The NBA Finals Has Lost Its Aura

Ever since I can remember, I have always loved the NBA Finals. There is nothing like watching some of the league's greatest teams and players ever looking to cement their legacies or place in basketball history by competing on the sport's biggest stage with millions around the world watching.

However, throughout the first two games of the 2025 NBA Finals between the Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder, it just hasn't felt like the Finals. Some will argue that this is because of the teams being in two smaller markets, but for me, this isn't a recent problem; it is something that I have felt for a few years now. Somewhere along the way, the Finals has started to lose its mystique, and that is a major problem for the NBA going forward.

For me, a big part of the problem is the broadcast itself. Everything about the Finals used to feel big. The pregame introductions were must-see TV themselves; the music blasted through the screen, the lighting, the national anthems, or even the way the camera would pan to the stars in the crowd—it simply felt different. 

Now? These games feel no different than a Wednesday night in December. Nothing gets the viewer fired up pregame, as there’s no dramatic shift in tone or presentation to signal that this is the biggest moment of the basketball year. That sense of occasion has disappeared over the last few years.

The most unforgivable example of this is the court design. The fact that there is no “NBA Finals” logo painted on the hardwood is head-scratching. I understand fans missing their giant Larry O’Brien Trophy decal at center court, but that hasn't been around for years. The court not giving us any indication that this is an NBA Finals game is absurd. How does Adam Silver's joke of an in-season tournament get more attention to detail to signify these games are different than the Finals themselves? Without those physical markers, at first glance, you’d have no idea these were the Finals. It looks like a regular season game.

Of course, the reasoning for all of this is money; the NBA has a lot of sponsors or partners who pay a lot of money to have their company names shown on the broadcast, but through that corporate greed, they’ve lost the plot on how to make the Finals feel special. The Finals should feel like the grand conclusion of the NBA season, but it no longer does. Like I said before, the league will hype up its in-season tournament with bold colors and courts so much so that at times it's hard to watch, but when it comes to the Finals, the visual spectacle is gone.

Sure, the games over the last few years have been good for the most part, but the truth is presentation matters. The NBA needs to recapture the magic of the Finals if it hopes to keep both casual and die-hard fans invested. 

Bring back the Finals' logo on the court. Enhance the broadcast in some way. Give us a pregame montage that gets us excited. The little things matter!

Because the aura of what made the Finals feel special before has started to fade, if not gone already.