NBA FINALS: HEAT VS. NUGGETS

June 1, 2023

Adam Silver

Media Conference

ADAM SILVER: Thrilled to be here for these Finals. You've written so much about them already. Having a first seed against an eight seed just adds that much more intrigue to the competition.

I think they've both had separate, interesting paths to make it here, to have a Play-In team, obviously in the Miami Heat, be here, and one that, as Coach Spoelstra said, struggled in many ways throughout the season. But he said something along the lines, embrace the grind of the regular season. Had a lot of injuries they had to overcome. I think the Miami Heat lost the third-most games, players to injuries over the course of the season. But here they are.

It's interesting, something also I've been thinking about are the similarities despite them being the first and the eighth seed. One, again, beginning with ownership, you have the Kroenke family and the Arison family. Both Arisons have been involved with ownership a few years longer than the Kroenkes. But with Stan and Josh, you have a father and son combination, with Josh of course taking on the presidency of the team. Same thing with the Arisons, with Micky and of course Nick is the CEO of the organization and work together as a fantastic team.

Both families are very engaged with the league office, serve on several committees and don't miss anything that goes on in the league.

In terms of star players on both teams, of course you have two essentially late-round draft picks in Jokic, a second-rounder, the 41st pick, and Jimmy at the end of the first round as the 30th pick. I think that's a great story for basketball fans everywhere.

Coach Spoelstra and Malone, you have two of the coaches with the longest longevity in the league. Erik has the second-longest tenure and Michael the fourth-longest tenure. A lot to be said there.

Again, and just the markets, two roughly around the same mid-sized markets in the league, I think that's intriguing, too. I think it speaks a lot to the competitiveness in this league and the fact that we've come up with a system now, working closely with the Players Association and all the teams, where I like to think every team in this league has a shot to compete for a championship.

We saw in this season in particular, it was a record with roughly just a little over a week left in the season, you had 26 teams still competing for the Playoffs. As I said, that's a record.

One sad note I want to point out. With the exception of those COVID seasons, this will be the first season that Bill Russell won't be here to present his namesake trophy of the Finals MVP. Players honored him throughout this year with the No. 6 on their jerseys. That will be the same with the jerseys in the Finals, and of course his No. 6 remains on the arena floor.

He's somebody who everyone here -- I know many of you in the media knew him well and was someone I got to spend an enormous amount of time with over my 30-plus years with the league. Just wanted to mark his passing again and his impact on the league.

Lastly, I'll say that I appreciate the amount of international coverage of those who traveled to be here in the Finals. I know it's not an easy trip when the cities, of course, aren't known until relative last minute. But these games will be carried in 214 countries and territories and 60 different languages. And on top of that, we continue to have an enormous, measured in billions of followers globally on social media.

There's tremendous anticipation for these Finals. And with that, happy to answer any questions anyone has.

Q. You touched on it, obviously, but the competitive balance right now in the league, there were probably 16 teams who thought they had a legitimate chance to win when the Playoffs started. What has the tangible benefit of that, if any, for the league? Not that four years of Golden State-Cleveland was a bad thing, but is there a benefit to unpredictability from the start of the season to the end?

ADAM SILVER: Well, I think there's enormous benefit. I get the question asked, too, sort of the converse of that question is are dynasties good for the league. My ultimate view is competition is great for the league, and if as a result dynasties are made, I think that's great, too. So I'm not against seeing repeat championships.

On the other hand, whoever wins this year it'll be the fifth consecutive year where we have a new team winning a championship.

When you think about a 30-team league, and it's not just the fans in those markets but fans increasingly all over the world who follow a team in that particular market maybe because they have an affinity for that style of play or a particular player on that team or some created connection to that city, you want a league where everyone feels that if the team that they are rooting for is well-managed and gets a little bit lucky, too, that's necessary, that they can truly compete for championships.

I think this increased parity we're seeing around the league is fantastic. It's part by design, too. Through successive collective bargaining agreements and the one we just negotiated, there's some new provisions in that one, as well, that we hope will help even the playing field to a certain extent.

