Basketball is a star driven game. There is no other major American sport where one player can have the sort of impact they do in the NBA, the WNBA, or even men’s and women’s college basketball.
FiveThirtyEight did a study on this back in 2015, and their findings indicated just this, with the exception being how important a quarterback is in football. And while this study was primarily focused on a player’s affect on his/her team’s success in the win column, there is no doubt that a star can positively influence fan interest as well. I think we can all agree that a team led by John Wall rather than Nick Young and Andray Blatche is far more intriguing.