Chapter 1: What insights does Tony provide about Adam Silver's leadership?
This is the Dan Levatar Show with the Stugatz Podcast.
I'd like to talk with you guys a little bit about what is happening surrounding Adam Silver because you guys say don't follow the legend Nick Saban, don't follow the legend Bill Belichick and the way Adam Silver followed the legend David Stern
was by being so bold or appearing so bold, I should say, appearing so bold, because when he took the team from Donald Sterling, it was actually a very easy decision because all the other owners wanted him to do that because they hated Donald Sterling. Donald Sterling was an embarrassment to all the other owners for a long time. Except for Mark Cuban, funny enough.
And the position that Adam Silver now finds himself in is an interesting one, because I thought once upon a time he was a progressive, modern leader who was younger than David Stern, who would be allied to the players, more gentle, wouldn't be iron fisted dictator. You don't believe that anymore? Well, he's just gotten old, right?
Adam Silver has aged during the tenure in a way that might make him make a few of the mistakes that he made when he called it a highlight league. He's walked some of that back here recently because he had to. When you've signed this much in television contracts, you cannot tell your television partners that it's a highlight league on the Internet.
Let's listen to Adam Silver walking some of that back before we get to some other Adam Silver comments.
been caught off guard by Pablo Torre's reporting that is so thorough that it has showed that Adam Silver benefited from a soft media for the last few years that he's smarter than usually in the way that we cover some of these things but he's been behind Pablo Torre and Pablo Torre has made some of the things that he has said look bad with new information but let's get some walking back here some backpedaling on Adam Silver calling his league a high
A portion of the question, the end of the question, was about the impact of social media. That's what I was answering on our sport.
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Chapter 2: How has Adam Silver's approach changed over time?
And what I was saying in a very positive way, and I don't think it takes, I think it's additive to those who watch our games live and increase the likelihood that they'll watch our games live. By saying highlights-based, I meant, you know, when I watch the traditional sports center, you know, and they have the top 10 plays and five of those are NBA plays.
I'm like, yeah, I'm not thinking like, oh, damn, like more highlights are being promoted from our league. I mean, I conventionally the reaction that was like, that's really good that that, you know, it's a it's a live game full of highlights. I mean, by definition, highlights aren't necessarily past tense. I mean, like when the NBA games are packed with action and I guess
It was misconstrued, but the point I was trying to make is that there is this community of social media followers, frankly, globally estimated at roughly around 2.5 billion people connect with the NBA in some way.
I think he's full of crap. Like, I think he's full of crap because he says there that, you know, if you remember what the question was, I was answering about social media. I have the question. You want to hear what the question was? This was back after the owners meeting, which is what, like a week and a half, two weeks ago. The actual question was,
It's becoming very expensive to watch the NBA as a fan, not just to go to games, but also in order to.
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Chapter 3: What controversies surround Adam Silver and the NBA?
There's different streaming services you have to subscribe to. Some of the RSNs are expensive. I know there are points of entry for fans to interact with the NBA. There's social media, a lot of younger fans. That is how they're experiencing the sport. But I wonder how much you think about that and how that will shape the next generation of fans. That's a question about cost.
Like, he's full of crap.
Not the only time that he's full of crap, because let's go to the original sound that Adam Silver gave us before Pablo Torre's additional reporting that made all of this sound very foolish.
The podcast came out. It was news to me. I'd frankly never heard of the company Aspiration before, and I'd never heard a whiff of anything around an endorsement deal with Kawai or anything around engagement with the Los Angeles Clippers, so it was all new to me.
And that didn't seem right at the time, and it proved to not be right when Pablo Torre reported what he did. And so this is what Adam Silver had to say after that.
He has said that.
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Chapter 4: How does social media influence the NBA's popularity?
You have said you hadn't heard of Aspiration before. But a $300 million deal with the team, you know, the team was going to be like a Jersey Patch sponsor. They had Aspiration on the back of the courtside seats. I think Pabloā Just to be clear, I'm not sure if I said I'd neverā
If I said I never heard of it, I meant in the context of the accusations here. I mean, I certainly was aware of the brand, but I didn't know anything about it.
Yes, because I think just earlier today, Pablo tweeted. He said that because it was a 300 million dollar deal, it was a founding sponsorship agreement. And those, as I would expect, have to be approved at the league level.
Why is he lying? I mean, like you can't be any clearer than quote, I've never heard of the company Aspiration.
Why is he lying? Because the truth makes everybody look really terrible. The truth, why is, allegedly, why is everyone lying? Because the truth is this is, and I know this is complicated thicket of information because it is rare in my lifetime
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of rising costs for NBA fans?
to see a journalist put in the work in sports that would come close to a smoking gun on things the seventh richest person in the world is trying to hide. Usually we can't get close to those things. The corridors of power in sports and around money in general make it that there is just these giant gulfs between the people who are running sports and the people covering sports.