It's important to point out, as well, that we only can make those changes with the partnership and cooperation of the players. We sit down with them. In a way, they're not that different than fans. You have the greatest players in the world coming together on 30 different teams. They want to compete, too. At the end of the day, they want a level playing field.

They of course also want the opportunity to become free agents and the opportunity to potentially move to a different market depending on the circumstances. But we both have the same interest at the end of the day.

Just lastly, I think something I pointed out before, it's changes in the CBA, which I think have been effective to a certain degree, but also there's societal changes because of social media and the amount of distribution that in terms of players being able to get the recognition, I think it's less important as it was in the old days to be in particular markets.

We're seeing that -- Nikola Jokic, clearly a global superstar, two-time MVP playing here in Denver, and because of the success Miami has had, sometimes people think of it, frankly, as a larger market than it actually is.

I'm pleased with it. I recognize that there's a bit of randomness to it, too, but we're seeing a really, I think, positive trend line in terms of competition.

Q. Someone that we've come to expect to see in these Finals is referee Eric Lewis, and obviously he's in the midst of an investigation into a second burner Twitter account. I'm wondering where that investigation stands, where you expect it to go and how it was decided that he wouldn't participate in these Finals after that is ongoing?

ADAM SILVER: We decided that given that investigation was ongoing and it remains ongoing, that it wouldn't be appropriate for him to work in these Finals. I don't know what the ultimate conclusion will be. We'll see where the facts take us.

Q. There's another investigation involving Ja Morant. Can you update us on where us on the timeline, when you expect it to end? And since there seems to be not a lot of precedent for this situation, how do you assess what kind of punishment to deliver, if indeed there is a punishment here?

ADAM SILVER: So in assessing what discipline is appropriate, if that's the case, we look at both the history of prior acts, but then we look at the individual player's history, as well. And the seriousness, of course, of the conduct. Those are all things that get factored.

It's not an exact science. It comes down to judgment at the end of the day on the part of me and my colleagues in the league office.

In terms of the timing, we've uncovered a fair amount of additional information, I think, since I was first asked about the situation. I will say we probably could have brought it to a head now, but we made the decision, and I believe the Players Association agrees with us, that it would be unfair to these players and these teams in the middle of the series to announce the results of that investigation.

Given that we're of course in the offseason, he has now been suspended by the Memphis Grizzlies indefinitely, so nothing would have changed anyway in the next few weeks. It seemed better to park that at the moment, at least any public announcement, and my sense now is that shortly after the conclusion of the Finals we will announce the outcome of that investigation.

Q. The majority of Nuggets fans have been unable to watch the Nuggets for the past four seasons due to the ongoing Altitude-Comcast impasse. Why do you think progress has been so slow going, and if that model doesn't work, what is the future of local NBA broadcasting look like?

ADAM SILVER: I think, ultimately, progress has been so slow based on something that Stan Kroenke himself said to me even back more than a year ago, which is the situation here has been a bit of the canary in the mine in terms of the breakdown of the regional sports network model.

Of course what followed then, this impasse, was ultimately the bankruptcy of the so-called Diamond RSNs, 16 others. It's a terrible situation. The league office has tried to mediate several times between the parties. It's a commercial dispute. There hasn't been a simple resolution to it.

I know there's no doubt it's bad for fans, of course, and the team recognizes that. It's my hope, though, and one of the things that's changed considerably since this dispute has started is the advent of many more streaming platforms, better digital streaming technology.

As we now embark on our negotiations for our new what we used to call our national deals, we have two years left with our existing partners -- I think Bill Koenig is here, our president of media -- it's a problem we have to fix.

I hope this is a period we look back on, as we say, where we went through a transition, and we got to a place where a fan, frankly, wherever they are can watch every game. Most likely it'll be through some sort of digital offering. When you think about those digital platforms, there's obviously no constraint in terms of individual channels and everything else.

It frustrates me because I think it's a broken economic model where you have demand and the supply isn't there, especially with a leading No. 1 seed team, Finals-caliber team here in Denver, the notion that local fans can't watch the games -- I have, incidentally, a brother who lives in Boulder, so I hear from him and his family all the time.

It makes no sense. It's on us to fix it.

