Advertisement - scroll for more content
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement - scroll for more content
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
“So, [NBA Europe] would be a standalone league,” Silver said. “But, I would just say over time… There’s a company called ‘Boom’ that is saying by 2030 they’re going to have supersonic jets.” “Because travel is a big concern,” Carton said, to which Silver agreed. “Long term, I could definitely imagine we could have a division in Europe,” Silver explained. “And, obviously, this is a very global game.”
Silver has navigated turbulent waters before. In 2014, after tapes surfaced of then Clippers owner Donald Sterling making racist comments, Silver, less than three months into his tenure as commissioner, banned Sterling for life. In 2020, the NBA was the first major sports league to shut down operations during the COVID-19 pandemic … and the first Big Four league to find a way back, re-opening in the Florida bubble in July. He has negotiated two labor agreements, dealt swiftly with threats to game integrity and signed the most lucrative broadcast agreement in NBA history. Says one longtime team executive, “Adam is one of the best commissioners in history. Not basketball history. Sports history.”
The next few months could test that opinion. Silver must find tweaks for a draft lottery system that has failed to discourage tanking. He must adjudicate a Clippers investigation that has rivals screaming for blood. And he must find a solution to injury issues that have plagued the regular season. It is, says one high-ranking team executive, “an opportunity.” While the ink is still wet on the 11-year, $77 billion broadcast rights deal that kicked in this season, it’s never too early to think about the next one. “Getting this stuff right is his legacy,” says the exec. Adds another, “This summer Adam is going to be very busy.”
The site Berkley pitched is a 20-acre plot located near City Hall, by the World Market Center that is owned by asset manager Blackstone. “It’s near a freeway, it won’t be as congested (as) on the Strip,” Berkley said. “It’s an alternative that they may want to examine, and I’m not sure that anybody has proposed it yet.” Berkley also wants to use the meeting to get to know Silver, whom she has yet to meet. She plans to invite Silver to her office the next time he visits Southern Nevada. Berkley said she comes from a basketball family; her father used to play pick-up basketball with NBA legend Bob Cousy in upstate New York when she was a child.
When asked about Silver’s comments from Wednesday afternoon, Rivers suggested that the league’s looking into an injury is just normal operating procedure. “I don’t think it’s a big deal,” Rivers said. “Maybe you don’t know this, but they look into every injury. This is nothing new. Probably because it’s been talked about, (Silver) felt the need to say something, but I’ve not been on a team where, when you have injuries, they don’t look at it. So, I don’t think it’s anything new.”
Advertisement
Silver will hold a news conference later Wednesday to discuss next steps. The league said investment bank PJT Partners has been brought on "as a strategic adviser to evaluate prospective markets, ownership groups, arena infrastructure, and the broader economic implications of expansion." The league will examine Seattle and Las Vegas bids over the next several months, and whether to execute the new franchise purchases in 2026 or in a few years. There will be a potential final vote later this year to finalize the transactions to 32 teams. In both voting rounds, 23 of 30 governors must vote in favor.
The lawmakers urged Silver to consider Las Vegas’ 20-year partnership with the NBA through hosting the Summer League and NBA Cup championships. “As you consider the future of the NBA, we strongly urge you to build on the League’s local momentum by selecting Las Vegas as a site for a future league franchise,” the letter reads in part.
Advertisement
Jared Weiss: Silver said the tension is that there are legitimate rebuilds and even teams shutting down starters to play young players late in the season is not tanking he is concerned about. He is more concerned about the ethical shifts in tanking we’ve seen this year in response to what he calls a “perfect storm” of a promising draft this June followed by less anticipated drafts the next few years. “There’s been a destigmatization around certain behaviors and I think that’s a broader societal issue. I think in other aspects of society, the guard rails have come off a little bit.”
There was a noticeable shift in Silver’s tone and demeanor on this particular issue, according to the three executives who spoke with The Athletic, with one of them saying, “He sounded more like Stern than Silver,” referencing Silver’s occasionally brazen predecessor David Stern, who was known for telling owners, general managers, players and reporters exactly what he thought, with choice words. It was a marked departure in behavior from Silver, 63, a lawyer by trade who is in his 12th season as commissioner and usually speaks in a lawyerly, collegial tone in meetings. At another point on the call, Silver said to a general manager that coaches on tanking teams “don’t want to do this,” essentially pitting these team execs against their most important employees (coaches can be fired, while players, essentially, cannot).
Silver told the executives on the call that the league had to change incentives “and mindsets,” so executives don’t have to implement tanking to save their jobs. One GM of a team that had undergone a tank and came out the other side of it as one of the strongest teams in the league said the executives on the call needed to “support Adam on this.” Another said “we are all to blame,” citing both rules that needed to change and teams taking too much advantage of those rules. “Let’s just say the message was sent,” one of the executives on the call said. “I am very happy Adam said what he said.”
What Silver means by this is that, if you chart team win-loss records by season, you get an interesting phenomenon: a bulge of teams that win 40 to 50 games and a paucity of those who win 30 to 39. In the four seasons since 2021-22, we’ve had 44 of the former and only 23 of the latter, and the disparity looks set to be even worse this season. The Milwaukee Bucks and Chicago Bulls may be the only teams that end up in the 30s, while 10 or more teams land in the 40s. Meanwhile, in 2023-24, seven teams lost at least 55 games, and in 2021-22 and 2024-25, six did. For comparison, we haven’t had a season where seven teams won at least 55 games since 2010-11, and we’ve only had six twice in the 11 full seasons since.