NBA PARIS GAMES 2025: PACERS VS. SPURS

January 23, 2025

Adam Silver

Accor Arena

Press Conference

ADAM SILVER: Thank you all very much for being here. First of all, it's my first time being back in France since the Olympics this summer, which were an absolute huge success. I also had an opportunity to spend time in Lille, where the Group Stage took place. I think between the games that took place, men's and women's, in Lille and those games here in Paris, the IOC and the organizing committee sold over one million tickets for basketball, which was quite spectacular.

Of course, my country ended up getting the gold medal in both the men's and women's games, but those games against France created an enormous amount of energy in this city. Record ratings in France. I think we had something like a 50 share of the audience for both games and huge ratings back in the United States, as well.

In addition, we had 3-on-3 competition at Place de la Concorde for the second time. Those launched first at the Tokyo Olympics. So, from our standpoint, just a fantastic showing for the sport of basketball in Paris and throughout France.

Now for this opportunity this week, of course it's a thrill to be back here with these two teams in Paris. It's only -- it's actually the first time we've ever played two games [in Paris] during our regular season. Our teams are enjoying their time here.

One of the benefits of playing two games is it gives our teams an opportunity to experience more of the city, something we've generally only been able to do historically when we played preseason in friendlies, but in this case both teams are really enjoying being here.

I know Victor has had the opportunity to take his teammates and show them some of the fine points of Paris and great food and sightseeing and shopping. Same with the Indiana Pacers. They've enjoyed that, as well.

I'll also say in terms of popularity of these games, even though it was two games this time, they both sold out within 24 hours, and we know from the ticketing services we use that that included fans from 53 separate countries that bought tickets to these games. We've said this before, but these games become somewhat like European All-Star for us. It's an opportunity for fans to mark their calendars and know months in advance where they can come to a huge gathering of NBA supporters.

This week we've had the opportunity to have an NBA Week, an NBA House, an NBA Paris Jam, so that includes activities for fans, clinics for children, of course boys and girls.

By the way, Sabrina Ionescu, who is on the championship New York Liberty, is here with us, as well, so we have the WNBA represented. It's great to hear, too, in many of the meetings I've had this week, many of our partners and potential partners have expressed strong interest in the growing women's game. So that's something we're also focused on.

A few words about Victor Wembanyama. There's no doubt he's a very special player and enjoys tremendous popularity here in Paris and throughout France. I would say that popularity is now being shared with fans around the world. At this point he already [has the third-most views among NBA players] on social media in the world, and he's the fifth in jersey sales on our global statistics, so it's quite remarkable.

I've been talking to a few people about a moment he had when he was in New York. He played the Knicks on Christmas Day and then he played the Brooklyn Nets a few days later, so he spent some time in New York, and Victor, who plays chess, went down to a famous park in New York City, Washington Square Park, and brought his chess board and just began playing a few games, and within a few days, something like 100 million people had seen that on social media.

So it just speaks to the popularity of Victor and the dramatic interest we're seeing in players' lifestyles and their interests and everything they enjoy doing. That was remarkable.

The two teams that are here, the Pacers and the Spurs, both have their team owners with them. In the case of the San Antonio Spurs, they're represented by Peter John Holt, who is part of the Holt family that's been the longtime owners of the San Antonio Spurs. Thrilled to have him, members of his family and other members of their ownership group here, too, supporting the franchise, and they've brought a large traveling party with them.

Same for the Indiana Pacers. Herb Simon happens to be the longest standing owner in the NBA, has owned that club for over 40 years now. He's here in Paris with us, also brought a large traveling party. I know I've had the opportunity to spend time with them, and they're enjoying very much their opportunity to spend some time here in Paris, as are their teams.

I'd also say, speaking of the players, of course we have a tremendous number of international players in this league. It's roughly 30 percent of our players representing, at least on opening day, 43 different countries, so there's much more of a global sense around our teams and a desire to experience new countries and new locations.

I'd say, thinking about my time over the many years with the league, it's really wonderful to see these teams and their coaches really embrace the opportunity to experience these great cities.

Players learn from each other, get around the community. Just like the Spurs can learn from Victor, other international players on this trip, there's also another French player, too, on the San Antonio Spurs, so it's quite exciting for these teams.

Coming with that is a great bonding experience for them, as well, just the time they spend with each other here, the time away from home, I think, turns out to be very impactful, so our teams are really embracing these sort of trips, so it's great to see.

Lastly, I just want to say before I take questions, speaking of the San Antonio Spurs, they were a pioneer around the international game, as you all well know. They were scouting internationally in a deep way long before many other teams, and those efforts were led by R.C. Buford who is here with us now, but also Coach Gregg Popovich, and I just want to say we miss not having him here with us today, and on behalf of everyone at the league office, wish him a speedy recovery.

With that, happy to answer any questions.

