Adam Silver covers a variety of topics in his annual All-Star media session.
One of these years, LeBron James won’t be involved in All-Star Weekend. He won’t, in fact, be active as a player at all.
Granted, at the rate he’s going, that might not happen for another decade. But NBA commissioner Adam Silver isn’t worried about replacing the 20-time All-Star as the “face” of the league.
“I would never anoint another player to be the next LeBron James just in the same way when Michael [Jordan] retired,” Silver said during his annual media availability session on All-Star Saturday Night in Indianapolis. “I remember at the time David Stern was saying whoever demonstrates on the court that they should be.
“Also, I would say the league is in fantastic hands. Just look at the All-Stars that we’re going to be seeing competing [Sunday] night. … Look at the magnitude of the pool of international players coming into this league. Look at the amount of basketball that’s being played on a global basis.
“These new players aren’t anointed. They demonstrate to the world, they demonstrate to the league that they deserve to be viewed in that same rare position as players like Michael and Kobe [Bryant] and LeBron and others.
“Let’s just watch the competition.”
The commissioner fielded questions on a variety of topics, many of which he talked about days earlier in an exclusive interview with NBA.com. Some of those included the All-Star Game’s return to a traditional East vs. West format; the early impact of the new Player Participation Policy and 65-game minimums for major awards; the coming advances in media and technology, and the perception by some that the NBA has scrapped defense in favor of inflated scoring.
There were several new topics, though, including:
• The working relationships between NBA players and the game officials. There has been a sense that, a generation or two ago, players and referees hashed things out on the fly, compared to short fuses and quick technical fouls often seen today. Silver conceded that communication could be improved.
“It’s not a typical workplace. We have to take into account the high stress they’re under,” he said. “There just has to be a two-way sense of respect. I’m sympathetic to the frustration and feel it’s an area where we can make progress.”
• Any perceived gap in intensity from regular-season play to the playoffs. “It’s only natural that when you get to the point where these are playoff games that are determining whether you so-called ‘win or go home,’ there’s going to be an added level of intensity,” Silver said.
“People often ask me, well, if players aren’t going to play at a certain intensity level for 82 games, does that mean your season should be shorter? I don’t necessarily think that’s the case. I think people understand there’s a regular season, they understand there’s playoffs, and they understand the difference between the Finals and the first round [or] a Game 7 and a Game 1. And I think it’s part of the rhythm of the game.”
• What appears to be unprecedented parity and the league’s role in it. The current collective bargaining agreement between the teams and the players union does make it tougher to assemble and pay so-called “Super Teams.” Silver didn’t run from that, even as he said the NBA is interested in “parity of opportunity.”
“While I understand that dynasties are something that fans will get behind,” Silver said. “What you hear from fans is they want those teams to be created the right way. So people aren’t that interested in seeing teams buy championships.”
• The Draft being split this June into a two-night event. It might seem that the NBA is tagging along on an NFL idea, staging its first and second rounds on consecutive nights, but Silver cited legit reasons. For one, teams apparently wanted to reset their needs and strategies after the first round and requested more than two minutes between those later selections. Also, two nights of prime time is better than one night trying to drag an audience past midnight. ESPN advised the league that the event was popular enough to merit two evenings.
Said Silver: “Combining those different interests – the opportunity to give that additional exposure to the second-round picks, the opportunity to talk about why these picks are so valuable to teams, how deep the rosters are these days – it seemed to me like a no-brainer.”
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Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
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