Q. It's been reported that in the new CBA that takes effect this summer that there will be a 65-game minimum for postseason awards, All-NBA. If that had been in place this year, a third of the All-NBA team and the Defensive Player of the Year, none of them would have been awarded their awards. What was the thinking in making this decision? You've had some players criticize it's going to water All-NBA down to just an attendance competition versus what you think the benefits can be.

ADAM SILVER: I'll rephrase your question. If that had been in effect this season, most of those players would, in fact, have been eligible for those awards. We're putting in place an incentive for players to play more games in the regular season.

There's no magic to the 65, but we're trying to take into account games, of course, that are going to be missed because there are injuries, and maybe occasionally even it's necessary for a player to rest.

I think, again, this is something we negotiated with the Players Association. Everybody has an interest in the league putting its best foot forward in a highly competitive regular season. That provision plus some others -- I think the Play-In, incidentally, had a huge impact at the end of the season. We're adding an In-Season Tournament.

We're hoping those various provisions plus, frankly, talking more about it as partners with the players, that people will understand that, especially to that earlier question about media, it's a changing media landscape, higher expectations from our fans, different pricing models for fans receiving games, that we're all going to have to play through the long grind, as Coach Spoelstra called it.

But again, finding that right balance. That's why it's 65, not 75, because recognize players are going to get injured. And it may be that even if a player has been injured and is out for a significant number of games, we've all come to the conclusion that that player is just not eligible then, therefore, for those level awards.

Q. I know that you know and want teams to compete fiercely for championships, but we've seen this particular postseason a number of very successful head coaches get fired after losing playoff series. I just wonder if you have any level of concern that the desire, the frenzy to win is becoming so great that even people that are proven to be competent and that have won championships, if they lose, they get fired?

ADAM SILVER: I have enormous level of empathy. I wouldn't say it's concern, because when you look at the numbers, it's actually not that aberrational. You've been doing this a long time, too, David.

There is that revolving door of coaches. What's interesting is some of those same championship coaches have already been hired on other teams. So it's a marketplace.

But again, I think that's something that ultimately has to be controlled by the teams. I am, though, just personally, because I've been at this a long time and they're personal friends, and I think sometimes I get it from a team or a fan standpoint you're doing everything you can to win, it's rough to get fired. It's rough on that coach's family. It requires dislocation. It's embarrassing.

But the good news is seemingly the great coaches, the ones that have proven track records, get rehired somewhere else. I don't think they go from being championship-level coaches to bad coaches one or two seasons later. For whatever reason change is just necessary, a different voice. We all know how that works.

But the good news is it seems that talent continues to get recognized and the great coaches get rehired somewhere else.

Q. If I could take you back to when Shaquille O'Neal got drafted in 1992, the salary cap per team was $14 million. Even then when a coach would get a big new contract, it might be four years, $3 million, people would say, well, there's no salary cap on coaches. Given the recent headlines, should there be?

ADAM SILVER: I'll just give you the other side of the coin, that all really a salary cap is is a mechanism for distributing the players' share of the total revenue. So in this case, and I think the coaches would take this deal any day of the week, the players receive roughly 50 percent of the gross revenue of this league. It's a formula we call BRI, but that's essentially how it works.

As you know, there's all kinds of complexity to the salary cap system. But in essence, you take their 50 percent share and you divide it by 30, and that's the salary cap.

While it has the word "cap" as part of it, it's misleading in that it's really a sharing mechanism. And what's so great about the system, one that I inherited and take no credit for, is it also creates maximum incentives because when we sit and we're negotiating with the Players Association, we see new opportunities -- take the Play-In or an In-Season Tournament -- they're our partners, and 50 percent of the revenue that we generate from those new activities then go to the players. It just gets expressed through the salary cap.

Q. But in terms of teams being able to compete for coaches now in a sense, the way they compete for players, a price that's paid now, is that at all in the league's interest to take an interest?

ADAM SILVER: I pay attention to it, but it's a marketplace. We're able to negotiate collectively with the players because they choose to negotiate as a union. The coaches don't -- haven't made that election. They could form a union and come and negotiate their agreements collectively, but in the marketplace for coaches, we compete -- our teams compete individually, and it's where the marketplace takes us.

