The NBA Draft had drawn enormous attention because both the Celtics and the Lakers held high draft picks. Lonzo Ball, who had been relentlessly hyped up by his father before the draft, joined the Los Angeles Lakers just as everyone expected.
With the Lakers selecting Ball, everyone wondered how two guards with overlapping roles, D'Angelo Russell and Ball, would coexist.
Perhaps the Lakers would shop either Ball or Russell that summer?
The bustling trade market was just around the corner, and fans were already looking ahead to next season.
But on June 28, when most fans had practically forgotten about it, the NBA's inaugural annual awards ceremony began at Barker Hangar in Los Angeles.
With every major suspense of the season already fully resolved, this awards ceremony suddenly inserted into the schedule really failed to get fans excited.
TNT broadcast the entire ceremony live, but the ratings fell short of expectations.
Besides the fact that fans had already lost much of their anticipation for regular-season awards, another reason for the poor ratings was that Link had announced five days earlier that he would not attend the ceremony.
Unable to see Link, many fans simply could not be bothered to watch the awards ceremony.
As for the winners of the regular-season awards, they could just check the results afterward.
The low ratings for the ceremony caught TNT by surprise.
After all, this was the very first awards ceremony, the NBA's first time presenting regular-season awards in this fashion.
For the fans, it was something completely new.
Yet even so, the ceremony failed to effectively draw their attention.
If they held several more of these, what would happen to the ratings once the novelty wore off?
Silver had hoped to use this ceremony to make another killing after the season ended.
Yet