As Game 4 of the 2025 NBA Finals wraps up, many basketball fans have taken to the internet to voice concerns that the NBA has yet to address.
This Finals series—like several recent ones—has seemingly lost its aura.
So, here are my suggestions to ensure the games we watch in June don’t feel like just another Tuesday night in January.
On-Court Championship Logo and Finals
I feel like this is the most obvious one out of all of my suggestions.
The NBA needs to bring this one back in order to properly give a statement to their viewers that the games being played are the actual NBA Finals. Whether these are the die-hard fans that watch the NBA, the casual ones, or even the first timers, it’s for the better.
It symbolizes that this is the ultimate stage of competition, both for the fans and players.
Other than “nostalgia”, these on-court logos add to the excitement factor for supporting their squads since not every NBA team is granted to reach this stage of their playing careers.
In the recent Game 3 of the NBA Finals, Commissioner Adam Silver spoke about why these designs had to be removed and why there is a need for innovation.
Yet the NBA Cup on-court design feels like an NBA Finals. It’s understood that perhaps there are some players who have slipped in the championship on court stickers in the past.
If they can do these during the “Ber months” of the calendar year, then most certainly they can do these when it’s June. The designs aren’t even bad or horrible to begin with. They are actually great as on-court designs.
The league is continuously improving with these NBA Cup on-court designs, so how come the best that they can come up with are “digitally televised on-court finals designs”?
NBA Finals Scorebugs
ESPN, ABC, NBC, and other broadcast media companies used to ‘COOK’ these designs. But as time passes by, it gets uglier, simpler, and minimalist.
These are screenshots from the previous NBA Finals. The Lakers vs Boston in 2008, Cavs vs Warriors in 2015, and Warriors vs Raptors in 2019.
Back then, it had style, flair, and glamor.
But nowadays, this is what we are given. Seen below is a screenshot in the recent Game 4 of the NBA Finals 2025.
It’s plain, bland; the only aspect that remained from the previous finals is the golden color. NBA needs to coordinate with these broadcasting companies to try and at least convince them to “go back with their old ways,” as these scorebugs back then were able to deliver a whole new, different vibe to viewers.
The way it is made in recent years it’s so “Gen Z”: Basic, simple, shortened.
Broadcast Crew
When the broadcast crew features a retired NBA player, a former NBA head coach, and a longtime basketball broadcaster assigned to the NBA Finals, you know you’re getting your money’s worth.
Jeff Van Gundy analyzes the plays made by both teams, Mark Jackson giving props to the players making the right decisions since he has been in the NBA Finals as well, and Mike Breen igniting the crowd with his famous word “BANG!”
Now, instead, what we have is this:
Richard Jefferson, a retired NBA player who was part of the 2016 Cavs who won the title, Doris Burke, who has been a longtime courtside reporter, and Mike Breen.
Doris was great in her job before, being on the sidelines, appearing on the screen not more than 5 times, and fans loved that they could listen to her reports for a limited time only.
Richard, on the other hand, is just a decent reporter. He’s great in the pre-game and post-game show of the NBA on ESPN as a basketball analyst, but he’s just not fit to be part of the Finals crew.
The truth of the matter is, Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson may sometimes say some hilarious things on air, but the chemistry of their trio was what every NBA fan wanted to hear in the finals.
A proper mix of humor, criticism, and professionalism was present whenever they were on the broadcasting crew together.
There’s a TikTok creator named flyuploads who’s doing voice-overs on “what Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy would say during these Finals”.
In his videos, we could again hear the famous phrases of: “Allow me to have this dance”, “Mama, there goes that Man”, “Grown Man Move”, “Hand Down, Man Down”,
And there’s no video yet, but the catchphrase, “Big time players, making big time plays,” was also an iconic line during the NBA Finals.
