Holding Court – New NBA commish Silver eyes changes

MANILA, Philippines – When Adam Silver took over from David Stern as NBA commissioner last February 1, many people thought he would be the alter ego, the carbon copy, if you will, of the man credited for bringing the league to unprecedented heights but had earned more than his share of criticism for shortcomings real or imagined. After all, he served as David Stern’s special assistant when he started working in the NBA in 1992 and had worked as his deputy commissioner since 2006, having been seemingly connected at the hips with his long-time boss and mentor when he played that role. It was in fact Stern who recommended Silver to succeed him, an endorsement the league’s Board of Governors unanimously approved on October 25, 2012.

But not even a month into his tenure, Silver has shown a few signs that he won’t be what perhaps most people outside the NBA circle had expected or imagined, that he would be his own man, and though he acknowledges what Stern has done for him, he will traverse his journey as league top honcho the way he sees fit, and not necessarily in accordance with what his predecessor would have done.

Just in his first state-of-the-league address where Stern, despite his new role as league consultant, could be seen nowhere (in contrast to all other Stern discourses where Silver shadowed him), Silver provided a glimpse of the differences between him and his former boss, from his humble and down-to-earth ways to his willingness to take suggestions from the media whom Stern used to banter with but sometimes regarded with not a little amount of disdain.

(READ: Holding Court: David Stern’s Legacy)

And there are the issues where he differs with the man at whose feet he learned, foremost of which perhaps is the age limit for NBA draft applicants, which he wants raised to 20 from the 19 where it’s currently pegged.  One should remember that it was Stern who batted for that number in the last collective bargaining agreement, which the players’ union will likely opt out of after the 2016-17 season, necessitating another round of negotiations for a new contract between the league and the union. 

Silver simply says that the “one-and-done” system, which the rule that allows players to turn pro after a year in college has come to be known, is regarded by many basketball circles as “a disaster.” He stresses his belief that the NBA has a certain responsibility for ensuring the continued health of the college game, and that forcing prospects to spend two years developing before turning pro will result in a stronger NBA game.

“I’m trying to look at it not just from the perspective of the NBA because I believe strong college basketball is also beneficial to the NBA and to the game generally,” Silver says. “So even if it’s not terrible for the NBA right now, at least talking to a lot of my college coaching friends and college (athletic director) friends, their view is (that) one-and-done is a disaster.  I think this is one of these issues that the larger basketball community needs to come together and address, not just the NBA owners and our players.  Youth basketball and college basketball should have a seat at the table as well.”

The 51-year-old Silver (he turns 52 on April 25) is particularly concerned with the maturity factor that comes into play with players who just have one year of college under their belt before jumping into the pros. “We believe the additional year of maturity would be meaningful,” explains Silver.  “And increasingly, I’ve been told by NBA coaches that one of the issues with the younger guys coming into the league is they’ve never had an opportunity to lead. By having come directly out of their first year of college, those are the moments in their lives where… they were put in positions as upperclassmen, where they first learned how to lead teammates. And ultimately, if you look at our most successful teams, they’re successful because they play as a team and I think that’s one of the beauties of this game is that it’s such an interesting mix of team play and at the same time individual (skill).

“Maybe the 20-year-old is a shorthand,” he says. “I would just say a better integration of AAU, youth, high school, college basketball and NBA basketball.  This is the sport of the 21^st century.  We have enormous opportunity.”  

Silver downplays the player opposition to the 20-year-old age limit when it was discussed in the last negotiations in 2011, saying that the amount of revenue sharing between the players and the league would still be 50-50 while such age limit could also create a more competitive league and thus raise the chances of having a bigger revenue to be shared.  This is while the draft aspirants continue to get experience either by remaining in college or by playing in the D-League or even overseas.

Another difference in outlook between Silver and Stern comes in the way the draft lottery system is implemented. While Stern remained adamant with keeping the lottery system that started in 1985 – when accusations of rigging to favor the New York Knicks and bring them that year’s prize, Patrick Ewing, ran rampant – Silver is open to finally making changes in the system to ensure that true parity is achieved throughout the league. This is particularly because the new commissioner is aware of the notion that tanking (or losing games on purpose) is repeatedly committed by a number of teams just to get a better chance of landing high-end top picks through a system that uses balls in a lottery draw.  The worse record a team has, the more balls it is assigned to increase its chances of winning the lottery.

This time, a new proposal that is supposed to use a “wheel” concept is supposed to have earned considerable interest from Silver.  Under this system proposed by cerebral basketball writer Zach Lowe, the NBA would set up a “wheel” of rotating draft picks, one that would ensure a team a top overall pick every 30 years, with established guaranteed picking spots at all points in between No. 2 and No. 30 in the ensuing years. 

“The team that gets the No. 1 pick in the very first year of this proposed system would draft in the following slots over the system’s first six seasons: 1st, 30th, 19th, 18th, 7th, 6th. Just follow the wheel around clockwise to see the entire 30-year pick cycle of each team, depending on their starting spoke in Year 1,” Lowe explains of his proposed system in Grantland.

