Adam Silver
Appearances
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
Well, I went to law school in Chicago. Okay. I worked in Washington, D.C. for years. So I know you guys are D.C. and Chicago guys. That was a big part of the selling point of coming on. And you guys are fun to watch and listen to. You guys do an incredible job.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
I appreciate it.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
I'm feeling good about it. One, I love the Bay Area. Obviously, four championships there since... since I've been commissioner. So I've spent a lot of time in the market and multiple finals appearances beyond that. Beautiful new arena in San Francisco.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
A new format that we've talked a lot about, you know, where, you know, in essence, working with the Players Association, we came up with this format where it's in essence around Robin, you know, games to 40, then a championship. So I think that's going to be really exciting for the fans. And I also, for us,
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
You know, as important as the game itself is, it becomes the epicenter of the basketball world for that weekend. It's essentially, you know, Friday, Saturday and Sunday of events, community events in Oakland and San Francisco. Opportunity to see old friends. I've been with the league for a long time and When you have a neutral site finals, you can't plan to gather there.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
So essentially people who've been in business for us for a long time can mark their calendars, you know, be in the Bay Area. Our international partners can all be there as well. So it's sort of a three day long celebration of the game. And that for me is the best part about the whole the whole long weekend.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
I think it was when I was presenting the championship trophy on the floor at the end of last year's All-Star Game. I think everybody was incredibly disappointed, at least speaking for the fans and the league office. It wasn't what we had hoped for.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
And then once I had an opportunity to talk to the players afterwards, I think they acknowledged as well, whatever happened, once they got out there, there wasn't any real competition. This was in Indianapolis, like Larry Bird had talked to the team in advance. Julius Erving had others. We thought we'd all come together with something that we thought would be effective. It obviously wasn't.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
I think then, post-All-Star game, talking to several of the players, the perennial All-Stars who we knew would be back, we said, look, we just got to do a better job for the fans. We recognize that you just can't turn the clock back. You know, obviously the NFL and Pro Bowl went to flag football. Baseball's done some changes to tweak their All-Star game.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
So I said, what can we do to make this exciting and entertaining for the fans? And this is how we came up with this new format.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
That's the evening part of my job. The day part, it's more like a standard business job in many ways than people would think. I mean, you've got 30 teams, of course. We've got the WNBA we're overseeing as well, the G League. We have a league in Africa now. We're looking at opportunities in Europe. So part of it is planning for the future. Another aspect of it is just regulating this league.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
There's constantly things happening with teams, business decisions they're making that if you want to make sure everything's unified as a league, that you have to coordinate among the many teams. We have what I was mentioning before about people coming together in the Bay Area.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
We have literally hundreds of business partners, licensees who produce our products, broadcast partners, media partners who distribute our games.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
know more traditional sponsors like pepsi and amex and gatorade and companies like that and so a lot of it's in the relationship side continuing to build those relationships with our partners negotiating deals with them helping to plan for the future it's also we're a huge enterprise in terms of our budgets and so i think more that's the part where it's more like a standard job like we have thousands of employees and you know we have an hr department a legal department a marketing department
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
So also just bringing all those people together and doing my best I can, along with other colleagues, just try to lead this enterprise.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
You know, I don't need to search because people seek me out. And so it comes through emails. It comes through people forwarding me things that other people are saying. We have our own communications department here who's sending me things. And in all seriousness, I actually find it very helpful because if you work
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
in an industry where you're so closely covered and you have fans and a section of the newspaper devoted to you that you get a lot of unsolicited ideas. And so, one, I think when you look at things we've done over the last several years, the play-in tournament, the in-season tournament now known as the NBA Cup, all those ideas came from initially outside of the league.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
And that's sort of, it's a question of processing those ideas. And also there's understandably fans want changes. Some, you know, you get criticism, you get, you know, people are, feel good about certain things we're doing, but I think it's my job to do the best I can to incorporate a lot of that feedback. And incidentally, when you have, 30 teams, 450 players on the NBA side.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
I mean, part of my job is hearing directly from players. You know, I've been at the league for a long time. So when players are coming through New York and playing the Knicks or the Nets, often they'll stop by the office. And in those one-on-one conversations, I can get a better sense from them. how they see the league. Also, our players are also the age, in many cases, of our core demographics.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
