Adam Silver
speaker
760 appearances
15 recordings
7 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard 26 Jun
Adam Silver’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 12 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 10.
Appearances
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That's awesome.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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...
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,
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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