Bill Simmons questions whether Adam Silver is right person to lead NBA
Silver was great at the start, he’s been terrible the last few years. But as long he’s making the owners money, he isn’t going anywhere.
Silver seems like he genuinely doesn’t like basketball. Also, he wasn’t good early. He just got gifted a layup with Donald Sterling.
Honestly, I’m so glad someone else thinks that Silver doesn’t like or care about basketball. He’s always struck me as a corporate yes man that will do anything to satisfy a higher power’s needs. It’s why he loves bending over backwards for players and owners. Fans don’t matter, what matters is pleasing the people who make his, and his overlords, pockets fatter.
And no, that’s not to say that David Stern wasn’t fixated on growing the NBA financially, but something about Stern made it seem like he respected the game of basketball.
I didn’t really follow basketball when Stern was the commissioner but I was under the impression people didn’t like him or his policies. Is this wrong?
Because it seems like many people are acting like Stern was better than Silver on this thread
Nah, it’s correct. People just view the past with rose tinted glasses
That’s what I assumed. The commissioner is basically a role created to be hated on. Similar to the NFL where everyone hates Goodell
There were problems here and there, especially with the lockouts and CBA, but for the average fan, there wasnt much of an issue with Stern. Big issues came with how he dealt with AI and playground/hip hop culture he brought in, the players having to dress up for press conferences and sitting on the bench, and the Chris Paul trade.
And the refs betting scandal. Only Donaghy faced any repercussions and that’s because he was specifically targeted by the FBI, but Stern didn’t bat an eye about all the implications of what other refs were up to
That’s cus the average fan didn’t have a phone or app updating u about things like this. Stern would’ve been crucified if fans at the time actually knew how he viewed large markets vs. everyone else, specifically LA, and how he hated small market teams being in the championship and was very vocal about it
Stern hated the Spurs so much. I was living outside of Texas for a lot of that period, but it always gave a pang of nostalgia when I’d hear a news blurb about Stern fining Pop/the Spurs for something and Pop doing his version of just flipping the guy off. Every time the Spurs got into the Playoffs or Finals, you just knew Stern was steaming mad about it. Good times.
I truly do hate him, ngl. I always say he’s looking up at us and how he’s spinning in his grave whenever I see people talk about how we’re the golden child small market team and they rigged the draft for us to get wemby
I always sort of viewed the situation as Stern being the high school movie principal forever annoyed and raging about the irreverent prankster “bad kids” and their shenanigans except that those were the players Stern actually wanted while the Spurs were the boring, team player “good kids”. I wonder what he’d say about the Spurs having the team they do now.
I’m going to disagree here. The lockout is where Stern actually shone the most.
He basically single-handedly ended a lockout by telling the players he was done negotiating with them. They could either accept his offer or they could all go play in Europe and he would replace every single one of them. The NBPA then went and accepted and offer they had previously rejected.
And I think it’s shit like that that has people calling for Stern now. Nobody believes Silver would ever put his foot down like that. And I think many fans have gotten to the point where they feel like someone needs to put their foot down, because the product is getting worse for the fans every year and nobody seems to care as long as the salary cap goes up.
Its like how people tried to make George Bush seem like a goofball after he left office. Its alot easier to like someone when they arent in charge.
Stern genuinely felt like a boss, whereas Adam is more like a friend. David could be play hardball and knew how to set boundaries whereas Silver is more focused on pleasing everyone except the fans.
Stern has certainly made unpopular decisions (aka the Chris Paul trade veto) but in a lot of ways it felt like David was a fan and cared about the actual basketball product rather than strictly trying to grow it as a business. For example with Adam, he said not too long ago that people who couldn’t watch games (because of the 100 streaming deals the NBA struck) should settle for social media highlights. That’s not something (in my honest opinion) David Stern would do.
There’s no universe where Stern would want the NBA to be a highlights league.
