The current state of the NBA just makes me sad. Some of my best memories from college are playing pick up ball all day and then having dinner and pregaming while we watched those epic Lakers Kings playoff matches before going out. At this point, nobody I know even really watches the NBA and the only time I talk about it with my friends is usually if they have bets on the games.
Another data point that is kind of interesting is that I watch a lot of NFL games, even for the teams that I don’t like, but I consume almost no podcasts or other media about the NFL. I just watched the games. The NBA is the total opposite where I still listen to Nate Duncan‘s podcast basically every single time it comes out and I follow the league pretty closely, but I almost never watched regular season games. I don’t know what it says about me that I can tell you everything about Denny Advija’s game from listening to Nate and Danny discuss it while I do the dishes, but I haven’t watched a Trailblazers game in like five years.
When the NBA is at its very best, like during a really good playoff series where everyone is healthy and trying all out, I think it’s still really really delivers the goods. The problem is that you get that level of product only about 1% of the time, whereas the NFL delivers a pretty great experience almost every weekend.
I’ve recently given up on forcing myself to be interested in the NBA. The primary factors of my disappointment are star players missing tons of games from injuries/rest (particularly on tanking teams), foul baiting and traveling is out of control, and maybe once a week we’ll see a truly competitive game go to wire.
The NBA has sinpmy become unbearable to watch during the regular season (and some playoff series) and watching college is not a backup option since NIL has decimated the team aspect of major D-1 schools.
I agree with the other reader that the NFL is now in a league of its own for sports fans. Adam Silver “got the bag” (as they say) with the last TV rights deal but the networks had no other live linear TV options with general entertainment moving to streaming/on-demand. There’s a clear reason that YouTube TV, DirecTV and others now have “Sports and Broadcast” only cable packages…and it’s not because the NBA is popular.
This reminds me of the NBA Roku app’s descent into slop. Back in the halcyon days of cord-cutting (2011-2016), the NBA used streaming to generate INTEREST, not ad revenue. The UI was flawlessly clean - you could watch the recaps of every game, a daily top-10, and even segments from shows like “The Starters,” all ad-free, with nimble loads and navigation. It made me INTO an NBA superfan because it counterbalanced the commercial slogs of games with breezy concessions to keep interest strong in small but consistent doses. Fast forward to the late 2010s, and the app became a parody of bloat: ads before a 13-second dunking clip (if it even loaded at all), a bomb-crater UX of nonsensical categories and outdated content, etc, etc. Without that “goody bag” tether of free and consistently rewarding fun, I was less inclined to watch actual games or strongly engage with the sport or its characters.
I consume sports generally in the same way Clint does outside the NFL (can't avoid being "spoiled"). There are sites similar to Stream East (biggest pirated streaming site) that simply host the recorded games of professional sports. Some even cut out the commercials. Still not as good as youtube but they usually have it hosted on multiple sources so you can swap if one is having an issue. Usually uploaded a few hours after the game airs. Video quality goes down a tiny bit as well, seems to be some sort of compression going on usually. Although some sites are better than others.
They're not that hard to find....A few google attempts should get you there. Just make sure you get an adblocker in your browser before you try using any website like this.
If I'm getting a competitive experience on some free random website compared to a massive subscription based service provider....That service provider has a problem.
Stream East is about maximum quality you can expect from 3rd parties, but it's never as good as the official broadcast. That gap closes every year, harder and harder to tell the difference
They have to capture the broadcast then send it out. So there is always some degradation. Only exception would be if they could get a higher quality source than was broadcast.
The NBA app has been atrocious for the last 15 years. My memory may be wrong but I think it's essentially the same good and bad over that time. It is an active reason to not pay.
The NBA app isn't perfect, but it mostly gets the job done for watching full games without too much trouble.
I will echo his point about the Prime app being horrible. Their fast forward function is the most infuriating thing ever to deal with. Every time I fast forward and resume playback, the quality drops to 140p for about 10-15 seconds until it recovers.
Also, Prime includes the hour long pre-game as part of the game, so if you watch from beginning, you have to fast forward about 70 minutes to get to the start of the actual game. No other platform does this! The pre-game is always a separate program.
Don’t love the nba app (though better than it was 2-3 years ago) and the prime exclusivity is annoying. But people really give away the game with the nfl stuff. The nfl buries 18 regular season games and a playoff game *on the same app* and has a Sunday Ticket platform that’s aggressively expensive, constantly being price hiked and tethered to YouTubeTV, which decided to cut its customers off from Disney platforms for a month (coincidentally right after a mass of customers made a 400 dollar Sunday ticket commitment.) they don’t care about you either and they’re flagrant about it. You just might like the game more.
Don’t get me wrong. The nfl is absolutely trying to extract as much money from us as possible. For me personally I like the YouTubetv UX and already subscribe so them being exclusive on it didn’t bother me. And I think nfl plus is better than any of the game replay / condensed options the nba has. My newfound preference for the nfl over the nba is more about stuff Ethan has discussed (event sport versus inventory sport etc) versus the apps. I just think the nba giving you only an option of the incredibly poor nba and prime apps to consume their product is another example of how the league is going to hell.
For the NFL by the way, you can get NFL plus, and get access to replays of all of the games for only $100 per year. They post condensed versions of games which just cut the time between plays (basically all of the dead time) within two hours of the game finishing. That is an awesome way to stay up-to-date with the league if you don’t want to spend your entire Sunday on the TV.
The current state of the NBA just makes me sad. Some of my best memories from college are playing pick up ball all day and then having dinner and pregaming while we watched those epic Lakers Kings playoff matches before going out. At this point, nobody I know even really watches the NBA and the only time I talk about it with my friends is usually if they have bets on the games.
