OKLAHOMA CITY — NBA commissioner Adam Silver said “I don’t think it’s automatic” that the league will expand from its current 30 teams, despite years of public discussion and even anticipation that pro basketball would return to Seattle or establish a franchise in Las Vegas.
As part of his annual news conference at the start of the NBA Finals, Silver said he suspects the league’s governors will direct the commissioner’s office to “continue to explore” the possibility of expanding in July, which could include taking formal meetings with potential new ownership groups, but he explained that there is concern over dividing league revenues among more partners.
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“It depends on your perspective on the future of the league,” Silver said. “You know, as I said before, expansion in a way is selling equity in the league, and if you believe in the league, you don’t necessarily want to add partners. On the other hand, we recognize there are underserved markets in the United States and elsewhere, markets that deserve to have NBA teams — probably even if we were to expand, more than we can serve.”
In a further signal of Silver and the league’s evolving thoughts on expansion from the top priority it once was as soon as a new TV rights deal was negotiated, Silver said he considers his potential new NBA European league as a form of expansion.
“We think there is an opportunity to better serve fans there,” Silver said.
In other business, Silver confirmed the NBA would, as The Athletic previously reported, switch its All-Star format again, this time to some form of international competition. He also said the game or competition itself would be Sunday afternoon on NBC — a network that will also be carrying the Winter Olympics at that time, with coverage breaking away from, and going back to, the Milan Games after the NBA All-Star Game, which Silver suggested would boost fan interest.
Silver said the league was still determining the exact format and how to break up the teams, which he said would likely be wider and more specific than a simple “USA versus World” format.
NBA embracing small-market finals matchup
Amid all the discussion about this small-market finals matchup being bad for the NBA’s business, and in the wake of so much discussion during the regular season about the early ratings decline, Silver insisted that the league is ecstatic about what these finals represent. This era has been defined by parity, with a new champion about to be crowned for the seventh consecutive season. This desire to spread the wealth was a driving force of the most recent collective bargaining agreement, and the fact that the legacy franchises aren’t the only ones holding up hardware these days is evidence that it’s working.
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“(Late NBA Commissioner) David (Stern) used to joke early on in his tenure as commissioner, he said his job was to go back and forth between Boston and L.A. handing out championship trophies. So to your point, I think it’s very intentional. …We set out to create a system that allowed for more competition around the league. The goal being to have 30 teams all in a position, if well-managed, to be competing for championships. And that’s what we’re seeing here.
“I can’t say standing here that I envisioned that we’d have seven different champions over seven years. I’d only say the goal isn’t necessarily to have a different champion every year. It’s to have, as we said before, parity of opportunity. And hats off to Oklahoma City and Indianapolis, two incredibly well-run franchises top to bottom that deserve to be here.”
As Silver highlighted in his opening remarks, Pacers owner Herb Simon bought the team at a time (1983) when “60 percent of the titles had been won by two teams.” Yet with the league having secured its 11-year, $76 billion media rights deal that starts next season, the goal now is to market more of the league’s stars globally while paying less attention to individual market size.
“I’ve said before, the goal is that market size essentially becomes irrelevant,” Silver said. “But in addition, these technological changes (with streaming) have changed the meaning of the differential from one city to another. (There are) roughly 700,000 people in Oklahoma City, around 900,000 Indianapolis, so not such small markets. … But even if there were another million people or so in a city, when you’re talking to a global market and a sport like the NBA, where you’re being followed by billions of people around the world, those incremental changes become pretty meaningless.”
Silver did admit, however, that the ratings discussion that often dominates the conversation is an irritant for him.
“It seems a little unusual how much discussion there is around ratings in this league,” he said. “Even for me, it’s just sort of just walking down the street with fans coming up to me often, and it frustrates me the first thing they say is, ‘Are the ratings (down)?’ Or ‘What are the ratings going to be?’ As opposed to, ‘Wow, you just had this incredible conference final. What a great playoff series you’ve had.’ So I can’t quite put my finger on it.”
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Shortened season seems unlikely
When star players like Golden State’s Stephen Curry and Boston’s Jayson Tatum went down with season-altering injuries during this playoff run, there was discussion about whether the league needed to space games out more in the playoffs as a way to combat fatigue. The Denver Nuggets’ Aaron Gordon, for one, was vocal about this desire when his team limped to the finish line in a second-round loss to the Thunder.
That move, however, would almost certainly require a shortening of the regular season. And to hear Silver tell it, no such changes will be coming because he disagrees with the premise entirely.
“If anything, there’s more space in the playoff games than when you and I grew up in the NBA,” he said. “We used to frequently play playoff back-to-back on the weekends. Having said that, we, of course, look at it very closely. …In fact, injuries are considered down this playoffs from what has been historically our second-lowest in 10 years. So we have pretty healthy teams coming into the Finals now. So we look at it very closely. This question comes up a lot. I think I don’t want to make a change just to make it change.”
When asked about the business considerations in the league’s analysis, Silver acknowledged the obvious: It’s a massive factor.
“Money is part of it, there’s no question about it — we’re a business,” he said. “But having said that, I don’t really see the benefit to reducing the number of games. People used to say you should reduce the number of games because it will lead to reduction in the number of injuries. There’s absolutely no data to suggest that.”
(Photo: Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)
