Why Nobody Cares About The NBA Finals Anymore [Deep Dive] 

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From someone who isn’t from the states I have to say I love basketball but the amount of advertisements and breaks in the nba is insane. It’s just a money making scheme at this point, entertainment and the game comes second

"[Auerbach] literally leveraged the racism of St. Louis in the '50s into helping a Civil Rights Leader become the winningest player in NBA History." fucking lmao

A two hour Rusty Buckets video? We are eating good tonight.

if you're asking a mega corporation like the nba to stop the over monetization than i have bad news for you

I agree with the other years finals being boring but anybody who thought the 2021 finals were boring don't love basketball

BSOLZ said it best y’all have to prop the upcoming players better yall spent the whole year shitting on Tatum and the Celtics saying they would lose and how they were boring and a fluke team,who would want to see that if that’s how it’s advertised ?

I can’t believe I’m hearing Rusty positively talk about the Celtics, I used to pray for times like this man.

This is not a video, this is a two part documentary. Mad respect for the production value alone. This could be shown on any streaming platform. Well worth the wait.

wilt had the talent to do literally anything he wanted on a basketball court, the problem is just that he played in an era where people didn't know exactly what the best thing to do on a basketball court was.

im placing an uber eats order for a pizza while i click on this and look up and see nearly 2 hours, guess ima eat the whole pizza and watch this

Krause didn’t draft Jordan. That was Rod Thorn under previous ownership. Jerry Reinsdorf bought the team during Jordan’s rookie year and hired Krause.

1 thing I have to point out. There were a LOT of blowouts this postseason. The conference Finals were painful to watch. It’s not a choose one or the other scenario:2024 or 2016. My favorite post season in would be the 2019 postseason as it was full of moments, games 7s and a new champion out of nowhere.

First of all: the atmosphere isn’t the same without the playoff and finals logos on the court.

This vid finna go crazy when I put it on at 1am

Buckets, this is the type of analysis we will never see on network TV again. Salute to your entire team. Hell of a video.

The Minneapolis lakers was technically the first dynasty by winning five championships in the decade led by George Mikan

The League Pass rant is so accurate.

What people often forget is that injuries ruined the blazers dynasty in the 70s. They were 50-10 before Walton went down, he still won the MVP, and the blazers were still the 1 seed. I swear man our big men are cursed 😭

Glad that message for Dorks is in there. Some days we forget that not everyone engages with a product the way we do.

It's simple. People have shorter attention spans and would rather just watch the highlights after the game.

Hoodie Melo Untucked Kyrie Glasses Rusty

Rusty really is a legend for emphasising how well built the Showtime Lakers and Bird Celtics were. Kareem is THE all-time two-way centre. Magic is THE point guard. The 86 Celtics have the best front court ever. And these squads were together for a decade.

I think this idea of ratings equating to quality is a bad measure (yeah yeah I'm the millionth person to say this). I find I've still enjoyed the playoffs and the finals. I think dynasties are good for bringing in the casual fan but basketball fans can still enjoy the finals. I think the lack of aura around the finals has more to do with the lackluster presentation than anything on the court (except for the lack of a 7 game series, those tend to stick out in people's memories), and the lack of a dynasty now will also only likely make the next dynasty feel more special. Enjoy what is present today, and be excited for what's coming tomorrow.

We haven’t had a great 7 Game Series NBA Finals since 2016, the dynasty era is dead, media refuses to talk about the next generation of basketball and is squeezing every last drop of the LeBron, Curry and KD era.

Much needed video from a much needed channel.

8 minutes in and i already know this is gonna be a banger. good to see you back with another one of these man! genuinely great to see your growth from like 5 years ago or however long I've been watching

Before getting deep into the video ima give my opinion. Yes people just don't care as much about the league and the championship. But, does that matter? Basketball and the league are a fundamental part of culture and it will be so for a long time to come. NBA players will still get their bags, and championships and legacies will still be built. Now back to the vid.

As one of my youth coaches said, Magic is Yugi and Bird is Kaiba.

Literally stepping onto a 2 hour train ride. Thanks rusty

Great work on this Rusty!

I never knew bill russell also coached during his last years. That’s so wild

Amazing video!

Man you get so creative once the season ends guys make sure you like so he can keep doing vids like this

aye glad to have u back!

Probably your best work yet rusty, good shit

Can we just appreciate how much Marc Jackson and Van gundy were missed from the NBA finals coverage. Doris and jj were just meh. And it doesn't help that the broadcast team keeps reminding us about other teams and especially players that have nothing to do with the finals.

Love the content brotha keep going strong ❤️

Beautiful video brotherman

This is an amazing breakdown, Rusty. You and your team did a great job.

