Despite constant handwringing from the national punditry about the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) ratings, a post-Christmas bump has left the league at an only marginal deficit to its previous season. True, the ratings have plummeted in the last decade-plus — four out of five of the lowest-rated finals of the last three decades occurring in these last four years — but these trends are not unique to the NBA.

Yet this hasn’t stopped a full-throated league audit, with the media class singling out their favorite reasons as to why the league’s numbers aren’t performing more favorably. Perhaps the loudest iteration belongs to right-wing figures like Clay Travis, who claim the league is simply too political and, specifically, too woke. This of course is a reference to George Floyd’s murder five years ago, where in lieu of spearheading a work stoppage to show solidarity with the victims of racialized police brutality, the players union allowed itself to be swayed back onto the court by league officials and former president Barack Obama. Who can forget the many league-approved social justice messages on the back of their favorite players’ jerseys that year, bangers like “Listen,” “Vote,” and my personal favorite — “Education Reform.”

Other more mainstream pundits have focused on the league’s dwindling percentage of American-born stars, suggesting US fans don’t connect with the Luka Dončićs and the Giannis Antetokounmpos of the world. This is a strange position, given these foreign-born stars’ fluency in English, which can often serve as an impediment for some non-native speaking athletes’ Q-ratings in internationalized sports.