Throughout my teenage years where I began to develop my love and passion for my sports, one thing I could look forward to every year was the next chapter in the LeBron James vs Stephen Curry rivalry that shaped the NBA in the mid 2010s up until the early 2020s.
James' and Curry's battles were always must-see television and thus far have featured 4 NBA Finals matchups, one Conference Semi-Finals series, a Play-In game, as well as countless marquee regular season matchups most of which were aired on National TV on holidays such as Christmas Day, and Martin Luther King Day.
As the NBA's 2024-25 schedule was released on Thursday, the two teams with the most national TV games this upcoming season were the Los Angeles Lakers with 39, and the Golden State Warriors with 36. This wasn't a shock to me, but I do have a problem with it.
As LeBron & Steph enter their 22nd and 16th NBA seasons respectfully, it is clear their careers are closer to the end than the beginning, and we don't know how many more times these two basketball icons will face off against one another on the court.
With that in mind, it is understandable why the NBA continues to showcase the two individuals and their teams, as, despite their age, they both still are the two most recognizable faces in the association, which usually equates to the Lakers and Warriors games being the highest rated games of the NBA season.
However, despite the Lakers and Warriors' popularity, both of them probably are not close to winning a championship with James and Curry on their rosters and with their final years in the league upon us, the NBA needs to begin to phase out of that era of basketball, and while appreciating these two legends, they need to start promoting the next generation of stars like Anthony Edwards, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Luka Doncic, and Victor Wembanyama, to name a few of the faces us fans need to start feeling more comfortable seeing on national TV consistently.
Much conversation around the NBA over the past 18 months or so has been about who is in line to be the next faces of the league when LeBron and Steph hang it up, and in my opinion, the reason this conversation is so interesting is because the NBA usually seems to have a succession plan in place.
For example, in the 70s, it was Julius Irving's league, which bridged the gap into the 80s which was defined by the Bird-Magic rivalry that saved the league.
The Bird-Magic decade, led into the 90s which was occupied by Michael Jordan who took the game to new heights. When we got into the 2000s, Jordan passed the torch to Kobe and Shaq, and in the 2010s James and Curry gave a similar vibe to the Bird-Magic era.
As we are nearly a half decade into the 2020s, it should be a tad concerning for the league that LeBron and Steph are still by far the faces of the league while they are on the back nine of their careers and should not be expected to be playing into May and June at this point in their careers.
In my opinion, nothing has been more evident that the NBA has a LeBron-Steph showcasing problem than the narrative surrounding the last two NBA Finals.
Even though the last two championship series have featured potentially the two best players in the world, with Nikola Jokic and Luka Doncic going up against two of the more popular franchises of the 21st century in the Miami Heat and Boston Celtics, a lot of fans have said the Finals just no longer feel as high stakes as they should and that the Finals has lost it's "aura".
I think a lot of those sentiments have to do with the fact that the casual fan is used to the LeBron vs Curry games being the ones they are so used to watching because the NBA has made it clear, it's LeBron, it's Steph, then it is everyone else.
With the two of them not having much longer in the NBA, I am fully supportive of remembering the LeBron-Steph rivalry, and hell I have no problem with their games specifically up against one another being national TV games, but at the end of the day, the NBA is a business.
For the future success and long-term gain of their business, the league needs to start promoting their under-25 stars as they will be the ones who begin to take over the league as early as this upcoming season.
For the NBA to stay relevant with the ever-growing popularity of the NFL and College Football, as well as the rise in viewership in the NHL in the United States, the league and Adam Silver must balance honouring the past while preparing viewers for the future, by showcasing the next generation of rivalries that will define the NBA over the end of the 2020s, as well as possibly the beginning of the 2030s.
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