If you are Adam Silver right now, which of these is more prominent in your mind?
The NBA’s gangbusters TV ratings, the best the playoffs have seen since ABC started carrying the league?
Or that the league’s three biggest stories right now do not include the conference finals?
Between super-prospect Victor Wembanyama being ticketed to the Spurs, Ja Morant getting himself into gun-related trouble again and the unknown future of the Warriors, the actual playoffs feel a little bit crowded out of the conversation.
And that does not even include another story that might trump either final-four series: The Bucks, Suns and 76ers all firing their coaches.
This is not a new problem for the NBA, but yet again, it feels as though following the league requires a lot less watching of basketball than it should.
You can’t follow the NFL without being planted on your couch on Sundays, Mondays and Thursdays.
But Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals on Tuesday between a back-to-back MVP winner and one of the sport’s best players ever felt like an afterthought to the Wembanyama sweepstakes.
The lead stories on ESPN’s website on Wednesday morning were all Wembanyama, with Lakers-Nuggets below the proverbial fold.
Ditto for The Post, which devoted more space in our Wednesday paper to the lottery than to the conference finals.
Morant’s antics have been a megastory, dominating the sport’s discourse since the original video of the Grizzlies point guard waving a gun in a Denver strip club appeared more than two months ago.
The latest incident has not just gotten coverage in sports circles — outlets such as CNN and CBS News are covering Morant, who released a statement Tuesday night saying he takes “full accountability” after he was again streamed with a gun on Instagram Live, leading the Grizzlies to suspend him from all team activities.
These stories being bigger than actual basketball makes sense on some level.
We’ve been told for months that Wembanyama is the next generational talent to enter the NBA and that he can instantly transform a franchise. His performance in a Las Vegas exhibition in October went viral, and caused LeBron James to call him an “alien.”
His going to the Spurs — as the heir apparent to Tim Duncan and David Robinson — is too good an angle to resist.
Morant’s downfall has become a human interest story, which is why it’s gone beyond the sports pages.
There are elements beyond the gun incidents, namely the Washington Post’s reporting that he was accused of punching a teenager during a pickup basketball game, but the videos of Morant have been a flashpoint — easily digestible and with no explanation required, making the story accessible to non-basketball fans.
What’s curious is why the Warriors and the coaching carousel — stories about the teams that lost in the playoffs — seem bigger than the teams that are still playing.
Yes, the Warriors are this generation’s answer to the Bulls, but how often has a team out of the playoffs felt more important than the teams still in the playoffs?
And yes, it’s bizarre that Mike Budenholzer, Monty Williams and Doc Rivers — three great coaches — are on the market despite successful runs (in Budenholzer’s case, winning a title just two years ago), but coaches getting axed despite success isn’t exactly new.
The TV ratings would argue that none of this has hurt the league, at least so far, but it will be interesting to see whether the trend continues into the final two rounds.
Undoubtedly, part of the reason for high viewership has been great matchups in the first two rounds: Lakers-Warriors was must-see television, the Sixers and Celtics are two marquee franchises, the Knicks are a big draw and so on.
It figures that Lakers-Nuggets and Celtics-Heat, which opened Wednesday night with the typical Jimmy Butler heroics, should get buzz.
It’s four deserving teams, with star power, in good basketball markets. If you’re a basketball fan, you should be excited about both series.
But will they drive more conversation in the coming weeks than Wembanyama or Morant will?
That is the bar here, and it’s tough to see either series clearing it.
And regardless of how many people are watching, it can’t be a good thing that the biggest stories around the league are off the court. The NBA has been down this road before, and it’s not where they should want to be again.
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Do these kids pitch, too?
A sub-.500 team with a record-setting payroll? A creaking rotation letting up crooked numbers? Tricky lineup decisions with top prospects?
No problem. Just hit more dingers.
A sequence of three dramatic home runs lifted the scuffling Mets over the MLB-best Rays, 8-7, on Wednesday night in their most thrilling performance of the season.