And we're not actually allowed near many of the guard gates, never mind through them. So, Pablo Torre's reporting on this, if it is factual that Ballmer put in tens of millions of dollars, should make this one of the biggest sports scandals that we've seen
in a decade and the biggest one in that sport non-crime division non and and there is that the accusations here are not crimes around that's a big asterisk Non-crime division. Because there have been a lot of gambling scandals in the NBA just these past two years. Well, you tell me. Sterling was pretty big. Yes, it was.
I think that was over a decade ago, though, at this point. Donaghy.
Sterling was pretty big, and I would say that it was pretty big because of what the commissioner did.
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Chapter 6: How does the NBA handle owner controversies?
If the commissioner did the same thing here, this one would be as big. It doesn't have the racial elements, but it would be as big if they got rid of the owner, which they're not going to do.
I'm glad that you mentioned Sterling because Silver came out of the gates getting a lot of credit for his handling of Donald Sterling and being more progressive than any of the other commissioners when it came to gambling. But in retrospect, that seemed like we were moving in that direction either way. So he bought a lot with how he handled Donald Sterling.
Do you remember how poorly he handled Robert Sarver? And what the initial punishment was, which was just a year-long suspension. While Chris Paul and LeBron James came out and heavily criticized what went on with Robert Sarver and how it was allowed to do. You remember what pushed Bud Selig out?
It feels like, maybe I'm remembering this wrong, but people weren't happy with that All-Star Game fiasco. The NBA has got its own all-star game fiasco. In fact, the NBA has bigger problems right now. Style of play, ratings way down, load management. These are all things that happen on Adam Silver's watch. This is his NBA.
Chapter 7: What are the current challenges facing the NBA?
This is his NBA. And now you add the Kawhi thing to this. Let's not forget the Daryl Morey China thing. There have been a lot of bad things that have happened to this man's resume when just a few years ago, along the time of Ray Rice, he would have argued easily. Roger Goodell is the worst commissioner in sports, and Adam Silver is the best. Shoes on the other foot. You're right.
Roger Goodell has wholly turned that thing around. I mean, unless they find actual federal crimes or whatever that have been committed in this, the stories like in terms of how it's affected the league, it's largely insignificant, right?
Like you have a guy who refuses to play a lot of the time who went to a team where he didn't really impact anything. They didn't win a championship or anything, and they circumvented a salary cap and again, didn't really impact any of the results.
Well, it's up to the owners, right?
Yeah, but I'm saying, like, big picture, it's not like, oh, now we need to strip a team of a title, this is the integrity of the game. Like, it hasn't really impacted results very much.
Right, like, if they won a title, if they had any kind of actual success, I suppose there'd be a bigger outcry?
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Chapter 8: What predictions are made about the future of the NBA?
I think it depends on what the penalty is, guys. We don't think there's going to be a big penalty, is what we're saying. That's a big problem. Okay, and maybe there won't be a big penalty.
I don't know that we can comment on this intelligently, though, until we see what all the reporting is and what the penalty is, because the Donald Sterling story was obviously a salacious, scandalous story because we had audio of racism at a time. Think of the time period this was. Like, race as subject matter was something that it mushroom clouded
for reasons that have been happening in this country for the last 10 years at that time. And so you had the scandal there, but what made it the story that it became is, holy shit, a commissioner just came down and took somebody's team. Like it was the penalty that made it mushroom into the larger story. When you guys talk about a commissioner doing a good job or not. What's the job?
Because Goodell was seen as a clown, but was making money for the league. And Adam Silver, while not a clown, Adam Silver found a revenue source in streaming that didn't exist before. And the consequences, if not for streaming, maybe all those things you just mentioned would have actually hurt the dollars because fewer people were watching. But it doesn't matter.
The teams are worth more than they've ever been. And the money is rolling in at an unprecedented number. I don't think you can give them credit for finding streaming when I I think they're last to the streaming rights fees.
Now, streaming platforms have evolved and have increased resources and a higher priority on getting live sports rights, but the NFL was talking to streamers well before, and they had their deal with Prime and Netflix. The NHL, their basically league pass package went to ESPN. MLB had Roku and Tubi. Yeah, we're doing the streaming thing again.
They had exclusives, so I don't know how much credit you can give Adam Silver for finding this. But to your point, the saving grace for Roger Goodell when he was in the middle of the Ray Rice stuff and it legitimately felt like he was going to get fired was he kept raising the watermark in terms of rights and what the league was generating. And Adam Silver's done that.
I'm not giving Adam Silver credit for discovering streaming. I'm simply saying that by happenstance, an amount of money has appeared out of nowhere that makes it so that those owners are probably happy with the job Adam Silver's doing. Because I will ask you guys again, what is the commissioner's primary job?
Because I think we think of it as protect the league, protect the optics, protect the future of the league. And I think the owners say, no, how much cash are you making me right now? That's the number one job of Adam Silver.
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