The 2025 NBA Finals have given hoop heads some great basketball so far, but it’s been lacking that special feeling, according to Bomani Jones.

On his The Right Time with Bomani Jones podcast, he expressed his frustration with the NBA and its broadcast partners’ presentation of the Finals this year. He feels that the games are not being treated as significant moments, unlike in previous finals.

“One of my chief criticisms of ESPN’s coverage of the NBA is that they treat the NBA like the NFL. You can’t cover it the same way. People don’t want the breakdowns of strategic minutia in basketball the way that they want them in football, right? Basketball’s a little more loosey-goosey,” Jones explained. “It’s a little bit more free. That’s how people are more likely want to talk about it. You can’t do quick bullet-point discussions in the way that ESPN does.”

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“So when you come out here and you don’t have any signage on the court to indicate that it’s the NBA Finals, it already looks like a g*ddamn AAU tournament with the coaches wearing quarter-zips, and anybody wearing any old jersey that was clean,” he continued. “You can’t tell who the home team was just by looking on the floor. You gotta make this feel like something.”

Jones is not alone in his view that the league has not brought the vibes for the Finals this year. Many have criticized the NBA for not announcing the starting lineup for the teams during the first series game, the lack of the Larry O'Brien Trophy, or the NBA Finals insignia on the court.

Without these embellishments, many NBA fans feel like the Finals games are marketed as any other game of the season.

“Sports are entertaining, not entertainment. Because the problem is if you treat sports like entertainment, then sports gets treated like the rest of entertainment right now, which is something that is not intended to be momentous, something that is not intended to be monumental, but simply something intended to occupy your time and attention,” Jones argued. 

You don’t want sports to be that,” he went on. “You don’t want to be so cynical to strip away all the larger things and act like it doesn’t matter.”