Really enjoying the long form content. I’m sure it takes a ton of work and it definitely shows.

And honestly, I am actually fine not having a face of the league or a dynasty for two decades.

awesome video, keep it up bro

Amazing videos Jacob

Quality of your videos keeps improving. This is good.

Incredible video, dude.

Because being still talking all the time about MJ and having and Icon living his 20th year in the NBA, this is like living in the past forever, the longer it gets the more boring it is. New brands grow small from that perspective. We should past the page , start focusing in the present for once, send Bron to play domino with Michael and let the young players make something of it.

2 hour video is some Kobe level grinding/dedication. W Rusty 🙏🙏

The year MY TEAM wins the NBA Finals is the year video essays go viral for claiming the NBA Finals is boring. Rusty told no lies I just wanna celebrate the chip man.

Editing and quality is fantastic. Worth the wait and effort Jacob and Rudy great work.

You're the best. Keep it up Jacob!

Amazing video.

great video bruh

Excellent video. Happy to watch this!😊

It’s been a pleasure watching you grow as a content creator. Can’t believe the guy who once argued John Wall was the best PG in the league is now making such great breakdowns

The dip in numbers is 100% because of illegal streaming, its just a better service than what the NBA offers. League Pass is absolute ass, and too expensive for most people outside the US. The price would be justified if you could watch old games or something with the same subscription but you can't even do that so its not worth it.

i deadass had this on to close out my shift. you’ve blessed the world with this one

unbelievable work from you guys. truly inspiring how well this is put together/edited. Thanks again for producing another great movie

The invincible-esque titlecard cut offs are amazing 😂😂😂😂

Keep up the great work man!

This is your best one yet, Rusty. Small things, like the music in the background of the Wilt example (it's a good example, please don't attack me) really make this one

Great video Rusty, the quality of this dive is legit amazing. Thank you for this!

Great video!! Also, that ad was absolutely hilarious😂

Love to see how far your production calue amd style of your videos has come along. Definitely some of the best basketball content out there!

Man this was an excellent video and such a thorough, well thought out, well put, and entertaining analysis. Awesome content man, much appreciated!

best one yet proud of u jacob

Awesome awesome vid bro you’ve been getting better at storytelling since the first long form vid.

YUHHH RETURN OF DEEP DIVE

as someone who was a deeply invested in following basketball 2010' through 2016' , graduated college and lost cable, this was an amazing documentary that was entertaining and informative. What you spoke about in the "War for Gary" section about the sport being divisive of the casual consumer vs real fans of the sports, that is being reflected in a lot sports (I'm a martial artist). Money usually breaks up an assortment of communal aspects, especially when it requires long term cultivation. Since things are cyclical it makes sense that slowly its coming back to some of it's original roots, can be misconceive as antiquated vs being a required foundational precept. Thank you for this!!!

I watched this while getting an arm pump in the gym, you the goat rusty🗣️🐐🔥

Fantastic video

Dude. The cat is the star of the frat house every game we stream. I could never unsub from a real ball knower like this

I’m loving this documentary-style stuff!

Great video - loved the love for Magic.

Keep going rusty 🎉

This video was well researched and put together! I learnt a lot and are looking at NBA finals through a different lens for the first time. Hope this gets the views it deserves Rusty 🤞🏿

I love the video so much. A couple thing to add: -1.) I know this is nitpicky, but Cooper was not the first DPOY. Before him was Sidney Moncrief (x2), then Mark Eaton, and Alvin Robertson. -2.) A thing that needs to be pointed out with the 70s is that we were robbed of a lot of talent. Rampant drug abuse aside, Bill Walton was had such a high peak before his injuries, and we were robbed of what should have been the best player in the league in the transition between Kareem's era and the Magic/Bird era. For reference, can you imagine if Steph Curry's lower body injuries robbed us of his superstar career post-2016, only for him to resurface a few years later as a cool 6th man on the Nuggets? Because that would be the equivalent of what happened with Walton

Brother, this is a masterpiece

return of the king

simply, thank you.

If you’re looking for video ideas, a rundown of the Aba would be awesome. A bunch of great players are totally forgotten by today, and even those who did make it to the nba aren’t seen as the greats they were.

What I really hated about the Finals was how many ads there were on and off the court. It’s just so ridiculous that we constantly have to be bombarded with RU-vid TV ads or the same repetitive commercials during ad breaks. It got to the point where I joked about having a basketball game in the middle of the commercials.

Imagine being an NBA fan in the 60s and how damn surprising it must have been to see Wilt FINALLY beat Russell to end the 8 peat Celtics' title defense. Must have been crazy exciting

Woah man the quality in this video is insane

There is the added factor that a lot of the audience for basketball is younger than for other major sports and many of them have figured out ways to stream games that would not show up in viewership statistics. I grew up in the 90s Bulls era and got back into basketball when I started playing it socially again (quite surprised that one of my old favourite teams the Golden State Warriors were suddenly very good) and by that point I had not watched or owned a television for over 15 years.

