By DAN BICKLEY
The Arizona Republic

David Stern's pet slogan - "I love this game" - seems almost laughable now. Does anyone even like the NBA anymore?

Maybe if you're a stone cold playa with 50 Cent in the headphones and street cred in the back pocket, you're still feeling it, dawg. But purists don't recognize the league. The rest of the country is off watching race cars. For all the cheerful forecasts, the league is starting to feel very much like the NHL.

That is, a niche sport.

"The NFL has always branded the league on its shield. Major League Baseball has always wrapped itself around its franchises," said David Carter, founder of the Sports Business Group. "But in the NBA, the players have always been the face of the game."

Which is a problem, because nobody likes the players these days. They are overpaid, underachieving, self-serving, untutored, uncaring and can't shoot straight unless aiming knives at the coach's back. At least that's the prevailing perception, even though there are plenty of exceptions like Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, and, um, uh, never mind.

Since last season ended, more than two-thirds of the league's coaches have been fired. It illustrates the power wielded by players with guaranteed contracts, and how easy it is to throw a coach overboard. This phenomenon has torn at all sense of structure, respect and discipline.

This shifting of the NBA has narrowed the audience. It has changed its marketability. It has helped lessen the value of the television contracts.

It has given the league a strange, new feel.

"The style of play has become more like street ball, in your face, one-on-one," Carter said. "And the players featured most have helpingly - or harmfully - made the NBA the most urbanized league in all of sports."

Some of the problems aren't exactly new. The decline in scoring and shooting percentages are part of a downward trend. Less than a month ago, the Golden State Warriors scored two points in the fourth quarter of a home loss. Nine teams are averaging less than 90 points per game.

What's new is how the game is being sold, and who's doing the buying. The NBA now has a dual customer base, with corporations buying premium seats in wide-open arenas, and everyone else watching from home.

The marketing of the All-Star Game prompted a Los Angeles Times columnist to call the event the equivalent of the Black Super Bowl, and the irony is striking.

Once, the NBA feared it was too black for Middle America. Now, the league is embracing what it once tried to escape, possibly because it knows that previous generations are giving up on the game.

"This has nothing to do with black and white. It's about culture," said Jerry Colangelo, Phoenix Suns CEO and chairman of the NBA's board of governors. "Culturally, we are evolving as a nation. There are those that like it and those that don't. The actions and the attitudes you've seen (from a new generation of stars), not just in sports but in entertainment as well, have been viewed as less than admirable for those buying into it. So we're going through a period of change."

The hope in the NBA is that globalization will expand the fan base, and that the heavy wave of European players will lead a shift back toward strong fundamentals and team play. The league hopes it can ride LeBron James until the climate improves.

For now, the game is so unappealing that former players are crying out in disgust. Charles Barkley told USA TODAY that it's "the worst basketball being played since I can remember."

As Washington State coach Dick Bennett said when comparing the NBA with the college product:

"They have the players, but we have the game."

From a business standpoint, that's precisely the problem. With wholesome, crossover superstars like Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan, corporations were lining up to jump on board. Today's players are hard to embrace outside their niche, and much riskier to companies and advertisers. Along with a lagging product, Carter says that is a warning sign of a league with identity problems.

A league that really needs a new slogan: "What happened to this game?"