The NBA’s Christmas Day games, a longstanding tradition, faced fierce competition this year as the NFL boldly scheduled matchups on Christmas, drawing between 27 and 29 million viewers and overshadowing the NBA’s 5 million for the Celtics-Lakers clash, revealing a significant decline in viewership.
The other NBA games did significantly worse. For example, the clash between the Mavericks and Suns had just 1.5 million viewers tune in.
Entrepreneur Patrick Bet-David, an Iranian-born American, is critical of the NBA’s waning appeal, attributing it to the league’s overtly political stance.
Bet-David emphasizes NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s endorsement of the corrupt BLM organization, which he labels a “con job,” pointing out the impact of this endorsement on the league’s popularity.
“I think two things are holding the NBA back: LeBron James and Adam Silver. Period,” Bet-David said on PBD Podcast. “Because David Stern was a boss, you feared him. He was a liberal, he went to Columbia. I believe he went to one of those liberal schools…
“For me these two guys are part of the problem because Adam Silver fell for a con organization called BLM and they wrapped BLM all over the place and we found that afterward that was a con job. Those guys fooled you, Adam Silver. You were naive and you fell for it.”
Bet-David doesn’t reserve his criticism for Silver alone; he extends it to LeBron James, the face of the NBA. According to Bet-David, James’s divisiveness and perceived lack of respect for the military and police are major contributors to the league’s downturn.
Drawing unfavorable comparisons, Bet-David suggests that LeBron lacks the unifying qualities possessed by other sports icons like Giannis Antetokounmpo, Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, and Kobe Bryant.
“Number two, is LeBron James is a divisive face of the NBA,” he continued. “When you think about the face of the NBA, you want somebody like, I don’t know, like Giannis [Antetokounmpo], you want [Tom] Brady, you want Michael [Jordan], you want Kobe [Bryant].
Bet-David recalls Jordan’s response to a police shooting incident, where the basketball legend supported both the Chicago PD and a black non-profit organization with equal donations, contrasting it with LeBron’s perceived divisive nature.
“You know what Jordan did when it came down to an even that happened with the cops shooting and back and forth? He gave both, I think it was a Chicago PD and a black non-profit organization, he gave each of them five [one] million bucks,” he noted.
“You know what he’s trying to say? ‘Hey, here’s where I am, I support both of them.’ … LeBron is divisive. He makes the game unattractive to watch, unattractive to follow. I haven’t followed the Lakers ever since this guy joined the Lakers.”
Bet-David speculates further, suggesting that NBA players contribute significantly more to left-leaning causes, particularly the Democrats, than players in any other major U.S. sports league.
