No One Knows

Posted by Rob Mahoney on July 25, 2011 under Commentary |

Attendance in NBA arenas is a strange and fickle thing, and though it can be rationalized, I’m not sure it can ever be fully understood.  You can draw logical lines from star players to spins of the turnstiles. You can connect wins to the bottom line attendance numbers. But there will always be some variable completely unaccounted for, a mystical motivating force that allows teams like the Warriors to fill seats even at their worst, while, well, the NBA CHAMPION DALLAS MAVERICKS struggle to draw fans on the road.

According to the NBA’s reported attendance data (via ESPN.com), Dallas didn’t draw much interest at all away from the American Airlines Center; they ranked 23rd in road attendance percentage, just above the Detroit Pistons, a team that won 27 fewer regular season games than Dallas. This is the company that the Mavs kept last season in terms of road appeal, and try as you might, there’s still little to be explained or understood. Dallas was hardly a title favorite, but they were still one of the league’s best regular season teams, boasted a legitimate star player, were an established commodity, and brought along plenty of big names…and yet the Mavs were the worst road draw of either conference’s top-four seeds. They can’t be America’s plucky underdogs on every night out (or really, they can’t play against the Heat on every night out), and though Dallas is on top of the basketball world after an arduous climb, stadium frequenting basketball fans just didn’t have much of an interest whenever the Mavs came to town this past season.

I’m sure basketball fans had their reasons — both conscious and unconscious — for their lack of interest, but it’s difficult to come to any rational conclusion on the subject. Had the Dirk Nowitzki era become too stale to basketball consumers? Had fans across the country simply bored with the Mavs as a concept after the string of premature playoff exits?

Regardless, things should change next season, as even a long lockout can’t dull the glimmer of a newly crowned champion. The Mavericks still won’t be the team to beat whenever the NBA continues business as usual, but at the very least they should be deemed a more immediately relevant component of the basketball landscape by those buying up regular season tickets. The Mavs have been present in their currently competent and competitive form for what seems like an eternity, but winning a title draws an incredible public interest. Dallas is no longer that very good team filled with very good players, but a champion to be unseated. Dallas’ dip in road allure is likely no more, and the cause of that dip will never be determined beyond some pretty abstract guesswork. Shrug your shoulders. It’s just one of those things, and in this case we have little choice but to be perplexed.