Adam Silver signs extension to the end of the decade

[Andi Obst]

The focus on gambling makes me sick, but other than that I love the product right now. Would love to see a shorter regular season, but that's never happening for obvious reasons. Play-In was a good change. I liked the In-Season-Tournament this season.

I think it could be a lot worse and I don't understand the hate he gets at all.

[dougthonus]

In the short term, on paper, Silver has obviously done a good job. That's not how I was grading him. He's done a good job tapping new markets and new revenue sources while degrading the fundamental product IMO. Maybe I'm wrong. Franchise valuations should reflect profits, not revenue. I'm not sure how those look but it's worth noting. It's quite possible that we now have more fans willing to pay less each than we previously had or could have with different policies.

Profits are probably at record levels, the NBA was in the red for most teams when Stern took over, franchise valuations grow massively under his reign, but profits didn't really follow all that much. It's somewhat complicated though because a lot of what eats up profits is the debt service to pay for the franchise which is more of an accounting trick. Ie, if I pay 5 billion for the franchise and pay 4% interest, all of a sudden I'm paying 400M a year in debt service which goes against my profits. That's not the league's fault really. If I pay in cash because I have 5B lying around, then I'm paying nothing in debt service.

I think stoppages of play and rough frequency of games are pretty common sense big levers for enjoyability. I disagree that it's just some made up personal preference. I don't think history means a lot here because baseball and even football had such an enormous chronological head start. Momentum can take a LONG time to change.

You just stated your opinion and used the fact that it's your opinion as evidence that its true. When in fact, I'm not sure these are the prime factors of success anywhere in the world for major sports.

There's nothing difficult or impossible about Silver TRYING TO CONVINCE owners of the benefits of a more equal playing field for team payrolls (which I'm unaware of much evidence for). Currently the lowest payroll team is paying like 62% of what the highest payroll team is paying, and I believe that's before luxury tax. That's absurd to begin with on it's face, and when you consider that the lowest payroll team is actually currently better in record than the high team, it shines a pretty bright light on the insanity of the NBA salary rules.

Again, everything in this paragraph would just make it seem like you don't know anything about any of the negotiations ever and yet have an opinion about it.



I'm not trying to insult you by saying that, but you just say things that show a complete lack of understanding of why things are the way they are.

The very summed up version is in order to level the playing field and make a hard cap work, they need better revenue sharing or all the small market teams will be in the red. The big market teams don't want to share revenue, because they want to keep it and also like being better. The league has no authority to force the big market teams to share revenue (or at least questionable authority) and so the small market teams don't really want to institute a hard cap at a level where they will be losing money. The players don't want a hard cap under any circumstances, and since the owners can't agree on a system that works for all of them, you have a three way argument that has no obvious solution except the current one where they try to minimize the gain by spending more money with extreme luxury tax payments.

Basically the entire concept of "blow it up", "rebuild", "burn it down" is all sourced from the insane salary rules. The idea that when you're not good you need to (and should) take 5 years to turn things around is a direct function of the easy to identify flaws that Silver has done virtually nothing to fix IMO. I'm not ignorant of the various factions and their interests, I just don't think Silver has done a very good job of getting the various factions to see a feasible common long term vision of success.

Agreed to an extent, except that it's not his primary goals and he'd be fighting with literally everyone involved in the negotiations to do it since no one in the negotiating field wants competitive balance enough to compromise on their end of the negotiation to make it happen, let alone all three factions, but they have inched closer to this by massively ramping up the luxury tax penalty and putting in structural limitations on the tax. If you went back a few negotiating cycles, and the Warriors were outspending everyone by 250M dollars in real money, they'd have an actual cap payroll of 125M more than the next team instead of 40M more. They've limited the impact of those extra dollars by a factor of 3, and now have all kinds of other penalties in place going forward.

