Detroit Pistons’ forward Blake Griffin highlights disparity in market size attitudes

Can Anything Be Done?

Super-teams threaten to leave small-markets behind who have trouble attracting players away from the cultural centers of the East and West coasts, creating a talent disparity and cycling through the same handful of contenders year-in and year-out.

But can anything be done to help balance the league?

Direct league intervention has a proven unpopular in the past after David Stern infamously vetoed a 2011 trade that would have sent Chris Paul to the Lakers. Adam Silver is smartly more laissez-faire in his approach to managing player moves than his predecessor.

Where Silver and the league could intervene less dictatorially is through financial means and improving on “Bird Rights” cap space rules that continue to incentivize and assist teams in retaining players without cap space penalty.

These policies, however, would take time and need to be slowly rolled out over a few years to allow for front offices to make adjustments.

More immediately, however, the media has control over balancing the league through determining who is given exposure. With Monday’s schedule release, the unsurprising imbalance in nationally televised games was also revealed.

The Lakers lead the league with an anticipated 43 nationally-televised games (ABC, ESPN, TNT and NBATV), while a depleted Golden State Warriors managed 42. The Clippers pulled in 38. Even a Durant-less Nets team is set to air nationally 20 times.

This is contrasted with small-market teams like the Cavaliers, who have one nationally televised appearance, the Pistons (six), and Pacers (11).

There are exceptions to this rule. Large-market teams such as the Knicks are only scheduled to play six national games and the Bulls are stuck with a four. Charlotte and Cleveland have a league-low three. Meanwhile, the small-market Bucks are slated for 23 appearances and Davis’ former team in the Pelicans earned 20 games.

While it makes sense that national networks want large audiences for revenue’s sake, these exceptions speak to high profile players’ abilities to draw large audiences to middle-America teams.

Giannis Antetokounmpo, who was retained under Bird Rights, drew national attention to the Bucks last year with an MVP season that helped lead Milwaukee to the top seed in the East. Williamson’s hype is evidently paying off in national attention around the Pelicans.

More from PistonPowered

• Which Detroit Pistons could save Team USA in the Olympics?
• Detroit Pistons could have major roster churn after 2023-24 season
• The best Detroit Pistons to wear each uniform number
• Full Detroit Pistons NBA 2K24 ratings
• Detroit Pistons: Who will sign the remaining NBA free agents?

Basketball fans will always watch basketball. Cursory fans will watch good basketball. Good players make for good basketball, and good players will go where they will be noticed and relevant. If the basketball media gives more attention to more teams through a more even distribution of nationally-televised games, it’s not insane to think talent will disperse more evenly throughout the league.

With recent appearances on Hot Ones, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Just for Laughs, and an upcoming appearance on Comedy Central’s roast of Alec Baldwin, Griffin has clearly not lost his marketability.

In this light, voicing his appreciation of Detroit will not just continue to win over Pistons fans, but will help to show other high caliber players that playing for a small market does not mean irrelevance -especially if that team is a contender.

Ultimately, Griffin’s voice is one voice, and the media more evenly distributing games is only a small and only a potential step in balancing talent among small- and large-market teams. But until more effective and thorough policies are established, is it not worth a shot?

What do you make of the market disparity in the NBA? Let us know in the comments or by liking Piston Powered on Facebook and following Piston Powered on Twitter.