So I'm always interested in how a 26-year-old player is consuming the NBA. Are you watching games on your phone? What social media sites are you on? What podcasts like yours are they watching? So that's very helpful. And again, and it's not just
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
owners of 30 teams you have team presidents and gms and coaches so lots of different constituent groups that are constantly you know providing feedback to the to to the league office and sharing information with and and that adage has never been more true that two heads are better than one and i just find that like part of my job is to be a good listener and get advice from others and then then somehow filter that advice and figure out what's in the best interest of the league
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
You know, last time I got that question on a show like this, it was a question that came from Dan Patrick. It was, what's the wildest idea you've gotten? And I said, 10 minute quarters. And I've been responding to questions at 10 minute quarters ever since. I'm going to be really careful how I answer this question. I mean, I'd say, you know, people have raised
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
The issue around the size of the court and the height of the basket. That's one. I think there have been various times along the way. I mean, it's interesting now that there's so much discussion about three-point shooting. You guys probably remember, you know, it was a while ago, but maybe time flies. So more sort of in the mid-90s and later.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
where there was a lot of criticism around the game because people thought it had become too physical and the game, there was too much activity under the basket and that the players weren't as skilled as they used to be and that they'd lost the art of shooting. And at that time, where there seemed to be a prevalence of dunking, the thought was, it's too easy to dunk.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
yeah and so it's quite remarkable then jump ahead till now where there's a lot of discussion around whether the players are frankly too skilled that three-point shooting has become so dominant and that it's the level of difficulty in essence isn't high enough on some of those shots so i you know i don't i can't say we ever seriously considered either you know raising the height of the basket or widening the court but those are issues that have come that have come up over the years i i also think
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
you know i'm trying to think of a particular example i know that a lot of marketing ideas i got one you know that i remember when teams first brought to the league the idea that we would put a brand on the uniform itself you know and i remember at the time when we first discussed that people said and i wasn't commissioner yet when we first did that david stern was commissioner but i was running the business side and people said i can't believe you're going to make our players look like nascar
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
cars, et cetera, whatever. And I think that's become very accepted. I think we did it in a fairly classy way. It's a relatively small logo on the team jerseys. But that not only has added a lot of value to the league, but for those companies that choose to put their logos on,
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
team uniforms they become that much more engaged in the league they're that much more incentivized to promote the league and so it sort of becomes you know a virtuous circle of sort of promotion around it so a few of those things i think you know even looking at i remember back in the day in the 90s early 90s now, when the continuous score clock was first proposed.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
I mean, Dick Eversol, still a close friend, was the executive producer of the president of NBC Sports. He opposed that idea, you know, both for football and basketball. I mean, it's almost unimaginable to watch a sporting event now and think you got to wait, you know, for however many minutes till the director decides, you know, to show you the score again. But
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
remember in those days i mean the initial idea was no we don't want to show a continuous score because if people tune in they see it's a 10-point game or whatever they'll tune out yeah and and and it took a long time and again that's one of those conventions it's almost unimaginable now to watch a game where you can't see the score at any moment and in my sense is there's i think a lot about to change on the production side i mean as as games are shifting from what i would call traditional television call that broadcaster cable to streaming
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
it creates all these new opportunities all these new capabilities of the streamers because of interactivity to do new things on the screens and i think you know we're like like for example i i understand the criticism now from people who don't like to see sport sports betting information during games whether it's because they don't want to personally or they don't want their kids to be able to see it i think we're not that far away we're just going to go click and if you don't want any information about sports betting
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
You won't have to look at it. On the other hand, if you're someone in a state where it's illegal and you can bet on sports, you'll see a lot more information if that's what you want. So I think things will become much more customized over time.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
That would be fun. I definitely could make some news with my answer to that one. I would say, so no, for the record, I haven't thought about that. But it is an interesting comparison. You know, I will say, just because you mentioned baseball, talking about rule changes, I'm a huge baseball fan, and I'm a big change, a big fan, I'm sorry, of the changes that they've made. Like, I think...
