Dwyane Wade Ruins Charles Barkley’s Bold Effort to Save NBA Ratings With Stinging Reality Check

With the drop in NBA ratings, the chatter about the reasons continues to rise. While several NBA and sports personalities continue to share their theories behind this anomaly, some focus on the reasons, while others press on solutions. Charles Barkley has also shared his hopeful notion that could boost NBA ratings. Only, it might not be able to! Why? Dwyane Wade recently explained his belief which may leave Barkley’s hope in vain.

In a recent episode of The Why Podcast, Bob Metelus mentioned the NFL vs. NBA debate on Christmas. He highlighted how the Ravens-Texans game got extra attention because of pop queen Beyoncé’s halftime performance. When asked, Wade highlighted the main difference that no one is talking about. Last Christmas, the NBA saw an increase in ratings, averaging 5.32 million viewers. The Lakers vs. Warriors game garnered the most viewership with 7.76 million viewers. However, that’s still much less than the 26 million views the NFL garnered in two games on Netflix.

Highlighting the reason as to why the NFL gained such viewership in America, the former Miami Heat player Wade said, “We can’t compete with them. Once again we have a thousand games, they have 18 now games that they just put we can’t compete with them. This is their America is their to sport okay so if they decide to come on Christmas, they gonna come on Christmas just all them basketball fans just make sure y’all tune in.”

He further added, “That’s our s–t. That’s… Christmas is ours. Thanksgiving is theirs, whatever. This is about making money okay so yes the player in me say yeah get this Christmas. This all it’s about making money.” 

Before this, LeBron James also commented on how he loves the NFL, but Christmas belongs to the NBA. “I love the NFL, but Christmas is our day,” he said. He said so because the NBA has been playing games on Christmas for decades, whereas the NFL has only been playing at least one game since 2020. During his recent appearance on the New Heights Podcast with Travis and Jason Kelce, he mentioned how, from a viewership perspective, the NFL was quite tough on the NBA’s five-game viewership.

“You guys kicked our a–, all right. From a viewership standpoint, y’all kicked our a–,” James said. So, will Barkley’s suggestion work?

What did Charles Barkley suggest for the NBA?

While many disagree that the NBA’s ratings have any issues, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver named the World Series and Presidential elections as the reasons behind the drop. On the other hand, several people have suggested strategies to help the NBA, as mentioned before. After loads of comments on whether the issue is the three-pointers, attention has shifted to the timing.

Chuck believes that the best NBA ratings were seen when the games started on Christmas because of strikes. He believes that it’s a waste of time to go against NFL or other football games. The aim of this is to remove the competition by starting late. 

In an interview with Dan Patrick, the Philadelphia 76ers legend Barkley said, “I think if we started at Christmas, there’s no other sport that we’d have to compete with if we started at Christmas. College football would be over, pro football is winding down, we’d have the entire calendar late December, January, February, March, April, May, June to ourselves. I think it’s something we really need to consider, plain and simple,” Barkley said.

It isn’t exactly the opposite of what Wade said. While it’s impossible for anyone to assume the success rate of it, but Chuck did make a strong point. What is your take on this?