Well, if you put it that way. Since Michael, Magic, Barkley, and Bird have retired, no one has captured the country like them guys. Instead, Shaq carried the league in the post Jordan era, and only LeBron and Kobe have come close to the popularity that MJ and Magic had since. If you compound that with 70 dollar upper level tickets for crappy teams and the thug element, the game has really done a lot to push itself away from the mainstream. As a result, I along with a great amount of fans of the sport have been pushed away from the NBA and watch college hoops almost exclusively