The NBA Marketing Machine Needs a Fresh Approach

I have never agreed with the way the brass of the NBA promotes their product.  "Larry  and the Celtics versus Magic and Lakers" was never a good idea to me since the team names will always be there, but Larry and Magic will not.

NBA rosters are smaller than those of any other pro sports league, but there is still something to be said for team rivalries.  Those have staying power.  The magic of the 1980s rivalry between Larry Bird's Celtics and Magic Johnson's Lakers was a blip on the radar for the league in retrospect. 

The '90s were dominated by Michael Jordan and the Bulls, but they had no true rival.  Clyde Drexler and the Blazers, Karl Malone and the Jazz, and Isiah Thomas and the Pistons all came and went during the run of the Bulls.

Then one day, Michael retired for the second time and the league realized they had not cultivated team rivalries.  It was a down swig for the NBA until Shaq, Kobe and the Lakers came together and started winning titles. 

The logic seems to be there will always be the next big thing, so the league continues to promote the next big thing.  If they would focus on team rivalries, then they'd always have intrigue. 

In this day and age of free agents, the NBA's promotion ideas get further convoluted.  There was "T-Mac, Vinsanity and the Raptors," then it was "Vince Carter and the Raptors," and "Tracy McGrady and the Magic." Now it is "Tracy and the Rockets"—then T-Mac gets hurt, and a good team like Houston is left without the headlining name.  The Nets fall into obscurity and Vince is no longer a draw.

The Kings were relevant with Chris Webber, Vlade Divac, and Mike Bibby, and they pushed Shaq and Kobe's Lakers, but now the Kings are nowhere to be seen. 

As Kobe winds down his career, LeBron is ramping his up, but if he leaves the Cavs, then all of sudden, another franchise will be without a face.

The league markets its stars, but not every team has a star now, rendering a number of clubs obscure as a consequence.

The Spurs' elimination got me to thinking about this topic again.  They were what the NBA should have been cultivating: A franchise with a team-first mentality that won titles.  They were rivals with the Suns, and the Lakers, and even the Nets had a good NBA Finals against them. 

They were hard pressed to be "Tim Duncan and the Spurs," since Duncan never did any interviews.  Duncan, like his coach, just wanted to win the last game of the season. Anything else was a distraction.

The Spurs should have been the model of a new NBA marketing strategy. Now that their run is over, a golden opportunity has passed.  The new marketing campaign should have focused on cultivating rivalries between teams.

The Spurs made the playoffs and even had star power, but were still relatively obscure to the nation thanks to the NBA's marketing strategy.  There is a sentiment to kick them now that they are down—it's a shame that they were not built up when they were good.

The success the Spurs had in the past ten years will be hard to match by any team in the next decade. San Antonio went through the Lakers when the Lakers had Kobe and Shaq. They beat the Pistons, and they beat LeBron's Cavs. They also kept the Suns from getting to the promised land.

The Spurs are lucky: Most franchises have runs like the Dirk Nowitzki's Mavs and Steve Nash's Suns, in which they come close and don't close the deal.

San Antonio closed the deal four times, an amazing feat in a league like the NBA that promotes stars. They showed every general manager in the league that if you build a great team, you can beat all of the stars.

But they weren't able to show the NBA brass that the league's marketing strategy is no longer a working model toward the growth of the game.