The NBA is no stranger to criticism for declining viewership numbers. Many blame load management or the lack of fierce rivalries, while Shaquille O’Neal claims the league relies too much on three-point shots. But Adam Silver doesn’t seem rattled. The NBA Commissioner has been quick to brush off these accusations, calling any declines temporary blips. And guess what? He might be right. This past Christmas, NBA viewership hit a staggering high, and former Warriors star Matt Barnes believes Silver is just getting started.

1980 NBA champ, Spencer Haywood recently re-shared a video featuring Matt Barnes raving about the league’s holiday performance. Barnes wasn’t shy about praising the product on display, saying, “All four games were high-quality, high-level, high effort. Incredible, incredible—the NBA that everyone has grown to know and love was on display yesterday.”

Barnes took it a step further, pinning his hopes on Silver to capitalize on the moment. “I think it’s Adam Silver’s job to figure out how to bottle that up and keep the momentum,” he shared, and honestly, the numbers back him up. The Lakers-Warriors Christmas showdown raked in an 84% jump in viewership compared to the previous year. With 7.76 million fans tuning in across multiple platforms, it became the most-watched NBA regular season and Christmas Day game in five years.

But the Lakers-Warriors wasn’t the only highlight. Earlier that day, the Knicks-Spurs thriller drew 4.91 million viewers, marking the best Christmas Day opener in 13 years. Not only that viewership also soared 98% from last year.

And that’s not all—every Christmas Day matchup saw massive year-over-year gains. The NBA on Christmas Day averaged 5.25 million viewers per game in the U.S. Even amid the ongoing backlash, it’s clear Silver’s optimistic approach has legs.

Is Adam Silver right about the NBA’s viewership comeback?

Frustrated with today’s NBA, Shaquille O’Neal called out the league for being too predictable. “Everybody’s running the same plays, at the damn top of the key, dribble hand off,” he shared on The Big Podcast. Shaq even mentioned a coach who wanted his team to jack up 50 three-pointers in a game, shaking his head at how far things have shifted. “Viewership will continue to go down unless we switch things back up,” he warned.

Not only that, Magic Johnson chimed in with his own take. He believes the NBA’s lost the fierce rivalries fans used to love. “That’s what it’s got to get back to … the number of viewerships are going down, and these guys better wake up.” He didn’t stop there, though. Magic took aim at another hot topic: load management. “You got to play. We took pride in playing 82 games,” he emphasized, clearly annoyed at the current trend.

On the flip side, Charles Barkley and Kevin Garnett joined the chorus of complaints, but NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has a completely different perspective. Speaking at the Paley Center Summit, he brushed off the criticism of the three-point shot. “I don’t think it has anything to do with the 3-point shot,” Silver remarked. He blamed external factors, not the game itself, for any dips in viewership.

To his credit, Silver pointed to a prime example of these distractions—this season’s early games, which went head-to-head with the World Series featuring the Dodgers and Yankees. “They brought in a big audience,” he noted. Now, as those external factors wane, is the NBA finally rebounding? Silver seems to think so, and recent numbers just might prove him right.