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
you know, the pitch clock, you know, slightly enlarging the bases to make stealing easier and stuff like that. Like I've looked at those things, you know, and we've talked about that at the league office and with our competition committee.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
And when I think the most traditional in my mind of all sports, you know, the most resistant to change, the fact that they're making changes in that sport to keep up with the times, I'm not sure, you know, different basket heights and different arenas is the answer, but I think it just means we have to stay on our toes and be open-minded about potential changes.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
A little bit. I don't know if they would describe it as hanging out, but I used to, when I first Gary Bettman still worked here before he went to the NHL. He worked for David Stern at the NBA. And we've stayed close over the years. Roger Goodell and I knew him well even before he became commissioner, when Paul Tagliabue was commissioner. And he's been great.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
I remember the first thing when it was announced I was commissioner, Roger was actually one of the first people to reach out to me and said, anything I can share with you, anything that'd be helpful with you. So we're obviously competitors in certain ways, but I think we're all fellow travelers trying to help each other.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
I think this notion that a rising tide raises all boats, that it's what's good for premium professional sports is good for all of us. Same with Rob Manfred. I think I became commissioner right before he did. And we've compared notes on a lot of issues over the years. Again, as I said, I'm a big baseball fan. He's invited me over the years to a bunch of different events that I've been to with him.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
I've been to Yankee games here in New York with him. So, yeah, we all talk to each other. I mean, everybody's running around slightly different seasons. So we don't get to spend that much time together, but they're all great guys.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
Well, I'm a Wizards fan, and we just sent Kuzma. No, believe it or not. And there's some confusion. People have yelled out to me for some reason in the last week or so when I've been at games that I should be vetoing that trade the way David Stern vetoed a trade back in the old days. And And there's always some confusion there.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
David never vetoed a trade that when he was the acting owner of New Orleans and the commissioner at the time that he turned down a trade that was proposed to him by the general manager of the team. But no, I mean, the way we don't put a thumb on the scale, so to speak, that when a trade comes into the league office, what our sort of basketball and legal folks do is they
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
make sure that that trade works under the confines of the collective bargaining agreement, whatever rules are in place, and then it's up or down. It gets approved or not based on those rules. We don't get to weigh in on what we think the merits of the trade are or should be.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
You know, honestly, and I promise, you know, look at the league right now, that two clearly smaller market teams, certainly Oklahoma City and Cleveland's a little bigger than Oklahoma City, but not one of the bigger markets in the league, are the two best records in the league right now. And I think it's great. You know, we've had six different champions over the last six years.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
And, you know, this may sound obvious, but I want all our teams to do well and be competitive. And frankly, Dallas is a big market. And so, you know, was I surprised that he was traded from that standpoint? Yeah, I'm a fan and that the teams don't necessarily give the league inside information on those kinds of things. So that trade was, you know, it wasn't one that I saw coming.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
And by the way, I love Luca. I've known him since the day he came into the league. He's obviously a great player. He's a great young man. And teams make these trades for reasons that in some cases only they know. They have inside information about a player. They're living with a player. They have a particular style they want to play. They have a vision for what that team should become.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
And truly only time will tell. I mean, the one thing I'll say, having been with this league for a long time, like truly nothing is written. People who say they can predict the future generally can't. And we'll see. I'm sort of rooting for Dallas, and I'm rooting for the Lakers. I'm rooting for Anthony Davis to recover quickly and be the all-star we know he can be and stay healthy for a long time.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
And I'm definitely rooting for Luka to demonstrate to the world what a great player he is in L.A.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
You have your job and I have my job. Your job is to create trades. My job is to make sure they comply with league rules.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
It is true. So I was practicing law in New York, just had only been a lawyer for a few years. and decided I wanted to do something different. I'm still happy I went to law school. It's been very helpful to me over the years. But I wrote David a letter. This is pre-internet, where you wrote letters and mailed them. And I actually was looking for advice.