Stern was far from perfect, but he would be appalled to ever hear “yeah if they miss the game they can catch up on highlights”. He didn’t do everything right, but fans butts in seats and in front of TVs was paramount
There’s no such thing as a league commissioner that people like. The job of a league commissioner is to be the fall guy for the league as a whole. He’s the face that everyone can get mad at instead of the league owners facing scrutiny. That being said, Stern might not have been well liked, but he got shit done. He was a hard ass and didn’t take shit. Silver is a fucking wet noodle with no backbone. Stern was the type to tell the owners “shut the fuck up and let me do my job”. Silver is the type to grovel to the owners and do whatever they say. That’s a problem, because the owners don’t care about basketball, they care about their investment. For example, Stern was VEHEMENTLY against gambling being involved with the NBA at all and he stood by that. Enter Silver, and within a couple years the owners got their way and gambling is everywhere. Why? Because it made the owners a ton of money. Do they care about how it’s destroying the product? Nope. And neither does Silver, because, in his mind, getting the owners what they want is his job. Stern had no problem saying “no”. Stern was also a shithead, though, and pretty much killed the FBI investigation into refs betting on the games. So, pick your poison. Personally, I’ll take the hard ass mob boss whose actually got the best interest of the league in mind, not just the owners pocketbooks
The gambling deal is a great point. Even if it’s being watched with Hawkeyes, promoting gambling for your sport is not a good look and will open you up for a lot of speculation and criticism.
Stern was also a shithead, though, and pretty much killed the FBI investigation into refs betting on the games.
I truly do not understand how you wrote everything before this sentence and believe that it is able to co-exist with this one in harmony.
It’s complicated tbh. If you asked the average fan, they probably have a negative sentiment of him. He was kind of weird/dirty/shady in a way (shoutout to when he got pissed at the players union and went on a tirade about how he knows where the bodies are buried in this league because he buried some of them). But, he was a hard-nosed dude who made shit happen and sometimes you need that. There’s a universe where the NBA goes under if someone else than Stern was commissioner at the time, it was struggling really hard in the 70’s
I agree with you but just to be clear, Stern wasn’t commissioner in the ‘70s. He was promoted in 1984, when the league was well into an upswing. The finals that year were Celtics-Lakers with Bird and Magic at their peak plus Jordan and Hakeem were on deck as rookies.
That’s weird, I always hear Stern being credited with driving the league towards star celebrity matchups like Magic vs Bird. Maybe he played a strong role despite not being the actual commissioner or something
That certainly could be true. Looks like he was an executive VP starting in 1980.
Ask any Lakers fan about David Stern lol
You don’t get to complain about David “my dream finals would be lakers vs lakers” Stern just cause he blocked one trade for you guys
I’ve been following since the 80’s - early 90s and people bitched about Stern constantly. This is just what happens, and it comes with the job Silver has. We could resurrect Stern and the same people would bitch about him. Give them enough time and they’d start talking about how it was better under Silver.
Sterns was awful, people are definitely forgetting what happened in the past or they were simply too young to remember.
Why are you under that impression?
David Stern was a shitbag of the highest order. He was just as unpopular as Silver. You just didn’t have quite as many avenues to express it back then.
Honestly I think the bigger difference is that Stern had self-respect. He viewed himself as a powerful man with a powerful responsibility. He enjoyed wielding that power and recognized the responsibility of commissioner was the only thing that allowed him that power. He treated the league like a stern parent (pardon the pun), and viewed it as a direct reflection of his parenting/leadership.
He was not a people-pleaser that enjoyed being around celebrities and athletes like Silver. Nor did he use his media savvy (he had none) as his primary tool as commissioner.
Obviously the world has changed a lot and media has become much more powerful and important, but Silver is not the proud, domineering father figure that Stern was in terms of leadership. He’s more like a nerdy step-dad that likes having a kid because it allows him to be cool for the first time in his life.
God damn this is so on point I want to frame it.
Stern was an asshole but he, at the very least, had some ability to see the big picture of the sport and while growing the game might have been means to an end, he really did want to see it grow and succeed.
Silver just seems to want to keep his job and rake money as much as possible regardless of the outcome on the sport long-term. He’s a perfect short seller kind of person that just smashes the “make money” button until the league is a fucking joke.
I think owners and players feared him. No one fears or gives a shit about silver.
He was supposed to be a divorce lawyer for the wealthy but somehow found himself in this basketball stuff
He’s a fish out of water when it comes to basketball. Doesnt know shit about it and doesnt understand what makes it fun for fans
probably never played basketball his entire life
He doesn’t. Mark Tatum on the other hand is a basketball psychopath. He’s a Brooklyn Nets superfan. I met him through a friend randomly, and all Mark spoke about was Basketball and trying to bring basketball into the hoods of other countries like Football aka soccer has. Mark has mentioned abstractly that some of his ideas don’t make it to silvers desk because the owners won’t allow it per se.
