NBA: Warriors by far most hated NBA team in state-by-state survey

[DMC]

I live in NC and nobody hated the Spurs during their le years down here but at the same time nobody cared about the Spurs. The Lakers on the other hand were despised down here by casual fans. Spurs never had that appeal to be a hateable en y. Also not all champions are hated because they are winning. As someone who grew up during the 90's the bulls were liked just about everywhere outside of NYC, and Utah.

To generate high ratings the NBA you have to have a champion that is either very charsimatic and exciting ala '90's bulls or very hateable ala '00 Lakers and current Warriors. It's why the league continues to push the Warriors because they know people will tune in to watch them in hopes of seeing them fail.

And this is why I say Lebron surpassed DK a few years back.

Sans Lebron's heroics the Warriors are sitting on a 4peat looking for 5. Never mind that KD doesn't go there if they win.

[Millennial_Messiah]

Spurs were absolutely hated in 2007, fans were tired of their style of play, they were in love with the Suns and it was exacerbated by the officiating and suspensions in that 2007 playoffs series..

Outside of that, casuals never cared about the Spurs in any way until they cheered for them against Miami in 2013 and 2014..

Dallas were hated worse in 2007... far, far worse. But ironically the team that magically sent them home early is the same franchise we all hate with all our hearts today.

[Arcadian]

I have to disagree with you previous post where you said the Spurs would have been hated all over the map had they done that map back in the day. Sure there were a few people who hated seeing the Spurs success from '02-'07 but for the most part casual fans just didn't care about the Spurs. I would say '07 may have been the peak of hatred for the Spurs due to the Suns series and what happened with the suspensions but outside of that I never felt mainstream hatred from casual fans.

If the Spurs were truly hated then the Finals ratings from that time period would have been a lot higher.

Let's just say, instead of "hatred," it was more "annoyance" evoked by the Spurs. It was always, "Spurs are too old, their window is closed" and yet they overstayed their welcome.