Q. We've heard many rumors about the NBA's plans in Europe, maybe to launch something, maybe not this season, maybe next season or the one after that. Do you have already an agreement maybe with FIBA to create something, and what do you make of the Euroleague's decision to re-sign with their partner IMG? Does that put an end to the discussions between the NBA and them, and is a clash inevitable in the future?

ADAM SILVER: Thank you for the question. I won't speak specifically on the IMG relationship with the Euroleague other than to say I know the IMG folks very well, and they are an excellent marketing company, and we've been partners in the past with the EuroLeague and are close with many of their clubs and are appreciative of the effort that's gone into growing basketball throughout Europe.

I'd say from the NBA standpoint, we continue to explore what opportunities may exist to help continue to develop the basketball infrastructure here. We have -- in the past I've talked about our exploration of a potential league here. I'd say to the extent we're looking at that opportunity, it would just be one piece of a larger approach to basketball throughout Europe. Anything we would do would include a partnership with FIBA, although there are no agreements in place right now. We're still in exploratory stage. But I would say anything we've done globally has been with FIBA as our partner as, for example, the league that we are operating in Africa right now.

But we've used this opportunity here over the last few days. Mark Tatum, the deputy commissioner, is here who oversees international to have meetings with many different stakeholders, and those stakeholders include leaders of clubs, includes FIBA, includes media companies, traditional sports sponsors, just to best understand the landscape here and to see what the opportunity may be.

As I said, we have no agreements in place. We're not ready to make any additional announcements, and we continue to learn all we can and to see if there is a path to move forward.

I'll just say, I joined the NBA right before the famous Dream Team in 1992 and have been closely watching the development of European basketball over those many years, and while Europe continues to develop some of the best players in the world, many of our most recent MVPs of course are European, we think that the commercial opportunity has not kept pace with the growth of the game.

What we do at the NBA is we run leagues. We of course run the WNBA; we have the league in Africa I mentioned; we have the G League; and we have a 2K video league, so we operate five different leagues, and we think it's an expertise we have.

So we are looking very closely to see if there's an opportunity to professionalize the game to another level here, to create a larger commercial opportunity and not just because commercial opportunity suggests you can grow revenue but because we believe that with markets, if you can create proper incentives, you can get significant additional investment, and ultimately that's the way to grow the game at all levels. That's what we're continuing to look at right now.

Q. Two years ago at this game, Victor was coming as a fan, and everyone knew he would be the No. 1 pick a few months later and you got asked a lot of questions that night about Victor and you were very cautious about not heaping too much pressure or expectation on then a 19-year-old's shoulders. Whenever you look back to what your private thoughts were at that point, has he exceeded or matched or how has the reality matched whatever you thought would be possible when Victor came to the NBA?

ADAM SILVER: I would say Victor has exceeded any expectations only because having been with the league for a long time, we've seen lots of projected No. 1 picks who did or didn't go No. 1, but even when they went No. 1, maybe due to no fault of their own or because of an injury or things just didn't work out, didn't meet the high expectations people had of them. So I tried to stay level-headed in terms of what the potential is for a player.

Of course, in the case with Victor, there was a body of work even when we were back then in Paris where we were televising on NBA TV his club games and we were familiar with him. I'd had the opportunity to spend time with him. There was never a doubt in my mind in terms of Victor's character, his motivation, his drive, his intelligence. All those things are very apparent when you talk to him.

I would say now all of those qualities being translated into the NBA game, we didn't know at that time he was going to be with the San Antonio Spurs, which again, we would have all been happy from a league standpoint with whatever club he had gone to, but there, as I mentioned earlier with R.C. Buford and Coach Pop, there were a GM and a coach who had fantastic experience developing international players, developing big men, so I think that worked out very well. I think he's received excellent support there.

Again, you never know with these things. It's like interviewing people for jobs. Everyone in this room has hired someone for a job thinking that they were the perfect person and candidate and then when he or she took the job you quickly realized, well, maybe they weren't the right fit.

I think in the case of Victor, as I said, he's exceeded my expectations. One, just by his play on the floor he's demonstrated that, but also in terms of his desire to engage with fans. That example I used with him about playing chess in Washington Square Park, that was something he chose to do. The league had nothing to do with that.

But I think he loves to engage with people. He loves people. We're also seeing what incredible work ethic he has. I love the fact that now people are actually talking about his defense. Think about that, something that he really has focused on and what a sign of a great player. Everybody clearly sees offensive statistics but missed defense in a lot of cases.

As I said, I'm very happy with him, but even now I'm still being a little bit cautious. It's interesting, I was just looking, he just turned 21, and LeBron just turned 40. There's the opportunity for 19 years of excellence.

I'm looking forward to seeing him play tonight and Saturday, and I would just say it's a pleasure to be part of a league with Victor Wembanyama.

Q. Basketball in Germany as a sport has benefitted from recent success like the World Cup and the German NBA players. It's not surprising that we get asked a lot about a potential NBA game in Germany. What message do you have for German basketball fans?

