Dear NBA, Please Pull Playoff Games From Any Network Showing the 'Dr. Pimple Popper' Ad

Watching sports on television is one of the final surviving communal experiences that we have in 2023. This weekend millions of people sat down for a prolonged period of time to watch the start of the first round of the NBA Playoffs. Those people were rewarded with some pretty good basketball, but they were also punished over and over again by TNT's repeated airing of an ad for Dr. Pimple Popper, which airs on their sister channel, TLC.

I'm not going to seek out this ad. I'm certainly not going to embed it on this website. And if you didn't watch basketball this weekend and want to know what I'm talking about... just don't. Forget I said anything. Turn off your computer or cell phone. Unplug your television from the wall and throw it out your front door. Then destroy it like you're a Dallas Cowboys who just watched the final seconds of a playoff game.

The Dr. Pimple Popper ad was, to steal an NBA Twitter term, a problem. But not in the good way. Dr. Pimple Popper is not a bucket, but if you saw the ad for the show you might want to throw up in one.

The NBA should consider removing remaining playoff games from TNT until they agree to stop airing this ad. Only absolute sickos would want to expose themselves to this commercial. By the time the Clippers and Suns tipped off most fans must have felt like they were in A Clockwork Orange whenever there was a whistle.

Look, I feel bad for anyone who has to go visit this television doctor. Something bad has happened to them. Something unfortunate. And I do not want to know about it. Why these people would seek treatment is easy to understand. Why they would use it as an opportunity to be on television, well, that probably means they should go see another kind of doctor.

Quite simply, this is a disgusting, trash ad for trash television. Good people. Normal people. People who watch basketball... We deserve better. We deserve beer commercials. We deserve people telling us why they bought a certain truck. We deserve Steven Adams and Lily.

Please. Make it stop. We can't do this for two more months. It is unsustainable.

We are not sickos.