SAN ANTONIO — This year’s NBA Finals pits the league’s biggest market against one of its smallest.
The Knicks and Spurs matchup comes a year after a Finals series that featured two non-luxury tax teams for the first time in 22 years: the Thunder, the league’s smallest market, and the Pacers, which sits in the league’s lower-third of markets.
Whether the Knicks or the Spurs come out as this year’s victors, it will be the eighth time in as many years that the NBA crowns a new champion, continuing a historic run of parity. And it begs the question: does market size matter in the NBA anymore?
The league office doesn’t seem to think so.
“It’s wonderful, right?” deputy commissioner Mark Tatum told reporters on a conference call on Tuesday. “ When we did our last CBA deal, that’s what we wanted to [accomplish]. We set out to try to ensure that any team in our league, if well-managed, could win a championship, and we’re seeing that. We’re seeing that it’s not just a function of the market size that you’re in. Think about San Antonio, think about Oklahoma City, right? Two of our smallest markets battling.”
