Why I Care More About the NBA Postseason than the NHL Postseason

I am a lifelong sports fan, but certainly not a fan of every sport. I am huge follower of baseball, NFL football, and college football, as well a casual fan of tennis, golf, and even horse racing this time of year. That being said, there are three sports that I just can’t get into, no matter how hard I try to to like them: basketball, hockey, and NASCAR. Since the NASCAR season is pretty much year-round, I can generally ignore it with little fanfare. It’s different with NBA basketball and NHL hockey, because their seasons run congruently, so their playoffs are featured in the sports media simultaneously. With all that media attention, I consume a good deal of coverage of two sports that I have very little interest in. The more I thought about it, the more I realized something sort of bizarre: despite my generally equal apathy for the NBA and NHL playoffs, I’ve found myself much more interested the NBA postseason then the NHL’s. With that in mind, I started to look into why this phenomenon is happening with me.

First of all, the media does a great job of creating story lines for NBA, specifically in playoffs. Over the years, sports journalism has done an amazing job of chronicling story lines in the NBA. For example, the past 15 years or so have been filled with the LeBron James career ark. From his magnificent high school days in Akron, the build up of whether or not the Cleveland Cavaliers would get the first pick in the 2003 draft to select him, his rise to super-stardom in Cleveland, his decision to leave his home team to pursue championships in Miami, the four years and two championships he won in South Beach, and now his return to Ohio to bring Cleveland its first championship in 52 tears. With such constant fanfare from the media following LeBron James, it has a unique way of making non NBA fans like myself suddenly start paying attention to James’ annual foray into the NBA playoffs. With constant media attention and an admittedly very compelling story line, NBA superstars like James have a way being in the forefront of every sport fan’s attention.

LeBron James isn’t the only NBA star garnering similar attention. In this season alone, Kobe Bryant’s final game, Steph Curry’s annihilating the three-point-shot record, and the possible end of the San Antonio Spurs’ “Big Three”, have all gotten loads of media attention, and inevitably has risen to the forefront of most all sports fans attention. Even silly things like the “Crying Jordan” meme, or the face that Paul Allen makes after his team loses, further popularize the NBA, by slowly invading our Facebook newsfeeds and airtime on sports highlight shows. I have to give credit to the NBA - they really know how to make both their highlights and lowlights well publicized all around the sports world.

The NHL is a very different story. Unlike the NBA, the NHL and sports media in general does virtually nothing to promote itself. While you’ll see amazing trick shots by Curry, and constant memes about the likes of the Crying Jordan and Charles Barkley throughout social media, you will almost never see a great hockey shot or meme of a popular hockey player show up on those same websites and applications. The NHL also fails at highlighting story-lines of its best players and their stories. The closest to anything like the Bryant or James saga in the NHL this season has been Jaromir Jagr, the oldest active player in the NHL who is making and breaking quite a number of records. Despite his amazing career and longevity (he’s been playing since the George H .W. Bush administration), the NHL has done minimal work to share his story with both hockey and non-hockey fans. As a result, non hockey fans like myself lose a lot of interest in the results of his (and other NHL stars) team’s sucess, because their story lines just aren’t promoted like the NBA’s.

I think a lot of that has to do with the nature of the game of hockey and basketball. Basketball to me is more exciting to watch then hockey. Watching Steph Curry make a half court shot, LeBron dunk a ball as hard as he can, and seeing Kobe Bryant score 60 points is so much fun to watch, even for non basketball fans like myself. Meanwhile, the low-scoring hockey has a much tougher time in competing in engaging potential new fans to the sport with basketball. For most people who haven’t grown up playing hockey and being on ice regularly (i.e., almost everyone south of the great lakes), hockey isn’t very compelling to watch if you don’t really “get” the sport at an early age.

Since the NBA and the NHL playoffs run at the same time, if the choice is watching/consuming the media of a triple digit scoring NBA game filled with well known stars making jaw-dropping plays, or a low scoring NHL game featuring somewhat obscure players making mostly blocked shots, almost everyone who isn’t a hockey fan will gravitate towards the NBA game. And who would blame them? The NBA finals have historically been seen by millions more then the NHL finals, and I would imagine that would have to do with the added publicity and high scores of basketball. People watch sports to entertain, and the NBA playoffs, because of its media promotion and its compelling nature, is much more entertaining then an NHL game to the causal sports fan. Unless you really love hockey, basketball will almost always draw you in more. That’s why I care more about the NBA postseason then the NHL postseason. I look forward to the highlights of the NBA finals, and hearing barely a mumble about who wins the NHL finals.