Is Mark trying to do stuff like build basketball courts in the favelas?
Silver actually had quite a few things that were considered objectively positive on this sub. He stood up to China and wouldn’t fire Morey, and actually got the NBA taken off TV in China which was a huge revenue loss and an incredibly rare moment of putting personal freedoms ahead of money. The bubble was considered really well run, and one of the best COVID sports implementations. The play-in tournament which sorta spawned out of that was really well liked at the start and I think generally still decently liked, and the In Season Tournament which everyone viewed as a gimmick actually produced some of the best regular season basketball in years.
Actual controversial stake is that aside from the on-court basketball with officiating and gameply style issues the vast majority of peoples complaints with silver would happen under any commisioner. Every commish of any sport would accept gambling with open arms, tanking was just as much of a problem under silver’s early days and with Stern, and would happily split up the broadcasts into as many differtent streaming services and local blackouts as possible.
Goodell is a NFL owner shield, Silver is an NBA owner shield, and Bettman is an NHL owner shield (bettman is a terrorist)
Exactly!!! I hate this narrative of Silver came in with a bang, like he did the bare minimum anyone would or should do in the Sterling situation.
When it comes to the actual league and product it’s gotten worse every year. Guys sit out for no reason, teams tank, it’s gone all in on being a star driven league so let’s get big name players as many points and free throws as possible to juice stat lines for highlight videos and box scores, end of games is an awful viewing experience it takes like 30 minutes of real time to play 2 minutes in a close game
like he did the bare minimum anyone would or should do in the Sterling situation.
He did the popular thing. Not the minimum thing.
He over-reached and was bailed out by the fact that Sterling was going through a bad divorce and his wife was able to show the court he wasn’t competent, had appointed her co-owner and thus she could take it away from Sterling and sell it
Controversial and conspiratorial take: I dont think he was handed that situation. I think that situation was orchestrated to bring Balmer in. Sterling had been a known racist and PoS for decades. Dude had on going lawsuits for racial discrimination. They probably knew he mouths off when drunk or something and got him on tape. The league cant force out owners but the public outrage would be so high that he would have no option but to sell.
And its probably a good thing. However, this is also why people who think league will come down hard on the Clippers for Aspiration stuff are mistaken.
I remember Cuban saying this sets a bad precedent at the time and hes not some old timey racist. He knew this tactic can be used to push anyone out and funnily enough he sells his franchise a few years later.
The Wolves’ KG era was fucked forever due to the Joe Smith situation, which is 100x less egregious than Aspiration; the Joe Smith situation is why James Harden called Daryl Morey a liar
He wasn’t great. He was just given an alley oop from Donald Sterling and rode that goodwill for years
FACTS FACTS FACTS , Adam doesn’t care about the fans and more lenient to players , what a disaster he has become
It’s not about the money, ‘Tone
Lmao. I’m literally watching the sopranos right now
You Neva mention the existence of this thing of ours!!
All I know is we can’t have him here in our social club no more.
He was terrible from the beginning. Whines about tanking while doing nothing to to make it better for long term success not to tank. Let’s have 20 teams make the playoffs and then act surprised that teams do not care that much about regular season games.
He wasn’t good at the beginning. He walked into the world’s most obvious decision with Donald Sterling and got a ton of free goodwill from it.
Once he wrote the gambling op ed I was out.
He got a softball lobbed at him, any idiot could have done that same thing.
The World’s Scariest Keebler Elf isn’t bothered by the yapping of Simmons and his ilk.
Problem is Carmine neva named a successor
His idiot son has been rigging wet t-shirt contests down theya
You’re at the precipice, Adam, of an enormous crossroad.
Donald sterling, whateva happened there
He probably crawled under there for warmth
He was gay, mark tatum?
WHATEVA HAPPENED THERE?!?!?! ILL TELL YOU WHAT FUCKING HAPPENED, THAT MAN SHOT 6 BIGOTTED STATEMENTS AT BLACK PEOPLE WITHOUT ANY PROVOCATION
Bill Simmons never has the makings of a varsity athlete. Low ears, that was his problem.
Rememba when we went to Florida? With the heat? Those bugs?!
