It may seem hard to believe, but Adam Silver recently hit the one-year point since becoming NBA commissioner.
It has been one year and seven days to be exact, since Silver took over for the long-tenured David Stern on Feb. 1, 2014. Stern ruled the NBA kingdom from Feb. 1, 1984 all the way until Jan. 31 of last year, and witnessed unprecedented growth and public interest in the league both nationally and worldwide while at the helm.
Silver assumed Stern’s former position with the reputation as an innovative thinker who was ready to reshape the NBA with some updated and progressive ideas, and immediately promised better transparency and consideration of suggestions moving forward.
He has delivered so far.
Have any significant changes come in his first year on the job? Not really, but he has had some undesirable issues to deal with, and he’s handled them well, while making some minor changes that benefited players and owners more than anything. Even though there haven’t been any major changes as of yet, Silver has proposed some tweaking to league policies and rules to a receptive audience within the league, while presiding over new and lucrative TV deals, constantly increasing franchise values, and continued global expansion.
You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone, player, coach, or owner, that has anything bad to say about the job he’s been doing.
“A-plus,” Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said of Silver’s first year. “Love everything he’s done. He has handled every obstacle perfectly.” Well now, that is a pretty glowing endorsement coming from someone who has publicly sparred with Silver’s predecessor numerous times since joining the league.
Out of the many things that Silver has dealt with and handled with in his own rookie year, a few stand out.
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The Donald Sterling Dilemma
Only three months in to his new job, Silver was faced with very sudden and awkward situation, especially in terms of public relations with not only fans, but players as well.
Any casual fan of the NBA or sports in general likely recalls the firestorm that now-former L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling created last year when his ex-girlfriend ex-assistant V. Stiviano leaked a recording of a conversation where Sterling could be heard making several obscene and bizarre racial comments about African-Americans.
While some other professional sports leagues might have waited for the dust to settle in the name of due process, Silver wasted no time proactively going on the offensive. Just days later, he held a press conference to address the situation, announced a lifetime ban from the league for Sterling, and outlined the fact that the team would be forcibly sold out from under him, which it later was for $2 billion. Silver was admirable as he cut through the nervousness and awkwardness during the press conference, and made it clear that the NBA was no longer a place for Sterling. Silver was able to get everyone on the same page within 72 hours, and had a very firm ruling within a week. His quick-triggered and decisive action went a long way in the process of restoring faith and trust between owners and players, and provided a blueprint for other league commissioners to emulate.
The League’s Lucrative New Television Deal
This might not seem like a significant event, but upon closer examination, the implications reveal themselves to be a great benefit to the league, owners, and players.
Silver helped to finalize negotiations on a deal with ESPN, TNT, an ABC that will generate over $24 billion in revenue for the NBA, beginning in the 2016-2017 season. The contract runs all the way through the 2024-2025 season. Because of this, teams will actually be able to increase their salary caps next season because of the additional revenue. Everybody wins.
There are several other positives from the deal as well, including (per ESPN) —
- An established framework for ESPN and the league to negotiate the launch of a new “over-the-top” content offering on the mobile platform.
- 10 additional regular-season games for ESPN or ABC, bringing the regular-season total to 100;
- 10 more exclusive regular-season windows;
- Increased team appearances to showcase the most popular teams and most compelling matchups more times throughout the season;
- Live, national rights to summer league and D-League games across ESPN entities;
- As part of the new agreement, ESPN will substantially increase its NBA-focused programming with 750 new hours of NBA content on linear and digital platforms for a significant year-round presence for the league on ESPN;
- ESPN International, in Latin America, the Caribbean, Australia and New Zealand, will carry significantly more exclusive regular-season and playoff games on ESPN platforms, including expanded weekend windows during the regular season, increased first- and second-round playoff coverage and the NBA conference finals and NBA Finals (including exclusivity in Australia and New Zealand).
It is worth mentioning that the terms of the deal have been in the works for some time, but Silver finalized the details and orchestrated the passing of it, and will now get to sit back over the next nine seasons and watch the league pull in even more money while expanding its global reach in a big way.
Attempts To Reform The Current Draft Lottery System
There are few things in professional sports worse than tanking. The players suffer, statistics suffer, coaches suffer, but most of all, the fans suffer. It is completely asinine to expect fans to show up or tune into a game to watch grown athletes making millions of dollars to play terribly with gutted rosters and without any intention to provide competition, in the hopes of *maybe* landing top college talent at a relatively cheap price for the next season and beyond. It is truly one of the most awkward situations to observe. Silver recognizes that the dubious method damages the brand and integrity of the league while affecting revenue, and is determined to take away the incentive that encourages it.
Under the current system, the team with the worst record has a 25 percent chance at the No. 1 pick, and the second-worst team has a 19.9 percent chance, with each subsequent team’s odds declining slightly.
“I don’t necessarily disagree with the way it works now,” Silver said. “I’d say from a personal standpoint, what I’m most concerned about is perception out there right now and frankly the pressure on a lot of our teams, even from their very fans, to somehow under-perform because it’s in some peoples’ view the most efficient and quickest way to get better. I think that’s a corrosive perception out there.”
He introduced legislation that he hoped would minimize the practice, and held a vote with league owners in late October. The reform would have given the league’s four worst teams identical odds (around 11 percent) of winning the top pick, with the fifth team having about a 10 percent chance and the rest of the teams with declining odds.
It didn’t get enough votes from the owners to pass, as some were concerned about unintentional consequences, even though most of them supported the idea in general. Still, it was a step in the right direction of addressing a system that some have viewed as broken for decades, and will likely be altered eventually.
Other Notable Actions
In November, Silver came out as a semi-reluctant supporter of legalizing sports betting outside of just the state of Nevada. This past summer, after acknowledging player’s complaints in the past, he extended the All-Star Break to a full week for 2015 and beyond, giving the players who participate in the actual festivities some much-needed time off when the weekend wraps up. And just a few days ago, he indicated that he is open to making some changes to the league’s current playoff seeding system, which has come under scrutiny due to the decline of the Eastern Conference. All are things that have needed to be addressed for quite awhile now, and he has wasted no time in doing so.
The Right Man For The Job
While it still may be a little too soon to declare Silver a sweeping success at his new post, he has certainly shown that he is fully capable of running the league while maintaining an appropriate level of authority, transparency, and openness. He has proven himself worthy up to this point, but he certainly has some bigger challenges and tasks ahead of him that will go further in showing his effectiveness as commissioner, such as the likely event of negotiating on a new collective bargaining agreement with the player’s union in 2017. The calls for stricter drug testing and changes to the league’s minimum age requirement are going to get louder over time as well, and he’ll also eventually be pushed to make a decision about lowering the amount of back-to-back and preseason games too.
Not to worry though. If we’ve learned one thing about Adam Silver to this point, it’s that he will be sure to tackle those issues head-on, with the same wisdom and caution that he has shown in his first 373 days on the job so far.
The future of the league is brighter than ever, and it’s in good hands.