Pardon My Take
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
It wasn't so much that I thought I wanted to work at the NBA. And I'm always telling young people this story because it's so different these days where you can go on the internet and find out all kinds of information about the NBA and what happens in the league office. And there's all these sites where they rate people's jobs.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
And they talk about whether they think they're fairly compensated and all that. I was seeing none of that existed in those days. And so David was someone who had worked at a law firm in New York before he had made the transition. He came over to the NBA as the general counsel before he was the commissioner. But I wrote him a letter saying, I'm also a lawyer in New York.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
I'd be interested in making the transition. I wasn't so sure that it would be to a sports league. And in fact, at the time, I worked for a law firm that was representing HBO. And I was fascinated with the media business. And David, at that time, had recently done some of the initial cable deals, where it was the early days of TBS, and he'd done a broadcast deal.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
Ted Turner was also an owner of the Atlanta Hawks, and he had done a deal with Ted Turner. He put NBA games on TBS. And because I was doing a lot of work for HBO, David Stern's name kept coming up in the context of media. So I wrote him a letter saying, I'm interested in making this transition. If you ever had time, I'd love to meet you and talk to you. I'd actually met him once before.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
He had worked at one point at the same law firm as my father. I didn't really know David, but the sort of letter began, I am the son of such and such, and hoping that that would sort of build a bridge to him. I remember he called me. And I think in those days, too, you were used to sending a letter and not hearing back for, in some cases, weeks. It was just everything moved at a different pace.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
His assistant called me at some point and said he'd like to schedule time with you. And my office was in New York City. I mean, where I am today in the NBA office is the same place as we were in the early 90s when Dave was commissioner. And I was just across town. And his assistant called me, scheduled. And again, everything moved slower.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
It was like, are you free two weeks from Tuesday or whatever? And I came and saw him. He gave me some advice about how I might transition out of the law. That's what I was interested in doing, and some media advice. And then I'll condense the story, because I've already been long-winded. At some point, he reached back out to me and said, there's something I'd like to talk to you about.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
And it turned out he was looking for an assistant. And he ultimately hired me, and my first job at the NBA was special assistant to the commissioner. Worked for David. I was 30 years old. So 32 years ago, I came to work here and then worked as an assistant, then became chief of staff, I mentioned.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
I then went to what was the entertainment side of the business, ran a division called NBA Entertainment for years, deputy commissioner. And so this is my sixth job, being commissioner. So I worked my way up the ladder.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
That's awesome.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
Very, very cool. By the way, I have to say, I mean, You know, David changed my life in so many ways. And I had five different jobs before I was commissioner, all of them working for David. And I sort of would joke to people, even when I was the deputy commissioner, my job was still the special assistant to David Stern.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
I mean, you guys, everybody is, you know, you may have had a chance to meet him over the years. I mean, he was full of life. He was a genius when it came to sports marketing. I think as much credit as he gets, maybe not enough for transforming the whole industry, not just the NBA, just everybody's approach. Even I remember.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
When I came to work at the NBA, I mean, he was the first person who really thought of the NBA as a brand, you know, as a brand marketer, even though his background was as a lawyer. I mean, now it's just a given that NBA is a brand, MLB, NHL, NFL, obviously. You know, but it's like he had a whole different way, a whole different vocabulary of approaching sports.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
And also, I think about how much of my time now I spend on growing the game globally. I mean, David was so far ahead of his time. And when I got to the NBA in 92, you know, shortly thereafter, it was the Dream Team. And, you know, which also transformed the NBA. I mean, what an interesting statistic.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
At the time that I got to the NBA, roughly 5% of the players in the league were born outside the United States. Now it's around 30%. You know, when you mentioned Luka or Giannis, you know, go down to Wemby. You know, now, you know, the Joker are very best players. Many of them are born outside the United States now.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
And that pool of players, I mean, just you got a chance to watch some of the Olympics out of Paris, a U.S.-Serbia game or the U.S.-France game. You know, there's so much high level basketball being played around the world. And David really had that vision that this could truly be a global game.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
Well, so, you know, it was only a year ago or two years ago we added the ability to call a technical in-game. you know, for flopping. So that was that was a change in rules, a new rule that we did, you know, modeled a little bit after the FIBA rules, the international basketball rules. And we have a provision where we do review after the fact. Obviously, we want finality in the game.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
So we're not going to go back and change scores or anything. But guys can be fined after the fact. And at least according to our own, you know,
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
sort of reviews of the games we've cut back considerably on flopping it's still i will say that you know for my european colleagues european friends you know there's a tradition in european soccer global soccer of flopping it was sort of to me brought to the nba stylistically by a lot of the international players a lot of them grew up as soccer players We've tried to crack down on it.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
Again, I think we've made progress. My sense is that as various forms of replay get better and get faster... Look, the problem is, by definition, you're fooling the ref. And if you get away with it, especially in real time, all you can do after the fact is potentially find the players. And I think you said it. The embellishment is the hardest because...
