The answer is not good enough to stop the CBS steamroll going on during Thursday nights (Survivor followed by CSI and the Mentalist), but pretty damn good.
In fact, if it were listed on the prime time Nielsen ratings, it would have come in third place. Not bad for a program that only shows draft picks walking up to a podium followed by game film and a bunch of people deciding how smart a team was for selecting him.
When you put the NFL Draft only up against other sporting events, it absolutely destroys the competition. Baseball is only a few weeks into a long season, so that's understandable.
The NBA, however, should worry. Viewers chose to watch the draft over the NBA playoffs by a 2 to 1 and sometimes 3 to 1 margin. This is the NBA postseason. This should be the pinnacle of the league. Yet it gets smoked by a show about a draft. The NHL playoffs got crushed as well, but nobody is surprised anymore when hockey ratings don't do well.
We all know the NFL dominates sports ratings, but this discovery is a crushing blow to pro basketball in America. Remember a decade ago when Michael Jordan helped the NBA creep up on baseball (still in the post-strike slump) for second place on the American sports landscape? Things looked bright for the future of basketball.
Then Jordan retired and the league couldn't replace him no matter how many personalities it shoved down our throats. Allen Iverson had too many tattoos and he didn't like PRACTICE! (We here talkin about practice!) Shaq was viewed as just a giant guy who bulldozed his way to the basket, Kobe was an ego-maniac who was accused of rape, Tim Duncan has the personality of a door knob, and players were simply viewed as less interested in winning and more interested in their tricked out rides and their group of buddies walking around in chains and sunglasses.
Don't get me wrong, David Stern has done wonders expanding the NBA to a world-wide audience and making it a true international sport.
Here in America though, the people have spoken. And they have said that the NBA isn't that important.
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