I like horse racing. Horse racing decline is actually in many ways (though not for exactly the same reasons) the same as for the NBA - neglect and bad decisions by management. Nobody likes to see a horse tumble and die right in front of them. But you have tracks that have been redone very poorly (oddly, with the aim of lessening harm to the horses it has caused more spills) and the trainers and owners are running broken down horses against the advice of veterinarians.
I had an interest in a race horse once many years ago. I loved that little filly. She ran for a couple of years but when the vet x-ray was was showing signs of hairline fracture in her front legs, we immediately stopped racing her and sent her out to breeding. Many trainers and owners would have kept her on the track until the problem worsened, only perhaps to watch her break down and die in front of thousands of spectators. And that’s a major turn off to everyone and certainly doesn’t help build support for the sport.
Same is true for the NBA. We don’t change channels from the News to Sports just to get more News and opinion. The NBA and other leagues have turned off major portions of their own audience and with few exceptions they have nobody to blame but their own poor decisions. And the networks that paid great sums of cash to air their games are doing the same, injecting politics into their ‘color commentary’. Sure, every player has an absolute right to their own opinion. But show me any office that allows political or religious contentiousness to fester - I’ll show you an office full of dysfunction and discontent. That is why many policy manuals actively discourage this type of conversation on company time.
And Kelly is right, there is a major difference between wearing a pink ribbon to remind people of breast cancer and the need for awareness and early diagnosis vs painting “BLM” in the middle of the court. She is even more correct - and where it gets interesting - is that BLM means different things to different people. Nobody disagrees with the statement that “black lives matter”, of course they do, but that is completely different from the political movement and the political aims of the organizers and leaders of the movement - who really do cloud their true agenda behind the sorrow of very grim incidents that occur in society. The NBA and other sports audiences are not fools. The leagues are fooling themselves.