Another data point that is kind of interesting is that I watch a lot of NFL games, even for the teams that I don’t like, but I consume almost no podcasts or other media about the NFL. I just watched the games. The NBA is the total opposite where I still listen to Nate Duncan‘s podcast basically every single time it comes out and I follow the league pretty closely, but I almost never watched regular season games. I don’t know what it says about me that I can tell you everything about Denny Advija’s game from listening to Nate and Danny discuss it while I do the dishes, but I haven’t watched a Trailblazers game in like five years.
When the NBA is at its very best, like during a really good playoff series where everyone is healthy and trying all out, I think it’s still really really delivers the goods. The problem is that you get that level of product only about 1% of the time, whereas the NFL delivers a pretty great experience almost every weekend.
I’ve recently given up on forcing myself to be interested in the NBA. The primary factors of my disappointment are star players missing tons of games from injuries/rest (particularly on tanking teams), foul baiting and traveling is out of control, and maybe once a week we’ll see a truly competitive game go to wire.
The NBA has sinpmy become unbearable to watch during the regular season (and some playoff series) and watching college is not a backup option since NIL has decimated the team aspect of major D-1 schools.
I agree with the other reader that the NFL is now in a league of its own for sports fans. Adam Silver “got the bag” (as they say) with the last TV rights deal but the networks had no other live linear TV options with general entertainment moving to streaming/on-demand. There’s a clear reason that YouTube TV, DirecTV and others now have “Sports and Broadcast” only cable packages…and it’s not because the NBA is popular.
This reminds me of the NBA Roku app’s descent into slop. Back in the halcyon days of cord-cutting (2011-2016), the NBA used streaming to generate INTEREST, not ad revenue. The UI was flawlessly clean - you could watch the recaps of every game, a daily top-10, and even segments from shows like “The Starters,” all ad-free, with nimble loads and navigation. It made me INTO an NBA superfan because it counterbalanced the commercial slogs of games with breezy concessions to keep interest strong in small but consistent doses. Fast forward to the late 2010s, and the app became a parody of bloat: ads before a 13-second dunking clip (if it even loaded at all), a bomb-crater UX of nonsensical categories and outdated content, etc, etc. Without that “goody bag” tether of free and consistently rewarding fun, I was less inclined to watch actual games or strongly engage with the sport or its characters.
I consume sports generally in the same way Clint does outside the NFL (can't avoid being "spoiled"). There are sites similar to Stream East (biggest pirated streaming site) that simply host the recorded games of professional sports. Some even cut out the commercials. Still not as good as youtube but they usually have it hosted on multiple sources so you can swap if one is having an issue. Usually uploaded a few hours after the game airs. Video quality goes down a tiny bit as well, seems to be some sort of compression going on usually. Although some sites are better than others.
They're not that hard to find....A few google attempts should get you there. Just make sure you get an adblocker in your browser before you try using any website like this.
If I'm getting a competitive experience on some free random website compared to a massive subscription based service provider....That service provider has a problem.
So sad that you get a better experience with pirating versus paying a premium. The NBA — it’s FAN-tastic!
2025 World Series on streameast looked like Avatar. Crisp, sharp colors, visually stunning.
Idk what the competition offered, though, so maybe that was everyone's experience.
Stream East is about maximum quality you can expect from 3rd parties, but it's never as good as the official broadcast. That gap closes every year, harder and harder to tell the difference
They have to capture the broadcast then send it out. So there is always some degradation. Only exception would be if they could get a higher quality source than was broadcast.
The NBA app has been atrocious for the last 15 years. My memory may be wrong but I think it's essentially the same good and bad over that time. It is an active reason to not pay.
The Masters app has taken considerable steps back in the last 3-4 years. It used to be state of the art. Kinda funny seeing how much new fans love it.
The NBA app isn't perfect, but it mostly gets the job done for watching full games without too much trouble.
I will echo his point about the Prime app being horrible. Their fast forward function is the most infuriating thing ever to deal with. Every time I fast forward and resume playback, the quality drops to 140p for about 10-15 seconds until it recovers.
Also, Prime includes the hour long pre-game as part of the game, so if you watch from beginning, you have to fast forward about 70 minutes to get to the start of the actual game. No other platform does this! The pre-game is always a separate program.
Don’t love the nba app (though better than it was 2-3 years ago) and the prime exclusivity is annoying. But people really give away the game with the nfl stuff. The nfl buries 18 regular season games and a playoff game *on the same app* and has a Sunday Ticket platform that’s aggressively expensive, constantly being price hiked and tethered to YouTubeTV, which decided to cut its customers off from Disney platforms for a month (coincidentally right after a mass of customers made a 400 dollar Sunday ticket commitment.) they don’t care about you either and they’re flagrant about it. You just might like the game more.
Don’t get me wrong. The nfl is absolutely trying to extract as much money from us as possible. For me personally I like the YouTubetv UX and already subscribe so them being exclusive on it didn’t bother me. And I think nfl plus is better than any of the game replay / condensed options the nba has. My newfound preference for the nfl over the nba is more about stuff Ethan has discussed (event sport versus inventory sport etc) versus the apps. I just think the nba giving you only an option of the incredibly poor nba and prime apps to consume their product is another example of how the league is going to hell.
League Pass NBA TV NBA app everything is mediocre at best, too often worse, and this has always been the case w NBA related tech
Pre Covid MLB app > today's NBA app
Masters app A++
For the NFL by the way, you can get NFL plus, and get access to replays of all of the games for only $100 per year. They post condensed versions of games which just cut the time between plays (basically all of the dead time) within two hours of the game finishing. That is an awesome way to stay up-to-date with the league if you don’t want to spend your entire Sunday on the TV.