NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said the league will pull back from its in-your-face support for Black Lives Matter next season, in what seems like an attempt to recover from collapsing ratings, BroBible reported.
“I would say, in terms of the messages you see on the court, on the jerseys, this was an extraordinary moment in time when we began these discussions with the players and what we all lived through this summer,” Silver said on an ESPN broadcast before Game 4 of the NBA finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat.
“My sense is there’ll be somewhat a return to normalcy, that those messages will largely be left to be delivered off the floor,” he said.
In July, the NBA moved to an isolated “bubble” at Walt Disney World in Bay Lake, Florida, for the teams to play the remainder of the season as well as playoff games.
But ratings have sunk since the move.
Game 1 of the NBA finals saw the lowest ratings in history, with only 7.41 million people watching. Then, Game 2 and Game 3 tanked even lower, with 4.5 million and 4.4 million viewers, respectively.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, criticized the NBA’s ratings have fallen through the floor because it “has decided to insult half of its fans” by supporting an organization rooted in a radical Marxist, anti-democratic agenda.
“I love watching NBA,” Cruz said Tuesday on The Sean Hannity Show. “I’m a die-hard Houston Rockets man. I have been since I was a little kid.”
At the moment, though, he said it has become “painful” to watch.
“They’ve essentially decided that half their fans are idiots and racists,” Cruz said, “and they’re just going to insult them and they’re going to lecture them—and when you watch an NBA game now, it’s just, the announcers are engaged in political tirades the whole time.”
