifinals and finals of the tournament will be held December 7-9 in Las Vegas. The NBA and NFL will go head-to-head that night opening Week 14 with the Patriots taking on the Steelers.
For the championship on December 9, there doesn’t appear to be much conflict. No NFL games are scheduled that Saturday night, and college football will only feature the Army/Navy game that afternoon. The Heisman Trophy will be handed out that night.
The NBA is hoping that by holding the conclusion of the tournament that weekend, additional regular season viewership would come the league’s way. Reising pointed out that as part of the league’s new collective bargaining agreement, the incentive for the players to compete is there, with prize money up for grabs and stats contributing to regular season averages.
“Now that’s fine, but if your goal is to try and attract people’s attention during your regular season, would it not be best to try and figure out a time where it does not conflict with the biggest and baddest of sports in this country at arguably its most critical time?” Reising asked.
“December and January in the NFL are the most important months of the season,” he said.
Reising pointed to the NFL also having a footprint over Christmas the last couple of years. Games during the final weeks of the regular season that have playoff implications overshadow the NBA schedule on Christmas Day. Despite ratings for the NBA being up 5% year over year for its Christmas Day slate at 4.271 million, it paled in comparison to the numbers FOX (25.9 million), CBS (22.6 million) and NBC (17.1 million) saw for their NFL games over the course of the afternoon and evening.
“Not only are they losing the competition to the NFL on properties that the NBA already owned, Christmas Day was the NBA, and now we have NFL games on Christmas Day,” he said. “And now we have NFL games across the Christmas weekend in a way that completely smothers one of the NBA’s marquee weekends, marquee days, marquee competitions. That’s when they put some of their best matchups of the regular season.”
The NBA will get a break from holiday head-to-heads with the NFL after this year as Christmas falls on a Wednesday in 2024. The holiday is on a Thursday in 2025, so undoubtedly the NFL will schedule another tripleheader.