What is this? The FUCKIN UN?!?
For God’s sake we bend more rules than the Catholic Church!
The fundamental question is, will Adam Silver be as effective as a boss like David Stern was. And he will be, even more so. But until he is, it’s going to be hard to verify that he thinks he’ll be more effective.
Is this the question now? 🤔
Very allegorical. The sacred and the propane
Stupida facking game
Give me 1000 dollars (Up in Da Club 🎶)
Adam silver never had the makings of a varsity commissioner
A commissioner doesn’t wear shorts
He was gay, Adam Silver?
It’s undignified
Cunnilingus and psychiatry brought us to this
Adam silver body being piloted by a small alien baby
You can kill him but you’ll never get a hold of the galaxy
It’s on Orion’s Belt.
Just rewatched clips of MIB. Such an entertaining show
MIB is gonna go down as an all time classic
This brought me joy
Little dude inside a big dude’s head
Peace…no peace.
They’re diamonds, for the children.
I always saw him as proof that the observers from Fringe were real… Like, he destroyed basketball in the 27th century and decided to come back in time and soullessly suck all resources out the NBA, and the life from it’s players (which he’s doing a really good job of to be fair!)
The tiny alien pilot thing totally checks out too though.
The alien didn’t do a good job of disguising itself
Yup. Men in Black was a documentary.
A agree with a bit of an asshole needed
Essentially everything the commissioner wants implemented needs to be approved in some way, right?
I’m genuinely curious what a different commissioner would be doing right now when most of the issues the league has are actually very complicated with no easy fixes
A good commissioner would have to convince the owners its good for the health of the league and increase revenue eventually. Problem is Silver doesnt want to and its hard for rich people to give up money. Convincing players is going to be difficult too, since they will lose earnings permanently and the health of the league isnt really in their long term interests
A good commissioner would have to do the impossible not once but twice
ok
How do you think boards of directors let the CEO do their own thing? It’s this proxy and direct negotiation
That kind of person would just run for President lmao
Neither the owners or players want less money.
Would the sport be better with fewer games? Total ban on sports betting? Probably, but it won’t happen. If your rebuttal is “well the commissioner should do what’s best for the game, not for profits,” if Silver tried that he’d be fired and replaced with another commissioner.
It’s a pipe dream to act like literally any commissioner would act in a way beyond maximizing profit.
It may not be a “want” issue but a “can’t”. Silver can say anything, but at the end of the day he needs to convince both the Billionaire owners and the close-to-Billionaire players that short term losses are the best for their long term gain. Also, if Silver pisses the owners off, they will just fire him and name a new one to do what they want. It’s not as simple as a lot of people think it is.
A good commissioner would have to convince the owners its good for the health of the league and increase revenue eventually.
which would be bullshitting evidence because there is no way to prove this. You need like near unanimous consensus to change NBA league rules and there is no way owners will EVER want to reduce their primary income stream by reducing regular season games.
The only way that you could approach it is by pressuring the players to hold out against the owners to push for reduced regular season. Players also don’t want to have reduced paychecks because of less games as well so I doubt that would be successful.
Yes, as others have said, Silver does work for the owners. But there are still things he can accomplish. Like abolishing fouls where offensive players throw themselves at defenders and get to shoot free throws because of it. I want him to do some of these things that he’s allowed to do.
Not really, any rule and officiating changes are approved by the owners on the competition committee
And then officiating is complained about by coaches and players as soon as the season starts.
Was there any official rule change about offensive players being able to extend their arms and push off?
That’s the crazy one for me, seeing your arm extend was an automatic offensive foul for as long as I’ve been watching basketball. It still is around the world, it still is in college. But they just stopped calling it in the NBA maybe a year or two ago out of nowhere
The league controls what does and doesn’t get enforced.
It’s been pretty openly talked about the league office gives officials directives on how to ref the games and areas of focus. It’s a think in the nfl as well.
Or also just consistency within one game.
One player on one team gets those fouls called, great, but then that same team can defend someone, pulling jerseys and arm checking opposing players, and that’s not a foul?
Also, getting fucking gambling out of the sport.
They make enough money. Gambling does nothing but bring a massive negative.
The gambling stuff is a problem with every sport right now. Tbh, the only way the gambling stuff is fixed is coming from the federal government, not the commissioners or owners.
