The NBA season just started. Is anyone watching?
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 22 October 2025
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Can the Oklahoma City Thunder defend its championship? How will all the player injuries affect the dynamics in the Eastern Conference? And if fewer people are watching the games … how does the NBA grow?
“Post Reports” tackles the important questions at the heart of this year’s NBA season, which began Tuesday.
And we’re bringing in the experts: The Sports Moment writer Ava Wallace joins NBA reporter Ben Golliver in a special sports takeover of the show.
Today’s episode was produced by Lucas Trevor. It was edited by Ted Muldoon and Reena Flores and mixed by Sean Carter.
Subscribe to The Washington Post here. And sign up for The Sports Moment newsletter here.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The NBA season tipped off last night, and the league seems to be at a crossroads. |
| 0:10.1 | Legends like LeBron James, Stefan Curry, and Kevin Durant are slowly inching towards retirement, |
| 0:16.2 | prompting questions as to who's going to replace them at the top. |
| 0:19.4 | Then there's the issue of declining viewership in the United States. |
| 0:22.6 | So I think what the NBA has been trying to do here at this particular moment is say, hey, we know we're incredibly popular. |
| 0:30.6 | We're everywhere on social media, but how do we make sure as many people as possible can see our games? |
| 0:36.6 | How do we get back to having those gigantic television numbers that they enjoyed during the Michael Jordan era? |
| 0:42.5 | Ben Goliver covers the NBA for the post. |
| 0:45.3 | You know, as the season starts this week, we're going to see the NBA's new plan, |
| 0:49.6 | how they're going to be reaching those people that maybe they were missing in the past, |
| 0:52.6 | or maybe they've lost here over the last 10 to 20 years. |
| 1:00.2 | From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports. |
| 1:04.5 | I'm Ava Wallace. |
| 1:05.9 | It is Wednesday, October 22nd, and today, Washington Post sports reporters are taken over the show. |
| 1:12.5 | We are coming at you the day after the NBA season tipped off. |
| 1:16.4 | We're previewing the biggest narratives this season, the teams and players to follow, |
| 1:20.6 | and we're going to dig in on the league's big existential questions. |
| 1:24.6 | If no one's watching, how does the NBA grow? |
| 1:30.3 | Yeah. question. If no one's watching, how does the NBA grow? I think it might be a little bit counterintuitive, but despite the fact that there's still |
| 1:40.2 | huge cultural interest in the league, viewership is actually declining. Can you break down |
| 1:46.3 | what is actually happening with those declining numbers? Well, yeah, I mean, I think the NBA was |
| 1:51.2 | really never more popular on television during the golden era of Michael Jordan, the Chicago Bulls |
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