While I was recording yesterday’s sports forecast podcast (say that ten times fast) I remarked that, opposed to the NHL’s national television schedulers, who chose a bummer of a game between the San Jose Sharks and the Buffalo Sabres, the NBA schedulers had gotten it exactly right by choosing the game between the Sacramento Kings and New Orleans Pelicans. What a difference, I though, that the NBA somehow managed to figure out before the season that this would be a close game between two exciting young teams. And between two teams without much pedigree also. Man, those NBA schedulers are smart. I watched about ten minutes of the game last night and while I enjoyed the action, something was nagging me, tugging at the back of my mind. What was this addition to the NBA TV scoreboard graphic at the bottom of the screen? Why did it say “Fan Night” in big, bold letters? What about this made it more of a night for fans than any other night on NBA TV. So, I looked it up.
NBA TV Fan Night works like this. Each week, fans can vote on which game they want to see next week. The NBA provides three choices and the one that gets the most votes by Saturday of the previous week, is shown nationally on NBA TV that Tuesday. Yesterday’s game between the Pelicans and Kings beat out two other games: the New York Knicks at the Milwaukee Bucks and the Los Angeles Lakers at the Atlanta Hawks. This week, the race is between these three games: the Atlanta Hawks at Washington Wizards, the Golden State Warriors at the Miami Heat, and the Detroit Pistons at the Milwaukee Bucks. Right now the voting stands at 84% for the game between the Warriors and Heat, 10% for the Hawks and the Wizards, and only 6% for the Bucks and the Knicks.
This, for a few reasons, is pretty cool. First of all, I love the idea of allowing fans to control which games get nationally televised. After all, why shouldn’t the fans have a say? For big-time national television channels like ESPN, TNT, Fox, CBS, NBC, CBS, etc. they are always showing games televised with their own team of announcers, camera people, and producers. For them, it makes sense that you’d need to plan ahead for logistical reasons. But NBA TV, like similar networks for other leagues, often simply carries regional televised games on a national platform. It’s awesome that the NBA decided to let fans choose which games to see, at least one night a week. It’s also smart — the alternative is that more people will cut the cable cord and go full-time to watching games on the internet through services like NBA League Pass, NHL Game Center, etc. The leagues benefit from these sales but television is still far more lucrative. NBA TV Fan Night is also really great for two non-commercial reasons. One, I love seeing how the voting is going for next week. What a fun little game-without-the-game! Fans of the Hawks, Wizards, Bucks, and Kings should feel a little depressed that so few unaffiliated fans want to see their games. It’s kind of a diss, isn’t it? And fans of the Pelicans, Kings, Warriors, and Heat should feel great that people are catching on to how much fun their teams are to watch. I also particularly find it interesting, at least for these two weeks, how closely my instincts about what games would be interested are shared by the majority. What does that mean? Are we all a product of the sports-media hive mind? Or do we just know good basketball?
I’m going to keep my eye on this for the next few weeks and see if there are any close races or interesting conclusions to be drawn.