I’m just sick of going to games and sitting near a bunch of dudes who won’t shut tf up about their stupid parlays.
I don’t think we’re ever getting the consistency that people want. Being a ref is an insanely difficult job that gets harder every year as the players get bigger and faster.
Having said that, I’d settle for just calling every travel and every moving screen.
Yeah..read any toxic gamethread and you’ll generally find fans of both teams convinced that the refs are rigging it for the other team.
Silver does work for the owners.
But he is constantly screwing up the long term interests of the league in favor whatever owner has the most power. The tanking, the destructive nature of gambling and Balmer investigation has been terrible for the league.
I don’t think this is actually out of lockstep with what owners want though. I think most of them prefer squeezing out max value in the near term. They either don’t care about the long term or are overconfident about the league’s long term prospects
Silver is doing his job perfectly. Being the punching bag for the owners
All nba related criticism flows to him as if he’s some dictator who can unilaterally do whatever he wants
I mean David Stern acted a lot like that. Hell Silver did too when he banned Sterling. This isn’t the NFL. The NBA commissioner has had a lot of power for decades now.
He has powers yes, but he doesn’t make decisions that the owners as a entire collective are against.
There are some things where this is true. Like one example is the local TV rights. Silver has said he wants more flexibility in people being able to watch specific games but the owners are clearly not in favor of that if it means sacrificing revenue. However there are also some things Silver could very well influence and he just doesn’t want to. He is pretty clearly against reducing games. He’s said several times he doesn’t think playing lots of games increases the rate of injuries. If he wanted to change those but was being blocked it would be noticeable by the way he talks about it.
I doubt there’s much ownership support for reducing the number of games in the regular season
Probably not much player support either, I imagine. Would be a major financial gamble.
Every year the Athletic does an anonymous poll, and one year recently they asked about lowering the amount of games in the season. I can’t find the one that I saw, but the players were overwhelmingly against it and their resoning was losing out on money because of the lowered NBA revenue.
However there are also some things Silver could very well influence and he just doesn’t want to
Literally every party that makes up the NBA wants this. Players don’t want it. Owners don’t want it. Concession stand works don’t want it. It’s a pipe dream that fans act like is reality
Why would the owners want less games?
The bigger issue… by FAR… is gambling.
But good luck getting Bill Simmons to go on that crusade.
Ehhh. The regular season being devalued and few casual fans watching is a big issue too
For me, blaming Adam Silver for everything action is the juice
gambling is not the biggest issue wtf. for example the tanking shit is an issue for like 10 years now, way before the gambling got so big as it is now. also injuries are a bigger problem too, and why are there so many injuries and resting? because there are too many games, and that is also an issue for a long time before the gambling stuff.
Gambling is peanuts compared to the fact no one cares about the regular season at all right now.
I don’t even know what you’re talking about that’s just a popular thing to say but it’s not remotely true.
No it definitely isn’t lmao, no one outside of reddit would list that as even a top 10 issue in the league right now
He dosent really care about betting in the NBA really. He becomes a degenerate when gambling on the NFL
Bill’s example shows he is trying to be real, without being honest.
Yes, of course, the reason there are 82 games is because of the money. If you cut it 70, Devin Booker is not going to go from “making \(75 million to \)73 million.” He’s going to go from \(75 million to \)64 million.
Is that still a ridiculous amount of money? Of course. But what businessman – whether a player, coach, team owner, arena bondholder, concession operator, etc – is will willing reduce their revenues by 15% (1-70⁄82)? Clost to zero.
Plus there is no guarantee any of these players will play substantially more with fewer total games. They already have benefits unimaginable 30 years ago: private planes, nutritionists, physios, trainers, exercise analysts, mental health coaches, less physical contact, fewer B2Bs. And yet the average star now plays 70 games a year, instead of 80, if we’re lucky. Who is to say they won’t be 60-65 in a 70 game season?
These guys play harder than ever. The moves the average NBA player is expected to make—these knee churning Euro steps, decel layups, step back drives, 30 foot threes, etc—puts unbelievable stress on ligaments & muscles. Unless certain moves are banned (and they won’t be) or players get fined millions for “maintenance” (they won’t be), going to 70 games is not going to happen. So stop asking.