Pete Alonso’s moonshot in the 10th inning provided the walkoff winner after Francisco Alvarez tied the game on a three-run blast with the Mets down to their final out in the ninth.
But first came Mark Vientos’ game-tying, seventh-inning two-run homer in his 2023 debut after being called up to Queens earlier in the day.
Because it is hard to believe that sitting Brett Baty to make space for Vientos to play third base is anything resembling a permanent solution for the Mets, the crucial question of how they will find playing time for the 23-year-old Vientos remains unanswered for now.
Baty, another 23-year-old prospect who has hovered around league average OPS since being called up, should not be on the chopping block, though he is more expendable than Pete Alonso at first base. (Baty finished Wednesday’s game in left field after pinch-hitting in the ninth.)
Given that dynamic as well as Vientos’ reputation as a below-average defensive player, it feels as though his best chance of being an everyday player is to be the Mets’ DH.
A platoon of Tommy Pham and Daniel Vogelbach combined to put the Mets at 20th in the league in wRC+ at the DH position going into Wednesday night, so there is room for Vientos to make himself necessary.
For that to happen, he’ll need to improve on a .167/.268/.278 slash line over 16 major league games last season, though his 1.104 OPS and 13 home runs at Triple-A Syracuse this season indicate that is a strong possibility.
The hype around Vientos and the exhilaration around Wednesday’s win aside, the Mets have more to do to turn their season around than merely calling up a top prospect.
For all that’s been made about the lineup, the gap between reality and expectation largely has been a product of the starting pitching, which has a collective 5.35 ERA even after Kodai Senga’s six innings of one-run ball.
No matter how much younger the lineup gets, the Mets’ chips are still all-in on two pitchers aged 40 and 38.
If Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer stay healthy and perform like themselves, the Mets can turn this around.
If the rest of the season looks like the first six weeks, during which both pitchers struggled with injury and put up ERAs over 4.75, then whatever Vientos and the kids do can be viewed more through the lens of the future than 2023.
Today’s back page
⚾ Yankees waste strong Gerrit Cole outing in walk-off loss
🏀 VACCARO: RJ Barrett is trending upward again
🏒 Inside ‘leader’ Jay Leach’s NHL rise to potential Rangers coaching candidate
Manchester City ends the pretense
Well, that was a dud.
The unfortunate reality for European soccer after Manchester City 4, Real Madrid 0 on Wednesday might just be that one team, financed by the mighty purse of the United Arab Emirates, is that much better than everyone else.
This second leg of the Champions League semifinal was meant to be a heavyweight fight after a tight 1-1 draw in the first leg. Instead, City was so much better it looked as if the two teams were in different classes — a takedown that evoked Bayern Munich’s 8-2 rout of Barcelona three years ago for its comprehensiveness.
City are now barreling toward the first “treble” in English soccer since Manchester United in 1999. The Premier League title, over Arsenal, is all over but the shouting. City will be massive favorites in the FA Cup final (on June 3 against United) and the Champions League final (on June 10 against Inter Milan, in Istanbul).
And for all the noise about the club’s inability to win a European championship, it is hard not to view that as inevitable. City have an embarrassment of riches in midfield, overrunning a championship-caliber Madrid side on Wednesday while Riyad Mahrez and Phil Foden were both on the bench.
They have a generational striker in Erling Haaland, who is setting goal-scoring records at every turn.
They are about to win a fifth domestic title in six seasons, and will likely do so for the fourth time with more than 90 points — a feat that happened just five times in the Premier League era (since 1992) prior to 2017 — in a league where parity is allegedly valued.
There is still the chance the treble will be spoiled or that alleged financial breaches by City could eventually disrupt their rule over European soccer, but if you were to handicap it, the biggest challenge to one Middle East-backed superclub would be … the other Middle East-backed superclubs: Newcastle United (Saudi Arabia), Paris Saint-Germain (Qatar) and Manchester United (should the club be sold to Qatar-backed investors over British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, who seems to have the inside track).
That is your bummer for the day.
