Has Luka-Lakers Solved The NBA's Ratings Ills? Not Quite.

For the first time in nearly five seasons, the NBA's ratings are increasing.

On Saturday, the Lakers-Celtics matchup drew 4.61 million viewers on ABC, marking the most-watched non-Christmas regular-season NBA game since 2018.

Two weeks prior, the Lakers-Mavericks game on TNT, Luka Doncic’s first game against his former team, averaged 2.5 million viewers. At the time, it was the most-watched non-Christmas game of the season behind Opening Night.

In December, NBA ratings on ESPN were down around 28% year over year. The recent surge—along with some dishonest accounting of the Christmas Day slate—has essentially wiped out those declines.

So, has the NBA officially rebounded?

Not quite.

LOS ANGELES, CA - FEBRUARY 25:  Luka Doncic #77 of the Los Angeles Lakers greets fans after the game against the Dallas Mavericks on February 25, 2025 at Crypto.Com Arena in Los Angeles, California. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and/or using this Photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 2025 NBAE (Photo by Adam Pantozzi/NBAE via Getty Images)

We predicted after the Lakers' shock trade for Doncic in January that strong ratings would follow. The trade was the shot in the arm the NBA needed.

While the NBA is often in the news, its headlines rarely translate to on-court interest. Conversations about players paying for abortions, requesting trades, sitting out games to rest, and jumping teams in free agency are great for social media discourse. However, those topics don't push viewers toward watching the games on television. In some ways, they do the opposite.

The Luka trade is different. The most famous franchise in the NBA traded for a generational talent at just 25-years-old to pair with one of the great players in NBA history in his twilight years as a pro. That is worth watching. That storyline draws casuals to the television screen.

That said, specific storylines last only so long. LeBron's first season with the Lakers in 2018 was also good for viewership. Then the novelty wore off.

While the Luka-led Lakers intrigues casuals, his arrival has not increased their interest across the league. Last Sunday, the first-seeded Thunder faced the second-seeded Nuggets in an ABC matchup featuring the leading two MVP candidates, Nikola Jokic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Despite the Sunday afternoon billing, the game averaged just 1.8 million viewers.

Jokic and Gilgeous-Alexander are the two best players in the world, and yet only diehard hoops fans seemed to care about the head-to-head showdown. In terms of mass appeal, Jokic vs. SGA is hardly this era's LeBron vs. Steph.

Sure, a Lakers-Celtics Finals this June would do a bonkers rating. But the much more likely Thunder-Celtics Finals would not. (Despite Boston's storied history, the team's recent Finals trips have hardly produced the viewership for which the NBA would hope.)

Visions of a Thunder-Cavs Finals, featuring the teams with the best records in the NBA, must keep Disney executives up a night.

Luka and the Lakers are simply a temporary solution to the NBA's ills. The issues that have come to plague the league remain – including load management, point inflation, too many three-point shots, and a relatively inconsequential regular season. The NBA also remains too politically divisive of a sport to attract macro interest.

But we confess, an NBA storyline that actually plays out on the court is refreshing. It sure beats hearing about Steve Kerr speaking at the DNC or claims of great white hope-ism each time Jokic makes a new case for MVP.