Q. I've seen WNBA players play 12 months a year. Given the money in the NBA, it doesn't seem so right.

ADAM SILVER: I think you could say it doesn't seem right as a societal matter, but this is a marketplace and it's a business. I don't think it's different than comparing teachers to bankers. We could go down the list, or journalists to players.

We as the NBA made a decision, again, David Stern made that decision, to create the WNBA, to fund it at enormous cost, and we continue to support that league. But ultimately I think the women who play in that league would be the first to say they are not a charity. The goal is to turn this into a sustainable, independent business.

The great news is that our commissioner, Cathy Engelbert, together with a strong Players Association, a fantastic group of women playing in that league, have made tremendous progress, particularly in the last few years.

We saw record ratings for this draft that just passed, for this early game so far on ESPN, record ratings on CBS, as well. It's happening. It takes a long time. But I would only say we contribute an enormous amount, both in resources and actual dollars, to that league, and hopefully just as the NBA and certain other sports have grown over time, women's basketball will continue to grow, as well.

Q. I have a question about international play, especially in the summers. We've got a World Cup coming, next year is the Olympics. Our international NBA stars seem to be committed to their countries' teams regardless of tournament, even in off years. The American players are not that way anymore. Would you like to see that reverse back?

ADAM SILVER: Well, I think it's tremendous that the international players are committed to their countries. I think there's -- especially in terms of World Cup competition, they grew up in different traditions. Obviously, there's the World Cup of futbol, slash, soccer, it has a very meaning to them in terms of World Cup. I think we've seen Americans are more focused on Olympic competition. I think you've seen the commitment from our very best to compete in the Olympics and in certain cycles the World Cup, and not just once but multiple times.

Frankly, if it were up to me, I would take one of those competitions, similar to what they've done in soccer, for example, where I think it's essentially 23-and-under for Olympic competition. I think it's too much to create the expectation that every two years that our best players are going back out and competing independently in the summer. Putting aside load management for a second, there's no question there's enormous wear and tear. It goes to the WNBA question about those women playing year-round. Their bodies just can't -- you need a rest.

I think here we should work with our federation ultimately, and whether it be the World Cup or whether it be the Olympics, maybe have one where it's unlimited in terms of age and your very best play, and then the other competition is one where your very best under 23 or something like that compete, and once you've done it, then their expectation is that you continue to compete.

The other issue, of course, is international. There's just not as large a pool in many countries for that competition, too, so I think it's just that some of our international players have grown up literally as brothers with some of these players, so I think there's -- I wouldn't call it peer pressure. It's nationalism, too. But I think it's just an expectation that they're going to be out there competing.

Q. I wanted to see if you could give an update on Michael Jordan's talk about potentially selling the team. And in recent years when the league has made so many great strides in getting a predominantly Black league, African American GMs and presidents, coaches, there's been a rise, is there a worry that if Jordan sells, now you'll have a league that doesn't have any Black ownership?

ADAM SILVER: Well, one, I'm not going to speak for Michael Jordan. I never will. So, I'll let him answer a question what his current status is. I'd only say that just in the same way that it's wonderful that one of our greatest, Michael Jordan, could become the principal governor of a team, he has the absolute right to sell at the same time. Values have gone up a lot since he bought that team, so that is his decision.

While he is our only principal African American owner right now, over the years, whether it's Grant Hill who's come in, David Robinson, Shaquille O'Neal owning a piece of the Atlanta Hawks -- I'm sorry, Sacramento Kings for Shaquille O'Neal. That's ongoing.

I would love to have better representation in terms of principal governors. It's a marketplace. It's something that if we were expanding that the league would be in a position to focus directly on that, but in individual team transactions, the market takes us where we are.

I will say I know that increasingly our governors are focused on diversity in their ownership groups just as they are in their front office, so the trend lines have been positive over the last several years.

Q. Going back to Ja for a second, when you look at the totality of everything that's transpired, the investigations, the gun incidents, when you look back at that first initial suspension, is there a thought that you might have taken it too light on him from that standpoint? Could you have sent a stronger message to be a deterrent to where you are now?

