The world according to Jim:
• If you missed – or ignored – Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Thursday night, it’s your loss.
We have heard, ad nauseam, that there will be a low level of interest nationally in this series. Oklahoma City and Indianapolis are out-of-the-way markets, their stars don’t move the needle, a Finals in the (supposed) hinterlands will send the national TV ratings into the tank, etc.
But who, among those of us who watched Thursday night, wasn’t paying close attention as Indiana chipped away at OKC’s lead and finally overtook the Thunder, with Tyrese Haliburton’s latest game-winning shot stealing Game 1 for the Pacers, 111-110? …
• By the way, who else among those of us who watched noted that the clock showed 0.3 when Haliburton drained his shot and wondered if Derek Fisher wasn’t somehow going to check into the game for OKC? …
• But this is the common wisdom in sports these days: If a matchup doesn’t feature big markets (New York, L.A., Boston, Chicago) or recognizable names (LeBron, Curry, Tatum, maybe even Durant at this stage of his career), the so-called smart guys banish it to the broom closet. Nobody cares, they say. The national TV ratings will be in the tank. Thus, the matchup and trophy are somehow tarnished.
To name just two local examples: Try telling members of the 2002 Angels or the 2007 Ducks that their championships are irrelevant. …
• Game 7 of the 2002 Angels-Giants World Series drew a 17.9 rating and 28 share on Fox, 24% below the previous year’s Yankees-Diamondbacks Game 7, and that was the high point of the series from a ratings standpoint. And while the L.A. and San Francisco markets both had local ratings in the 40s, the national consensus seemed to be, “eh, two California teams, why bother?” (And this was with Barry Bonds in the Giants’ lineup.) …
• The Ducks-Ottawa matchup in the 2007 Stanley Cup Finals drew miniscule U.S. ratings. Game 3 drew a 1.1 rating on NBC, tied for the network’s lowest prime time rating ever with a West Wing rerun, and the highest figure was 1.8 for the Ducks’ clincher in Game 5.
But there are two asterisks. One Canadian team meant half the local impact in the ratings on this side of the 49th Parallel. Worse, the first two games were shown in the U.S. on Versus, which was struggling to get on cable systems, and those games each had less than 1 million viewers. For games 3, 4 and 5 on the main NBC network, U.S. viewership inched into seven figures and reached its highest figures in Games 4 (2.79 million) and 5 (2.902 million). …
• Yeah, go ahead and throw out the old, tired “nobody cares” trope. I’ll guarantee you that people in OKC and Indianapolis will be watching, and no matter who carries away the Lawrence O’Brien Trophy, it won’t have any notation etched into it regarding TV ratings. …
• Oh, and here’s one other place where they’ll be watching closely: Seattle should have the largest Pacers rooting section outside of the state of Indiana, because folks up there will never, ever forgive or forget after their Sonics were moved to OKC in 2008. …
• Meanwhile, the pulse of the public seems to vacillate between (a) fury at big market baseball teams for spending all that money to win, and (b) boredom over small market teams succeeding in a sport that enforces parity through a punitive salary cap.
Can we make up our minds, please? …
• If it’s June, Dan Hurley must be saying no to NBA coaching offers, right? …
• Since ESPN is scheduled to take over TNT’s renowned “Inside The NBA” show next season anyway, any chance they could move up the timeline to get Ernie, Kenny, Chuck and Shaq on the air for pre- and post-game segments during this series? …
• Marco Sturm got his promotion, if a year late. The former Kings assistant and Ontario Reign head coach for the last two seasons was named the Boston Bruins’ new coach on Thursday. He’s already getting positive reviews in Boston, and since he played for the Bruins he’s familiar with the culture and the expectations in New England. …
• Asked last spring if he were willing to move back into the NHL as an assistant as a step toward a head coaching job, Sturm said no: “That’s not my goal to be (an) assistant. I think I am a better head coach than assistant.”
Now he gets to prove it. …
• Today’s quiz: That aforementioned Ducks-Senators Game 5, a 6-2 decision that gave Anaheim its only Stanley Cup to date, took place 18 years ago Friday at Honda Center. What happened in the previous game in Ottawa? Answer below.
• UCLA’s new chancellor, Julio Frenk, has declared that he will be actively involved in the athletic program. That’s a significant change from his predecessor, Gene Block, and maybe it should send a message.
Especially at the power conference level but not exclusively, chancellors and presidents who care about athletics and pay close attention can help create success (and the revenue that comes with it). Those who treat that part of the campus with benign neglect, as we’ve seen too often in too many places, often get the mediocrity (or worse) that they deserve. …
• Quiz answer: Andy McDonald provided the tangible assets on the scoresheet, with two second-period goals in the span of a minute and an assist on Dustin Penner’s game-winner in the third period of a 3-2 victory that gave Anaheim a 3-1 series lead.
But Ducks captain Scott Niedermayer provided the words of wisdom, right after Ottawa’s Daniel Alfredsson had shot the puck directly at him as the second period ended. He told his teammates between periods not to retaliate and just concentrate on hockey. Those who remember the truculence of those rough-and-tumble Ducks know how much of a sacrifice that was. …
• And yes, I used “truculence” intentionally. That was one of Ducks general manager Brian Burke’s favorite words, and you’d better believe his team reflected that attitude.
jalexander@scng.com