I’m sure if you asked Bill if he wants to put his podcast back on YouTube where people could freely watch it instead of getting a paycheck from Netflix for a worse experience he’d stick with the check he’s getting. So on some level he understands that making money is more important that simply making the best product on paper
That’s the thing – he definitely understands it. So it’s insulting where he lets his “fan” brain takeover and act like he’s talking about something that’s realistic or even desirable for the parties involved (including the players, as you noted).
Does he sit on Spotfiy executive meetings and if someone says, “Let’s implement this solution. Listeners will like it more, but revenue will go down 10%” – that’s a hell no.
In theory making the consumer like the product raises revenue, IN THEORY.
i was thinking this same thing the whole time while listening. it’s kind of rich to hear bill talk about how everyone’s too focused on their bottom line and not on the fan’s experience. rings a little hollow coming from him at this point.
Min contracts too.
Booker will be fine, but what about a guy like Jaylen Clark coming out of G League? Making \(2.2M right now. Might not get an extension, who knows. Why should he have to leave \)300k on the table? People still pay to see him when the Wolves depth chart thins out
They mention banning the euro on this pod actually as well
Right – how realistic is that? How about the negative step drive, that is suspected to be the reason Haliburton, Tatum, Durant, etc all tore Achilles? They going to ban that too?
It would take a huge culture change, diligent enforcement (do you go to the video to see if someone scored a basket via a Eurostep or a negative step, and if so, wave off the basket?), and a lot of patience. But at least there is small chance of that happening, as money is not involved.
70 games would cost a lot of people/corporations a lot of money. So stop wasting breath on it.
And also who wants the refs having to decide what is and isn’t a euro step. People complain about reffing already.
League revenue is not in a linear relationship with season length.
Kind of besides the point but going from 82 to 70 games will not be a 1-70⁄82 percent difference in pay. There are a lot of other factors aside from regular season games that determine the leagues total revenue.
This isn’t true. The national TV money won’t go down because there’s still plenty of games to fill a national schedule. And the games are more important.
Regional and stadium revenue will drop, but the NBA is a national TV revenue league.
Once again… he works for the owners. If the owners want to change sht they would order him to do so. Blame. The. Owners.
I understand the sentiment, but there are 30 owners with conflicting views and divergent incentives based on the position their particular franchise is in today.
It’s the commissioner’s job to provide a pathway for the league to thrive and in order to do that he sometimes needs to convince the owners to make changes that might make them uncomfortable.
Eh. That’s true but also Silver isn’t blameless
He works for the owners but is also a consultant to them. If there’s a change that his office believes to be made and the owners don’t really want it, then it’s important for him to politic his way to influencing the owners and try to convince them that the short term pain is worth the long term benefit
Yeah, he runs a risk, but he also runs a risk by being complacent. Not only could he be fired if there’s a crisis in the NBA but he’ll be remembered as the commissioner that killed basketball. That’s…not good.
So he’s gotta figure it out. That’s what Simmons means by “weak”. If the owners needs to be pushed back on something, he needs to push back. The allstar weekend dying is another example of that. He allowed it to die under his watch
I don’t think people will ever be happy about who the commissioner is.
The NBA is like the only league where people actually used to be happy with the commish tbf. Lizard man has had a bit of a fall from grace.
Silver’s been coasting off the Sterling ban like Doc and his one ring
people sleep on the bubble. throwing all of that together in fucking disney world of all places in the span of a few months was sooo impressive.
Huh? Everyone hated Stern
Talkin about Silver. He had a lengthy run of being thought pretty highly of, especially compared to how hated other commissioners are.
Oh, gotcha, read that wrong
That’s what happens when they sell out the entire league so the owners and a few players take all of the money.
The NHL liked Gary Bettman for maybe a month when the COVID playoffs happened and went off largely without a hitch
I think fans would love Mark Tatum but the owners most likely wouldn’t.
I’m going to disagree with Bill
On the players side, Adam can’t even get the star players to play hard for a single game (the All Star Game)
On the owners side, he has to move heaven and earth to perform no brainers like expand to Seattle
How the hell is Adam going to convince them to cut down the games and revenue??? I’m sure he’d love to but cutting games is an issue that is an insta-no for players and owners
Silver has a big problem on his hands. If he doesn’t get this under control, there will be irreparable damage done to the league.
