The internet stays undefeated when it comes to bullying the NBA, ladies and gentlemen!
Just a week after social media users successfully bullied legendary play-by-play announcer, Mike Breen, into bringing back his “bang” call, and quasi-successfully bullied the Larry O’Brien Trophy back onto the court, the league has once again been coerced into capitulation.
There’s some of that old-school Finals pageantry we’ve been missing!
With ratings continuing to be an issue for the NBA, it looks like the league has started listening to its fanbase’s cries on social media.
As Shams Charania noted in his tweet, this is the first time since the 2013 NBA Finals between the Heat and Spurs that the player introductions for both teams will be aired on the broadcast.
One can only wonder why they decided to do away with them in the first place, though the prevailing theory (as with most decisions these days) is that it came down to dollar signs in the form of ad revenue.
The comments on Shams’ post are, naturally, very funny, with fans acknowledging the fact that they have once again bullied the league into doing what they want.
It’s hard to argue with these fans when you look at the results.
Complain about the Larry O’Brien trophy being absent: the NBA hastily superimposes a clip-art version of the trophy only to then be bullied out of it halfway through the game.
Complain about Mike Breen holstering his “bang” on Tyrese Haliburton’s game-winning shot: Breen panics and inserts a premature “bang” into the first quarter of the broadcast.
Now we have fans complaining about the lack of player intros, so what does the NBA do? They brought them back for the first time in over a decade.
The people of the internet are on an unprecedented run right now and should be given their props for slowly bringing some much-needed “aura” back to the NBA Finals.
Now if we could just have them bully the NBA into replacing Richard Jefferson and Doris Burke, we would really be cooking with napalm.