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
Now, their teaching in youth basketball is, you know, you want to demonstrate to the officials, at least the way they're taught, is to embellish so that the official clearly sees. So, you know, you're often seeing somebody shoved and they're going flying backwards. And then so the official in real time and I and I understand, too, you know,
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
you know player frustration fan frustration sometimes with the officiating we're doing everything we can to to to make it better but i i when i watch the officials it's remarkable to me what they can do in real time i mean when you think in a split second and the speed of the game to making those calls and then add flopping on top of that or embellishment that they're supposed to be able to discern the difference and you know the the amount of force that's going into a push and the reaction from the players i i i will say that that you know
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
Technology, the changes in technology will help us there. I mean, just shifting slightly doesn't go directly to flopping. But guys are constantly trying to fool the officials when, who did it touch last? They're pointing and et cetera.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
We're not that far away from having technology where, just like you think in tennis, where there's an automated call as to whether the ball was inside the line or outside the line. It's this technology called Hawkeye. It's owned by Sony. We're working with Sony also to bring that to basketball so that
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
whoever's, you know, I think there's 100 fingers on the floor at any given time, various body parts, you know, to instantaneously show who the ball went out on, you know, if somebody's foot was on the line, anything that can be objectively determined, goaltending, et cetera. And I think that will allow, so one, there'll be a whole category of calls that will be objectively right or wrong.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
And we'll speed up the game from that standpoint. But just as importantly, for those more subjective calls, the officials won't have to both be looking at somebody's feet to see if they touch the line and their hands at the same time. They can really focus on what is truly subjective.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
And I think we'll be able to do a better job sort of discerning whether there's some kind of embellishment going on. So if the standard is perfection, we've got a long ways to go. But I think we've made improvements there.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
it's interesting to say that like number one we did you know a couple years ago we changed the format at the end of the game we reduced the number of timeouts and we reduced the ability for officials to go to discretionary reviews i mean you recall just a few years ago virtually every play towards the last two minutes you know the players were going like this you know so we added one more coaches challenge
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
But we reduced those discretionary views. And I think that's made a big difference. And to your point, I've had many players and coaches tell me over the years that they would prefer speed to accuracy in certain cases, because especially near the end of the game, when... There's those long reviews. Guys are literally getting cold standing there, getting out of rhythm.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
And they just assume, say, all right, red ball and move forward and move on, as opposed to waiting for the endless reviews. And as I said, I think back to the technology that some people also don't like that we might have a different standard in the last two minutes. But look, when you have...
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
A game like basketball where there's a lot of scoring, even if there's a bad call in the second quarter, you can make up for it over the course of the game. But you can't necessarily in the last two minutes. So I'm in favor of there potentially being more scrutiny.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
But as I was saying, if you can use technology and take a whole category of calls off the table and that they're now objective, I think we can reduce the number of replays. Because also in those calls, just like in tennis, you'll see sort of the quick animation. I think you need transparency. People don't want to just be told. you know, bull's ball. They want to know what happened.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
And just like in Tennessee, ding, ding, ding, ding, you'll see like some animation, you'll see what's going on. But then and also if you think back like some early days in tennis, there was a lot more arguing, you know, with the officials. And now once you see that animation, you know, and there's an ooh and an ah from the fans that just barely touch the line or whatever else.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
But, you know, it's play on. And I think everyone would prefer that.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
Yeah, suck it up week.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
If I say I'm thinking about it, does that mean it's under consideration? Yeah, you've already thought about it. It's under consideration.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
Yeah, right. Tough shit. You know, it's interesting, though, but I've actually made that point, not using those same language, but human error is part of this game. It's certainly part of the game when a player misses a shot, somehow it gets lost sometimes, that it's also part of the game when an official makes a mistake. And I get it.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
And if an official makes too many mistakes, they can't be an official in this league. But You're right. Perfection can't be the standard. There are going to be mistakes. And I think often what separates the best teams is their ability to move on from that mistake. And I just lastly say, we have seven-game series in the playoffs.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
And I think that as some of the best basketball minds in the league will say, It's highly likely that at least for that week or two weeks, the better team is going to win the seven-game series. Yeah. Regardless of the officiate.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
Yeah. Right?