Just so we’re up to date. Ballmer obviously used a third party to circumvent the cap rules wit Kawhi Leonard. Chauncey Billups and others were involved in a mob connected gambling scam. The Hornets knew Terry Rozier was being investigated by the FBI when they traded him to Miami. And now we have teams losing on purpose. And that doesn’t even address the stars sitting out nationally televised games, the best players not qualifying for post season awards, or all the injuries to the most important players in the league.
These are just the problems I can think of off the top of my head. I’m sure I’m forgetting something.
The league got a big TV contract because every streaming service (except maybe Netflix and Amazon) needs live sports to justify their continued existence. That won’t be true forever.
And both guys said the most damning part out loud. They just don’t like the product the league has become. I don’t think I do either.
Simmons is a blatant supporter and shiller of sports gambling.
He’s part of the problem.
His suggestions for fixing the league directly go to making gambling less of a problem than it currently is.
You solve tanking and injuries that’s like half the problem rn.
The NBA has gotten worse since he took over.
The teams might be worth more, but the enjoyment of the product is a lot lower. Adam Silver sucks.
yeah i used to watch the nba religiously. i’d be watching games when i didn’t give a shit about either teams. now i barely watch games of my favorite teams.
i always assumed it was me and i just lost interest, but listening to bill and nick talk about how the same thing happened to them made me wonder what’s actually wrong with the product.
When 2⁄3 of the league make the playoffs, it’s hard to act like the regular season matters. Combined with the overly drawn out ending to games, it can be a hard watch. At least that’s the issues for me.
i agree with all these points, but something i haven’t really heard anyone talk about is also how basketball isn’t really a friendly 2nd screen sport.
baseball and football are perfect sports for people who are watching tiktok or instagram or browsing reddit on their phones while a game is on. which is why i think i have started gravitating towards those sports. the downtime feels like a feature when it used to feel like a bug. now you look up when the play starts, the “action” comes in quick 5 second spurts, and then you can just go back to looking at your phone. whereas basketball needs to be a primary screen sport. you can’t really just listen to the commentator for 20-30 seconds. that’s the main thing for me and i have to imagine i can’t be the only person.
Adam Silver is the WORST
This was a great conversation but there’s a zillion unintended consequences that Bill and Nick ignore on every one of their suggested fixes. How does taking cap space away from bad teams help the tanking problem?
Stern wouldn’t have reduced the schedule.
nosferatu lookin head ass
Calling Adam Silver ethical is a joke.
I know he knows this, and it’s just Bill being himself.
But his job is essentially to make the 30 owners as much money as possible and protect their investments. So yeah, they’re going to keep pointing to the media deals and money being made because that’s really all that matters in terms of how his bosses will evaluate his performance.
Their first mistake was in thinking Adam Silver is ethical. The NBA is insanely corrupt. No idea how people don’t see it.
Silver is horrible. The carrying and traveling is worse than I’ve ever seen, mirroring the all star game in low quality no rules basketball. The flopping hasn’t slow down at all. Free throw merchants are getting way too many free throws for subpar offense. Teams are resting players, sometimes entire lineups to lose intentionally or not try.
The NBA nosedived under silver. The game is worse, the viewership is worse, the injures are worse, the tanking is worse, the viewing options are still terrible.
Silver got one win in Donald Sterling. Maybe the easiest slam dunk of all time. Every other decision has been atrocious.
His job is to make the league money. That’s it. Everything else is just a decoration
People who complain that they play too much basketball are idiotic. Personally, I Iike watching NBA basketball. He is just making up stupid straw man arguments so ha has something to rant about.
This is silly and reductive. Playing 70 games means far fewer back to backs. Which means star players more likely to play any given game. It also means fewer injuries. It also means every individual regular season game matters more. I would guess that the vast vast majority of fans don’t watch more than 15 NBA games in a given year so a move to 70 games per team would have little impact on that
Every player in the NBA is excellent and worth watching play. The NBA has really leaned into the idea that the league is driven by a few star players-much to everyone’s detriment.
Each game “mattering more” seems extremely silly and reductive- why not play 30 games?
Watching pros play basketball is fun; even when player X happens to be sitting.
