the NBA to prioritize marketing stars over teams. This strategy continued with LeBron. He's now 40 and none of the new generation of stars have the marketing appeal LeBron and the other aforementioned players had.
As a fan of a small market team, this marketing strategy has always bugged me. How is it that an NFL team in Green Bay Wisconsin can draw big numbers, but the NBA can't figure out how to get people to care about teams in Cleveland (sans LeBron), Memphis, and Houston?