More than the past year imo; I’d say for the last 3 years or so. I largely started avoiding the comments, but then I realized that a league as popular as the NBA would have news coverage anywhere. I then started following The Athletic for my news; that being said, I do miss having good conversation about the NBA with others. I’m hoping that constructive criticism and disagreements can be upheld here, as that was lost on the subreddit years ago.

r/nba has been pretty bad as long as I can remember. Every thread has always been low effort jokes like LeSomething.

Yeah, it just descends into tribalism, and stupid jokes that are tired and old. The only things that get upvotes is drama and hot takes. Kinda sad to be honest.

The mods are largely to blame for what is happening to that place right now. If they stuck to the spirit of the protest by boycotting Reddit while it was closed, then it would only be a little toxic.

But nope, they had to create GDTs and post on other open subs. That put their credibility and sincerity under scrutiny, and the entire blackout pointless. Nobody’s buying their story that they weren’t threatened - everyone’s going to think that was the case and they’re selfish cowards. Any attempt to now close threads for being off topic would come off as them silencing backlash.

If you want actual discussion you need to go to r/nbadiscussion. They have rules that are enforced.

Way too many online NBA fans aren’t basketball fans. They just watch the NBA because it’s socially unacceptable for men to watch The Bachelor

I mean it all feeds off the drama. The NBA is the most drama league in all the North American major leagues. So it appeals to story’s and narratives more than play at times. My friend doesn’t watch any games all year and starts telling me how the Lakers will easily win this year. Because of one ESPN vid he watched.

I think it is just literally the usual decline of a large sub. You always get low effort and drama bubbling to the top as the userbase grows.

I think the NBA product, specifically the announcers and commentators, fail to feed a more nuanced product to their viewers. Marc Jackson’s “you gotta play harder,” or “you have to want it more than the other guy” just doesn’t build a deep respect for the flow of the game, or the underlying strategies and tactics being gamed out. Baseball is much better in that regard, and I think it has kept the meme dilution away from the game.

I’m mostly a nobody but it has been clear to me that most people can’t or don’t have any incentive on starting discussions or threads on r/nba. Over the last few years, the only thing that has appeared on the “hot” sorted posts are memes, robot posts, parody posts, etc.

The worst are those posts that are just attempts to garner upvotes, like statistical analysis of weird things like players going to strip clubs.

Then came r/nbadiscussion and even that wasn’t much better.

In the end, I think it’s just a matter of numbers. Having a discussion on r/nba or any other popular subreddit is like having a discussion in a noisy auditorium filled with thousands of kids, teenagers, adults, old people, trolls, etc.

The most enjoyable interactions I had on Reddit were via smaller niche communities where there were only a few thousand posters, max.