“The system is designed to eliminate the link between being very bad and getting a high draft pick. There is no benefit at all to being bad under a wheel system like this.  If you believe tanking is morally wrong, or that it hurts business by alienating fans and cutting into attendance, this is a system you could get behind.”

The drawback of this system, however, is that not all draft classes have the same caliber, as last year’s draft class where Anthony Bennett ended up as the top pick by Cleveland and this year’s projected draft class so vividly show.  There’s also the possibility that college players, who would be aware in advance of the schedule of drafting, could plan and wait a year to come out of school, depending on whether the team who could pick them belongs to a big market and gives them advantages that a small one cannot, in effect being able to dictate where they might be drafted.

But Silver is open to such ideas nevertheless, as he is as well to a change in the league’s playoff format.  He, for example, admitted he is “fascinated” by the idea of a play-in tournament for the final spot in the playoffs similar to what Major League Baseball does for its wild-card berth. 

“I think what’s so exciting about college basketball – and I’m a huge college basketball fan – is the single-elimination tournament, the NCAA tournament.  There, statistically, you’re gonna have a lot more upsets.  So, I think for us, well, I have mixed views.  In case of certain teams where star players were injured for a portion of the season or the team didn’t jell until later in the season, that team can become competitive.  Right?  I like the idea.”

There’s no question Silver loves the game, a big factor in why he can look at it from a fan’s perspective.  A native New Yorker like Stern, he was a Knicks fan while growing up in Westchester County.  He graduated from Duke University in 1984 and, influenced by his father who was a law partner at Proskauer Rose, a highly-regarded international law firm that’s often in the headlines for its sports law group and celebrity clientele, earned a law degree from the University of Chicago in 1988.

Before joining the NBA, Silver held modest jobs as a litigation associate at New York firm Cravah, Swaine and Moore and as a law clerk to Judge Kimba Wood, a federal judge at the Southern District of New York.  He joined the NBA in 1992 and rose from being Stern’s special assistant to become the league’s chief of staff, senior vice president of NBA Entertainment, its entertainment arm, and the latter’s president later.  He was an executive producer of the IMAX movie Michael Jordan to the Max as well as the TNT documentary Whatever Happened to Micheal Ray?, aside from working on the production side of Like Mike and Year of the Yao, a movie shown locally a couple of years back.

In 2003, Silver was named to Time Magazine and CNN’s list of Global Business Influentials, and has also been named to The Sporting News’ “100 Most Powerful People in Sports” several times.

He now occupies perhaps the most influential position in American sports, following the NBA’s first commissioner Maurice Podoloff who was at the helm when the league was still establishing its foothold from 1946 to 1963, Walter Kennedy (1963-1975), Larry O’Brien (1975-1984), and Stern.

Silver undoubtedly has plenty of things on his plate.  Besides the aforementioned changes he’d want to make to improve the game, he has to look at a new deal between the NBA and its digital and TV media partners, as the current deal with ESPN, TNT and ABC expires in two years. He has also talked about installing human growth hormone testing while instituting stronger drug policies in the face of rumors circulating that a number of elite players are into PEDs (we’ll talk about this once we have enough material to back up such claims). And there’s the seemingly more mundane task of taking measures to lengthen the All-Star break to a week and to help players get more sleep, including reducing travel and back-to-back games.

“I’m fascinated with it,” the newly-minted NBA boss says. “I’m generally sleep-deprived.”

Hardcore NBA fans, of course, wouldn’t mind as long as Silver steers the league into better times, even better perhaps than when Stern left it in the hands of a man who was perceived as his alter ego but is now turning out into one who’s intent to do things on his own terms.

SHORTSHOTS: LeBron James fired a career-high 61 points, hitting 22 of 33 field-goal attempts, including eight three-pointers, as the Miami Heat beat the Charlotte Bobcats 124-107. LBJ just made the MVP race with Kevin Durant a little more interesting… Jimmer Fredette has joined the Chicago Bulls after being waived by Sacramento.  Caron Butler has also signed with Oklahoma City after being released by Milwaukee.  Ben Gordon, however, cannot play for another team in the playoffs after having been released by Charlotte later than the cutoff date of March 1… Jason Collins has been signed to a second 10-day contract by Brooklyn. After his second 10-day contract expires, the Nets have to either waive him or sign him for the rest of the season. – Rappler.com  

Bert A. Ramirez has been a freelance sportswriter/columnist since the ’80s, writing mostly about the NBA and once serving as consultant and editor for Tower Sports Magazine, the longest-running locally published NBA magazine, from 1999 to 2008.  He has also written columns and articles for such publications as Malaya, Sports Digest, Winners Sports Weekly, Pro Guide, Sports Weekly, Sports Flash, Sports World, Basketball Weekly and the FIBA’s International Basketball, and currently writes a fortnightly column for QC Life and a weekly blog for BostonSports Desk.  A former corporate manager, Bert has breathed, drunk and slept sports most of his life.