Great video! You're my favorite basketball RU-vidr.

Not gonna tell you how to run your own channel but I love this long form, high effort format you guys have been producing. I learn a lot from them. Keep it up!

Love to see more

wtfffffff great work !!!

This was one of the best videos I’ve seen on the NBA 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

As a casual, the Finals have fallen off to me cuz everybody's getting effin injured. Key players always get injured Every Season and the next runner up easily slides into the Finals. The gaps between teams just seems too damn wide. Every Finals feels like a team is there that shouldn't be there or got there too damn easily. The "parity" doesn't feel legit. These teams are only in the Finals cuz "something" happened.

Great historical analysis

Loved the channel for years man! Excellent video totally summarizes the whole super fans getting annoyed by dynasties versus casuals honestly preferring them. Not even close to as much of a basketball expert as yourself and a lot of others but I do know software. The problems you're seeing in the app that you were comparing about towards the end of the episode I googled the software jobs that the NBA has posted and frankly they're just not paying enough to get a good enough team together that would be able to fix them at the scale. So I'm sure there is a lot of churn on their team and they're using a lot of contractors that don't really care much as long as the app kind of works. They really need to up the salaries and have some kind of profit sharing / equity type of component to help with that.

There’s a reason why games between the lakers and warriors are still the most watched of the season despite the fact both were play in teams. Despite all the new talent in the league, guys like KD, Steph and Lebron are still carrying in terms of marketability and fan attention because instead of using platforms like the NBA finals to establish this new era which may even be the greatest from a talent standpoint, they’d rather bombard you with commercials, come back for 30 seconds to talk about what LeBron ate for dinner and then go back to commercials when he was eliminated 3 rounds ago. What is a casual fan who isn’t fully invested in simply basketball gonna think?

not even half way through but very very good video worth the wait

I think the big problem that just isn't being addressed is the fact that injuries have destroyed teams recently. I mean the 4 other best teams in the east this year were devastated by injuries. Players now just haven't been able to stay healthy and it's killed a lot of the excitement around the league. It’s hard for me to excited about the playoffs without worrying about injuries now. In the 1990s and 2000s there are extremely few examples of superstar players being hurt and it costing their teams. I’m struggling to think of any examples(2003 Dirk vs spurs is the only example I got)

Masterpiece

As someone who's primarily a baseball fan, I found this perspective really interesting, because the NBA's "ring/dynasty culture" is a lot different to how baseball fans conceptualize our own history. Only three MLB teams in the time period you covered would count as a dynasty by your criteria - the 1972-74 A's threepeat, the Jeter Yankees of the 90's, and the 2010's Giants - and even among those, I don't think they're considered as pivotal for the story of baseball as the Magic-Bird rivalry or the Bulls 6-0 run are for the story of basketball. MLB hasn't had back-to-back title winners in almost 25 years. A lot of the greatest and most popular MLB players (Ken Griffey Jr, Ernie Banks, Ted Williams, Mike Mussina, Tony Gwynn) never won a World Series, and most fans don't really consider that a knock on their respective legacies. A title is great, of course, but they're generally considered the climax for a great team or career, rather than a baseline requirement for greatness as some basketball fans seem to treat it. A lot of that is just because it's a lot harder to build a constantly winning team in baseball. In basketball, you can structure your offense around just one great player and still get results, like you said happened with Wilt or Luka. But in baseball, it's ALWAYS been about depth: your best hitter will always only ever get 1/9 of plate appearances, and your best starter will always only start every 5th game. The 2020s Angels managed to stack the two greatest superstars in the league, Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani, but never even *MADE* the playoffs because they had no depth beyond them; imagine if an NBA team had both SGA and Jokić but could only manage to win ~35 games a year! And as the quality of players continues to rise, the NBA could be heading towards that kind of roster construction. So if the NBA were to continue without a dynasty for an extended period of time, I'd wonder whether basketball fans would adapt by taking on a more baseball-ish mindset towards rings. Where a star player or great team can still be the "main character" and set the league's narrative for casuals without needing the continuity of a dynasty.

You look very healthy and well. I'm pleased to see that after a couple videos ago when you shared with us how much you were struggling with mental health issues and wanting to make a change in your life. You also noted that you wanted to make fewer quantity of higher quality videos and since that post I have very much enjoyed your latest videos and I think you absolutely nailed the sort of deeper higher quality content that you were after. I hope you're success continues! Great job, proud of ya ❤

This expository gained you a sub (after watching it three times)