1⁄3 of the league is currently tanking. For the rest of the teams, the stars don’t play nearly as many games as they used to because teams have figured out it’s not worth injury risk to play back to backs, for example. Reducing to 70 allows you to give guys more rest in between games, among other things.
bill’s gunning for a new job i see
Flattening the lottery odds to de-incentive tanking was a mistake. You just made more tankers because now the 7th worst team has a pretty good shot. Analytics based GMs aren’t helping either. You ever watch a gamer play the most optimal way, most times it isn’t fun.
I’m struggling to see the math on how a 15% reduction in games would only cause a 2.67% pay cut for a player.
I know it wasn’t serious math but he is being disingenuous. That would be a large cut in revenue, player salaries would go down a good amount.
This is the problem with every business in this society. Nothing matter but profit. The quality of the profit. The satisfaction of the customers. Profit profit profit uber alles.
Late stage capitalism is a disease and our entire society is infected.
I used to believe and even worked for a non-profit for 5+ years under the belief that profit is the issue. The challenge is that no matter if the activity is done for profit or not for profit there is a group of people being prioritized above the customers, shareholders for for profit and management for non-profit.
At least with a for profit focus the incentives are aligned and clear on which direction everyone will take.
I would like to see Silver end the in season tournament immediately.Even hard core NBA fans don’t give a crap about this meaningless event.
Adam Silver has done damage to the NBA that may not be repairable. They’ve absolutely diluted the game to a point where its not entertaining anymore, players sitting out, no defense, flopping, offensive players throwing themselves into defenders for free throws, gambling, DV, and tanking. The NBA is in an absolute shambles of a state right now.
Love the BS podcast but this is a guy who literally received a >$100M+ payout from Spotify for The Ringer and is also a vocal critic of media unions. He needs to take a paycut himself before advocating for anyone else to take a paycut.
The MLB commissioner helped do a lot of good for the baseball, removing the defensive shift, adding the DH to the NL, pitch clock, etc.
Adam Silver has just added the NBA Cup and some new gimmick at the ASG every season.
Didn’t even mention all the betting issues and the Kawahi/aspiration shenanigans that they are hoping to be forgotten.
This type of rhetoric would have been useful while the sixers were getting bent over by silver and the league office.
If it wasn’t obvious he shouldn’t be leading before, it became super obvious when he didn’t veto the Luka trade
The value of teams is only increasing. There is no economic incentive to be competitive. The owners will just sell the team for an extra couple billion then they paid for it no matter what the team’s record is.
I got downvoted when i mentioned these problems in the past. Most players and teams have no incentive to try hard and play their best. That’s why the regular season is boring. It’s not just the 8-9 teams tanking.
bill simmons is a bum..he talks shyt for pub..
Silver has been a terrible commissioner imo. League has gotten substantially worse since he took over.
What I find interesting about this podcast is Bill says this is a 42 year old problem which implies that Stern didnt fix it and allowed it to occur but also seems to think we might need Stern. I’m not quite sure what Stern would do now that he didn’t do back then.
the reason Adam Silver couldn’t care less about the on court product is bc off the court the league is dealing with:
Players having ownership stakes in illegal betting companies
Active coaches running poker games for the mafia
players helping their friends bet their over/under
cap circumvention
owners selling illegal products to Russia
Adam Silver would be in front of Congress testifying if it were any other administration
Silver is compromised by ykw
Calling a zionist ethical lmao, these dudes are deluded.
Ηe is correct
Lol I thought to myself “what would Bill Simmons say” while typing this out
https://old.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/1r1f0w9/ptfoexclusive_ballmer_and_kawhis_hidden_trail_of/o4pr9gx/
It’s not even Silver he does the owners bidding. I think they’re doing a shit job for the NBA. All the gimmicks aren’t going to last.
Silver is doing a good job growing the game globally, and the league is making money, so I don’t think he’s going anywhere. For this conversation to even start, we have to ask where the replacement is. Silver has to opportunities to bring the hammer down, one will be this tanking stuff thats going on and the whole Kawhi and Clippers situation
He’s the right person if the league only cares about shareholder value (which they do) because Silver’s main focus is making everyone, including players, a lot of money.
He’s quite different than Stern, who was much more stricter in terms of policies and more authoritarian. Silver could care less about the product and is more capitalistic is in his decisions. He reports to the owners and clearly, the owners are happy with the uptick of high valuations for NBA teams and tv right deals.
Read that as Ben Simmons and my brain short circuited.