It appeared that Adam Silver had discovered something that the other commissioners had not. Both players and owners respected him for his communication skills and calm demeanor. He made a statement in 2014 when he expelled Donald Sterling from the league: “This office has standards, and they will be enforced.” It took years to establish that credibility. Erosion is occurring much more quickly.
Adam Silver’s owner issue didn’t come up out of nowhere. It built up gradually at first, then all at once. The Los Angeles Clippers case is the best place to start. Steve Ballmer was found not to have violated the salary cap in relation to Kawhi Leonard’s compensation by the NBA’s internal investigation. No misconduct was discovered. Apparently, the case is closed. However, the obvious problem here is that a league-funded investigation into its own richest owner is not exactly a model of independent scrutiny, as many observers have pointed out without much opposition. Courts forbid defendants from financing their own juries for a reason.
The NBA’s wealthiest owner is Ballmer. by a significant amount. And that’s important because the league’s whole competitive philosophy is based on parity, which holds that championships shouldn’t be decided by financial gain. It isn’t truly a principle if it can be discreetly abandoned when the man in question has a net worth of more than $100 billion. It’s a choice.
The ownership class appears to be becoming more unstable in other areas. After federal fraud investigations clouded his tenure, Mark Walter, who had been positioned as a transformative figure for the Los Angeles Lakers, sold his stake about ten months into his ownership. Robert Pera, the owner of the Memphis Grizzlies, has come under fire for business connections to technology purportedly utilized by Russian forces in Ukraine.
Internally, the new Portland ownership has been characterized as aggressively cost-cutting, which is the kind of behavior that usually precedes a relocation discussion. And following the sharp decline in the value of United Wholesale Mortgage’s stock, Mat Ishbia, the extravagant Suns owner who came to Phoenix with a lot of fanfare, is currently dealing with actual financial difficulties. In public, he is downplaying it. The business “has never been stronger,” he informed the staff.” It makes sense that Suns supporters, who are accustomed to that specific register of assurance, are dubious.
Maybe none of this turns out badly. At the very least, Ishbia’s basketball instincts have been sound: an unexpected postseason run, a highly regarded general manager and head coach, and fan-friendly pricing choices. However, Silver already has to deal with a lot of other issues in addition to the actual financial uncertainty.
since the owner issue is not occurring in a vacuum. At the same time, the league is dealing with tanking on a scale that Silver has described as worse than anything seen in recent memory. Penalties have not been effective. Changes to the draft lottery have not been successful. “We are going to fix it,” Silver declared bluntly while standing at a podium in March. Complete stop. It was the language of someone who is aware that the situation has outgrown the resources at hand.
Load control is still in place. The flopping goes on. In markets where they paid full ticket prices to watch them play, players openly skip games. The NBA now has a close relationship with the sports gambling sector, which brings in money but also raises ethical concerns that the league appears happy to ignore.
It’s difficult to completely ignore the impression that Silver is in charge of a league that has grown bigger and more intricate than the framework designed to contain it. The draft lottery procedures, luxury tax thresholds, and collective bargaining agreements were all created for a different time period. One where the owners, despite their wealth, excluded individuals who were the subject of federal investigations or who faced billion-dollar business collapses in the middle of the season.
David Stern oversaw the NBA with a weight that frequently seemed overwhelming. However, the realization that leagues are not self-policing, that unchecked owners will always find the edges, and that the commissioner’s role is to make the edges uncomfortable is where that heaviness originated. In contrast, Silver relied on consensus to establish his reputation. During the pandemic, when players and owners trusted him to handle an impossible situation, that strategy worked flawlessly. Now that the situation seems to call for consequence rather than consensus, it is functioning much less effectively.
It’s still unclear if Silver has the authority or the desire to accomplish that. The cost of not doing so is no longer abstract, as is becoming more evident. The league’s reputation as a place where competition matters is gradually eroding, as evidenced by the standings and ownership suites.