ADAM SILVER: I've thought about that, and Joe Dumars, who is here, was in the room with me when we met with Ja, and he's known Ja longer than I have. For me at the time, an eight-game suspension seemed very serious, and the conversation we had, and Tamika Tremaglio from the Players Association was there, as well, felt heartfelt and serious.

But I think he understood that it wasn't about his words. It was going to be about his future conduct.

I guess in hindsight, I don't know. If it had been a 12-game suspension instead of an eight-game suspension, would that have mattered? I know it seemed based on precedent, and he's represented, and we want to be fair in terms of the league, it seemed appropriate at the time. That's all I can say. Maybe by definition to the extent we've all seen the video that it appears he's done it again, I guess you could say maybe not.

But I don't think we yet know what it will take to change his behavior. Same thing I said at the time; he seems to be a fine young man. In terms of my dealings with him, I think he's clearly made some mistakes, but he's young, and I'm hoping now -- once we conclude at the end of our process what the appropriate discipline is, that it's not just about the discipline, it's about now what we, the Players Association, his team and he and the people around him are going to do to create better circumstances going forward.

I think that's ultimately what's most important here.

Q. Is there any discussion of tweaking the Play-In in a way it doesn't affect the top seed? For some people it seems a bit unfair that the team who actually wins the conference would end up playing with the team that is actually the seventh seed instead of the eighth? Is there any discussion with that?

ADAM SILVER: Yes, there's been discussion to the extent that's an issue that came up from the moment we put in place the structure. Again, you have the example here, right, we all talk about Miami Heat is the eighth seed, but they started as the seventh seed, and when they went to the Play-In, they lost the first game. And some of you may recall, I think they were down to the Chicago Bulls with less than three minutes to go in the second game. They ended up as the eighth seed.

I think from our standpoint, it's worked. I'm always, though -- I've acknowledged to the extent we should tweak certainly new things we put in place, we will. I think I'd rather have a few more seasons under our belt before we make additional changes, so right now it's something we're open to new ideas and discussion, but we think it's working pretty well right now.

Q. Do you expect Ja to be available at the beginning of next season?

ADAM SILVER: I'm not going to answer that yet. I think let's wait and see what the conclusion is of our investigation.

Q. I know you guys are always looking at the season schedule and reducing back to backs. Teams are still playing 15, 14 back to backs, a lot of those on National TV, as well. What's the discussion or evolution of reducing the number of back to backs, especially on the national stage?

ADAM SILVER: Well, it hasn't just been discussion, we've dramatically reduced the number of back-to-backs. We've eliminated four games in five nights -- that used to be a regularity in this league, and now we're down to math.

I think it's the trade-off. Recall two seasons ago we played a 72-game season. In a way, it's not a perfect experiment because coming off the COVID season, so it was condensed in a way that -- as if we had changed and taken 10 games off the season.

But at least from that season-long experiment, it didn't change resting patterns all that much, and it didn't change injury patterns all that much. There is an economic factor, of course, that's being balanced in terms of playing a longer season.

What's interesting is that what we saw this year maybe surprised some, was all-time record attendance, more people attended NBA games than any time in our history. So clearly our fans aren't saying reduce the number of games.

Ultimately, to me, as the science gets better on injuries, if we had better data that suggested a shorter season and fewer back to backs would make a significant difference, I think we would take that seriously.

Of course, the other issue other than the reducing the number of games, you could lengthen the season.

But I think, again, in talking to our teams and our players, one, it is already -- when you think of when training camp starts, essentially the end of September, and here we are almost in late June, so we're all still in the same season, plus you want to get in a Summer League for the incoming players, the players also want that chunk of time off on their bodies. That's what we didn't see when we were coming out of the Bubble.

It's just something we're constantly balancing. But we're always open as we learn more, and I think that AI is yet -- will add a new component to better understanding the data around injuries.

Remember with AI you can also digest video. And I think probably in the not far too distant future when a player tears his ACL, they're going to go back over multiple years and instantaneously through AI analyze the movement that that player was making with his left knee or whatever and conclude whether there was some indicia of something that if only the player were strengthening some muscle or something else could have avoided that injury.

Hopefully with all this new technology, we're going to keep our players on the floor longer and we won't need to modify the schedule.