NBA commissioner Adam Silver is tinkering, at least so far.
The NBA in five or ten years might look almost entering identical to the NBA we’re watching right now, save for possibly the addition of a few more holograms. The league might still feature 30 teams, all in the current NBA cities. The games could last as long as they do now, the season could start and finish at around the same time, and the road toward the NBA lottery drawing might possibly still be forged by the same rules in hand now.
Or, Silver could attempt to blow things up.
For now, though, he’s still working around the fringes. A recent interview with Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck revealed as much. The commish didn’t outline any impending plans to make significant changes to how the league operates, and most importantly unlike his predecessor Silver didn’t deem imminent change necessary for the future well-being of the league via the media.
If you have time, take a look:
If you’re looking for blowhard content, a conversation between big brains like Adam Silver and Howard Beck is not the place to seek it out.
Silver doesn’t sign off on guarantees that there will be a franchise out of North America by 2024, he doesn’t currently want to expand the NBA’s number of teams, he would still like to explore lottery reform but isn’t peeling paint off the walls while banging on about it. He’s also listened to the players that told him that 44-minute games aren’t the answer to wearying play, but less compressed travel and scheduling is. He also, shock horror, credited writers for doing the research for the league (I’m paraphrasing, but “research” was his word) when it came to reacting to various ruminations on change.
One thing – Pro Basketball Talk noticed this and we’re happy for their transcription – that did bug a little was Silver’s interest in a midseason tournament of sorts. Whether it offers an approximation of the Lawrence O’Brien trophy-earnin’ Finals or includes pro teams from overseas or makes a whole lot of sense in the slightest is all up for conjecture. Everything’s up for conjecture in this interview.
“I and others at the league office have spent a lot of time studying the Champions League for European soccer and other types of cups and mid-season tournaments,” Silver said in the interview. “Now there there’s a long tradition, but maybe there’s the opportunity to create a new tradition. And to create more competitions. Right now everything is about the Larry O’Brien trophy but soccer operates a little differently, they have different cups, which may not be as important as the championship but in their own right are highly significant.
[…]
“Conceivably what a mid-season tournament could look like is you have some number of teams — it could begin with all the teams and have a single-elimination type tournament — and this is a case where by floating the idea I got some good suggestions back over the transom, so to speak. It may be a chance to bring in some international clubs,” Silver said.
This … sigh.
Is there something wrong with the NBA that I’m unaware of that would be fixed with a midseason tournament? As I’ve endlessly bleated on about before, the insane late-October-to-mid-April 82-game schedule that the NBA cooks up every year really is the problem, players travel too much and aren’t always at their best, and now we need another tournament pitched to drive up novelty basic cable ratings and sell more shoes?
Beck did ask Silver if he had any interest in starting the season earlier and ending it later – something we’ve been pushing in these figurative pages for months – and the NBA commissioner gave the idea a light brush off, which is fine. Giving more airtime to a musings about an expanded season, though, is a bit much.
Even if a tournament were used, as some have suggested, as a way to determine the final few seeds in the NBA’s playoff bracket … why? NBA fans forget about the races for those final seeds, presuming there are races for the final seeds, as soon as the playoffs start a few days later. Even if the seeds are set in stone a couple of weeks before the season ends, just about rendering the last few regular season weeks pointless, it hardly matters. That’s fodder for a column in the first week of April that will be forgotten soon enough once the postseason tips off.
Voices from all manner of media outlets and endless exposure can be a good thing, but we’ve spent the last couple of years fixating on some things that truly aren’t problematic, just because some people seem bored with the actual games. There are endless scads of great writers that are still watching the contests and reviewing clips the day after from now until April, but Silver can’t be swayed by those for whom ennui has taken over.
In cheerier news, former commissioner David Stern spoke with CBS Sports’ Ken Berger on Wednesday to discuss the potential for yet another NBA lockout in 2017, when both sides could agree that they’re not keen on the current collective bargaining agreement:
"I think that our players are very smart and successful and they have hired what seems to be a smart and successful litigator," Stern told CBSSports.com. "Our owners are smart and successful and have got Adam Silver, an accomplished litigator, too. And I have no doubt that they're going to work it out."
Asked if they'll be able to do that without a work stoppage, Stern said, "I hope so. There's too much at stake now."
Now, some of this is self-serving, because this is David Stern we’re talking about. He went on to remind that, to his calculations, the league and too many of its teams were losing money in 2011 when Stern and the owners locked the players out, and because of the CBA that Stern pushed through, the NBA will now be in a more viable financial state as it enters 2017. As if dumb pre-lockout moves such as signing Drew Gooden or Josh Childress would have had any viable effect on ESPN and Turner eventually forking over huge gobs of cash.
He’s not wrong in pointing out that the league does have too much to lose in lockout its players, though the league lost plenty in doing the same in 1998-99 and 2011 – to say nothing about those whose income derives from working NBA games. Also, David had the added bonus of getting to both toss a nice dig at former NBPA boss Billy Hunter, while being completely correct in referring to new NBPA chief Michele Roberts as a “successful litigator.”
Stern also pointed out that, in his estimation, Adam Silver isn’t a “neophyte,” but the real word he should have been searching for there is “acolyte.” Adam Silver isn’t an approximation of David Stern, he’s not his hoped-for doppelganger, and he’s not carrying on in legacy like some watered down former Vice President that is only in office because of the term limits of his predecessor.
Adam Silver is trying new things, and while we’re disagreeing with just about all of his attempts on the surface, these musings are to be embraced. David Stern wasn’t exactly staid in his final decade, changes and mistakes were made, but he was too often influenced by whims and short-sightedness, and he was frequently out of touch. Silver may end up the same way, but for now the poking and prodding is well-received.
Now, Adam, do something about those infuriatingly-long referee replay reviews.
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