Again in the 90s, when the game was extremely popular, ground zero was more or less Chicago. Not a massive market compared to LA or NY. I just don't get it. I see history repeating itself with Lebron James having that some global appeal that Michael Jordan did. And once again it will not matter if the most popular figure in the league is in a big market or not.
FYI,
The LA market is less than 2% larger than Chicago. NY is less than 4% larger than Chicago. IMO your point is flawed. IMO Chi vs LA is a wash but IMO the NBA definately needs NY to be relavent in order to boost TV revenues. Yes player marketing can help but just look at the horrible TV ratings of Cleveland vs SA, the lowest since the 70's I think, LeBron didn't seem to help much.
LA is over 50% larger of a media market than Chicago.
Top 5 media markets, in terms of tv households:
1 New York, NY 7,433,820 6.495
2 Los Angeles, CA 5,654,260 4.940
3 Chicago, IL 3,492,850 3.052
4 Philadelphia, PA 2,950,220 2.578
5 Dallas-Ft. Worth, TX 2,489,970 2.175