Adam Silver works for NBA owners, whose team values have skyrocketed over the past decade. He does not work for the gamers, but they appear to love having their bank accounts stuffed as well.
It is a win-win situation.
And with that, it appears like keeping him around is a no-brainer.
Silver and the NBA’s owners agreeing on a contract extension that would keep him as commissioner for years to come, a development first reported Saturday night by ESPN and confirmed by The Associated Press, makes perfect sense. Owners are making money. Players are making money. Fans are willingly paying large sums of money, as seen by the league’s attendance records.
“What is the maximum contract? Seven years and $350 million? When informed by the Associated Press about Silver’s extended agreement, Milwaukee star Giannis Antetokounmpo inquired.
Antetokounmpo was joking, and the financial details were not disclosed, but there was a point to the joke: Silver deserved this new contract.
“He’s done an incredible job,” Antetokounmpo stated. “He is always there for us. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him somewhere and we didn’t talk about something hurting me. I can contact him at any time to schedule a meeting; he’s always available to us.
Thursday marks the 10-year anniversary of Silver’s appointment as commissioner of the NBA, succeeding his mentor David Stern. Silver is usually willing to chat for hours about almost any topic when asked, with the exception of himself. To put it another way, he would be uninterested in a retrospective-style piece about his first decade in office.
He was questioned about the upcoming anniversary when he appeared in Paris earlier this month before the Cleveland-Brooklyn game, as well as his finest and worst moments as commissioner. “There have been many highs and lows. I’d have to think about that more,” Silver remarked, before quickly shifting to topics such as World Basketball Day, which is being observed by the United Nations, how more females are engaged in the WNBA, and how players are more upfront about their mental health than before.
Silver appears to be always gazing forward, not backward.
“I’m glad for him,” Los Angeles Clippers star Kawhi Leonard said. “He’s done a wonderful job of elevating this league and making it more global. And I believe he will continue to do so and accomplish amazing things.
The highlight reel is long, topped recently by two initiatives that Silver desired despite skepticism and were ultimately proven wrong: the play-in tournament and the in-season tournament. The play-in tournament brought the spirit of March Madness to mid-April in the NBA, and players gushed about how it revitalized the regular season.
Another significant victory: international expansion. Nearly one in every four NBA players was not born in the United States, including the majority of the league’s leading scorers this season, including Joel Embiid, Nikola Jokic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Luka Doncic, and Antetokounmpo. The NBA proudly boasts that its major events are broadcast in over 200 nations and territories, and that one in every eight individuals in the world watches the league at some point every year.
That equates to at least 1 billion people watching NBA games, thanks in part to exclusive digital rights agreements he helped negotiate with Tencent in China and Rakuten in Japan.
“I think you’ll only see more kids, boys and girls, who are turned on to this game and the love of this game,” Silver went on to say. “It’s just increasingly becoming global, and I’m thrilled to be along for the ride.”
Silver’s journey has included rule changes, such as coach challenges and offensive player freedom of movement, as well as stars resting for national TV games and away-from-the-play fouls late in quarters. In 2014, he penned an op-ed for The New York Times about the value of sports betting; it sparked a lively debate, and most states have since legalized it.
He led the NBA through a pandemic, suspended Donald Sterling, and ensured labor peace would last until at least the end of the decade. He’s also faced some criticism, with some wondering if he went too easy on Ja Morant in the first gun-video incident last year, and if Draymond Green’s suspension for on-court acts such as grabbing Rudy Gobert around the neck and hitting Jusuf Nurkic in the face this season should have been harsher.
This is part of the job. It’s all about making difficult decisions. There are significant ones on the horizon; the next media rights agreement will essentially establish the financial basis for the next decade or two, and once that is completed, the NBA will likely move fast to expansion talks, which will bring billions more into the league’s coffers.
“Our league has improved tenfold since I joined,” Antetokounmpo added. “Everything is more ordered. I think he’s done an excellent job. He’s clearly a maximum player.”