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
I think you just saw in those trades we were talking about that – NBA seems ready made for social media. Yes. Yes, it does.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
There has been. I mean, that is one thing that we have thought a fair amount about, and we've looked at different proposals. And I think for a lot of people, you're right, that there was always this notion that we, you know, in the old days, we would start on NBC on Christmas Day. We would start on network television on Christmas Day.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
Sort of, you know, the regular season of the NFL had wound down. People could now move their attention to the NBA. The issue we have there
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
is one of moving into the summer and and by the way things are changing so rapidly culturally in terms of viewership and everything else that nothing no idea is ever completely dead but at least historically the thought was we wanted our season to be over by july 1st in essence and was sort of working backwards if you're going to get the draft in
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
in the last week of June, and you're going to therefore start the finals, anticipating you potentially could have a seven-game finals, it means you've got to start roughly June 1st, working backwards. That's how you end up with a training camp in October season that starts roughly the beginning of November. I mean, people's television habits have changed dramatically. I think in large part, we all
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
I'm reaching for my phone. We all carry a TV with us everywhere we go now. I look at the kinds of things I would put you guys in the category of nontraditional media, that the amazing popularity now of podcasts like yours, people's enormous amount of time looking at screens, listening to audio feeds of things. The other thing about us moving into July
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
It's sort of, let's just say, okay, you can move the finals into July. Then you got, we have our summer league. When does the, you know, and, and part of it, it's, it's actual consideration. Like when do they get vacation?
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
And part of it is, it's always in our, the tradition, this league, there's sort of the equivalent of a summer vacation that matches up with family vacations. Even once, you know, summer league ends, it's sort of the third week of July, you know, things can settle down a little bit, you know, in, you know, for the last part of July and August.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
And now I'm not talking about the league office, largely for the players and the rest on their body and everything else. So, you know, I will say, you know, I think all these things we will continue to look at. I don't think in the short term we'll do it.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
I just last say, I mean, there used to be this notion, you know, in television they call it hut levels, households using television, that traditionally because of summer vacation and things, that once you got to July 1st, there were fewer people watching television, which is why, again, historically, you know, all the primetime shows, you know, when we were younger, would launch in the fall.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
You can almost think of the beginning of the NFL season when all the shows would launch. I think, though, now, as I said, like, people's television habits have changed dramatically. Like, streaming has changed a lot of those conventions. Like, new shows launch on Netflix all the time. You know, in July, nobody thinks twice about it. So I think these are all things that we'll continue to look at.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
Not a good idea.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
You lost me on the beat the shit out of him part. I was with you up to like, all right, you can single out one fan and then we'll review that fan's conduct. Think about the ratings, though.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
We'll bring a cage. Yeah, sure. Of the arena. Is the fan allowed to fight back? Yes, yes.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
Like, you don't want to call— No, I didn't fully consider your idea.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
Yeah. You know what's so interesting? I will say I'm a New Yorker. I'm a Rangers fan. and go to games occasionally. And as you guys remember, there was that era, again, back to the 90s when there was a fair amount of fighting in the league. And David Stern, you know, he cracked down on it. You know, we had automatic suspensions walking off the bench and all that.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
And it's still surprising me to this day when I go to a hockey game and they face up And the officials step back. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I get I mean, there's there's there's, you know, it's part of the culture of hockey.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
And I know I've heard the arguments that by having allowing players to fight things out in that way actually cuts down on violence in certain cases by having enforcers and everything else. It's obviously so foreign to the NBA. But, you know, based on the idea you're sharing, think about it. I'll share it with Gary Bettman to maybe bring fans in as well. Yeah. Yeah.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
I'm available.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
For which team?
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
Thank you, Commissioner. Thanks, guys, so much.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Joe Burrow, Max Parties With The Eagles + Guys On Chicks And Fyre Fest
Thank you.