If you add in teh salary floor now being mandated, the gap between salaries will now probably be practically constrained to something like the highest salaried team spending 40% more than the lowest salaried in terms of salaries, which is a pretty stark difference from what use do be allowed. I'd prefer removing the max contract and putting in a hard cap which I think would do wonders to create better balance, but would have its own other downsides and ignores the fact that neither the players or teams want it.

[nitetrain8603]

Not a huge fan of Silver. I was when he first became commish, but the issue I have with him is that he is too player-oriented. And by that, I mean superstar oriented. The decisions he makes really don't benefit MLE or LLE type guys. In turn, he also screws the fan quite a bit. Latest example is "we're going to crack down on resting and sitting out, especially for marquee matchups", but yet Joel Embiid sits out against Jokic. He wasn't on the injury report and literally was only brought up 15 minutes before the game.

As an NBA fan, I always rooted for my teams, but I loved watching the marquee matchups like Shaq vs Dream. This is the equivalent of Shaq sitting out.

[kyrv]

I would say one of Silver's biggest plusses is that ge did a 180 from Stern and treats the players more as partners and not with animosity like Stern did

Sports started becoming big business I think in the 70s, and the commissioners eere hailed even though they really were the beneficiary of the times. Same now, to *some degree*, but also Stern and now Silver have done a lot to grow the sport.

Not a fan of the playin tournament but that along with lottery changes appear to have reduced tanking. Not a fan of the in season tournament, it kind of highlights how little the teams players care about most regular season games. But it hurts no one.

[GoBlue72391]

I hate how closely Silver tied the game to gambling. That's happened to all the pro sports leagues, but the impact in regards to refs making questionable calls that affect the outcome of games seems to be the most prominent in the NBA. The Tim Donaghy scandal wasn't a conspiracy, it really happened, so it's not like this is an unfounded concern.

I think this will eventually be the downfall of the league, or at least be the heart of an impending scandal that will damage the league for years to come.

I also hate how high scoring, free throw centric the game has become with all the rules and refs tilted so far in the offenses favor to the point of absurdity that historic performances are no longer impressive, but rather expected.

I do like some of what Silver has done; making the G League into a true minor league, the play-in, etc. He's also not Roger Goodell, so he has that in his favor.

He's not awful, but there's legitimate criticism against him that goes beyond "Dumb fan hate commish."

[kulaz3000]

At the end of the day, Adam Silver has created a great entertainment product for the mass audience, which in turn has made some negative impact on the game of basketball played in the NBA as a result. I don't blame him, because his job at the end of the day is to put as many eyes on the NBA as possible, and make money, not only for the owners, but the players, and in that regard he is smashing it out of the park. But he is also hurting the game of basketball for the purist, which let's be honest, are the minority.

Now can the NBA be both entertainment, as well as a true competitive league again at it's purest form? I think it can, but I think it would need to be a gradual swing of the pendulum towards to other direction (in speaking of how the league is mostly just offense now), to allow more defense and make it a two sides of the court game, as opposed to the one as it is currently. I'm not advocating for the league to turn into the late 90's and early 2000's where it was either TOO MUCH DEFENSE allowed, and way too much isolation one on one emphasis in the game, but if can find a happy medium, I think the league can be both entertaining, but also competitive again.

[FriedRise]

Read on Twitter

1. Sell high on Caruso
2. Sign/draft only shooters and scorers
3. Profits!

Contrary to popular belief, defense is NOT 50% of the game.

[Kurt Heimlich]

The Bulls being painfully irrelevant for so long has crushed my interested in the league as a whole so I guess I can't blame Silver for that. But I don't watch the TNT or ESPN games basically at all anymore. And Bulls games at most maybe only watch 25% and even then it's often as background noise.

IDK if it's a function of getting older and changing interests, but the NFL seems to have further skyrocketed in interest whereas people's interest in the NBA seems to be going the opposite direction in noticeable fashion. But that could just be me and my social group I have no data to support that feeling.