ADAM SILVER: Stay tuned. We're looking very closely at potentially bringing a regular-season game to Germany. It's something that our office in Europe is concentrating on at this precise time.

Q. I wanted to come back to the discussions about the European League. You said you've been meeting with stakeholders this week. What has the tenor of their reactions been like?

ADAM SILVER: The tenor of the meetings have been very positive. It's not anti-anybody or anti-any other organization. But I think what we're hearing is when we look at the success of, I'll say soccer so I don't confuse anybody, because that's what we call it in the States, when they look at the tremendous success of soccer globally but in Europe, as well, and they sort of -- most people in a meeting they put one hand here and they say that's the commercial success of soccer, and then they put their other hand here and they say that's where basketball currently stands.

So when we look at that opportunity and these potential partners do, as well, what they're telling us is they believe that from a commercial standpoint in terms of the networks they represent or are part of or those consumer companies that they represent, that they think there's a desire to connect with consumers, particularly young consumers, which is generally the fan base of the NBA, that they think that the market is ready to do more in this sport.

I'll add what I'm hearing back from people, it's something I know by virtue of being part of the NBA. The NBA is a unique league in my mind in that of course we represent the best basketball and with the WNBA the best women's basketball, but it's also a lifestyle brand, and I think that's something that comes up in many of the meetings, that there's a strong association with music, with fashion, with culture, with art. I think there's a real appreciation for that, that the NBA is even something a little bit different than basketball, than just pure basketball.

I think the way to grow the sport is to appeal to people beyond those who are hardcore basketball fans, and that's where our success has come in the United States and elsewhere. It's about the NBA brand.

I think that the notion we've heard back is that if you can bring those elements of the NBA brand and bring those to Europe as part of some structured league potentially, we think there's a real opportunity.

Q. I would like to just ask about the new TV deal that you signed and if you think that it can leverage some availability for Europe and for Poland, as well.

ADAM SILVER: You're referring to the new TV deals we did in the United States?

Q. Yes, yes.

ADAM SILVER: So number one, in many ways, those are global deals: Three global companies, Disney, Comcast/NBC Universal and Amazon. One of the important aspects of these new television deals is it's a move from what I think of as traditional legacy television, over-the-air television, which is still very important, cable television, which in many ways is becoming less important, but then moving to streaming television.

Streaming TV, which is really internet television, provides all kinds of opportunities for fans that you don't have through traditional TV. Number one, programming, games can be viewed on your phone or whatever portable device you have but a huge advantage when you can carry your television with you especially when there are time zone differences and particularly for young people who tend not to watch as much traditional television but watch streaming services, whether that be ESPN or Peacock or Amazon or YouTube for that matter. Young people tend to watch more programming on their phone, putting aside opportunities in social media.

In addition to the availability, those new services allow for all kinds of new functionality, unlimited numbers of languages, dialects, cameras focused on particular players, human interest, information that can come up while you're watching a game, tap on a player, where is that player from, what are his statistics, et cetera, merchandising opportunities, community activities. You name it. Those are things we're very focused on.

Those deals, yes, but also -- maybe this goes to your question. Those deals are not exclusive around the rest of the world, so we still have opportunities. Bill Koenig is here, who runs the NBA's media business, having additional conversations with broadcasters here in France and elsewhere so that we can supplement those deals with additional programming that's more local, including, for example, these two games will be available on over-the-air television.

We want to make sure both that we can reach the broadest number of fans but also that we're reaching fans where they are, and particularly with young fans that tend to be on their phones.

Q. Staying with that European basketball topic, yesterday when you spoke with the French media, you mentioned that the likely scenario will be an independent European league. Even though the league would be entirely new, is it possible that the participating teams will include established and well-known brands like Real Madrid, for example? And second part of the question would be regarding the new teams; could there be soccer brand affiliates in basketball such as PSG, Man United, Manchester City and the others? And do you think they would be able to compete financially with other European basketball teams?

ADAM SILVER: The quick answer to your question is everything is still on the table. The potential to include existing clubs, absolutely, should there be interest. The opportunity to create sustainable competition, yes. Would we want to have to have a broad base of countries represented? Absolutely. That's the benefit we have now by coming in and looking at this from a blank canvas.

Incidentally, I recognize there's enormous history and tradition here in European basketball, and we want to respect those traditions. Obviously, the United States is used to closed leagues; Europe is used to open leagues with promotion, regulation, et cetera. So we're looking at all those facets.

But having had this long history from our operation of sports leagues, largely in the United States and a little bit elsewhere, seeing what's happened in Europe, not just in basketball but in soccer, as well, it gives us the opportunity to say, all right, let's take a fresh look; what are the most effective practices for creating a commercially viable league.

That's the process we're going through right now.

Q. With the game becoming more and more global, do you feel the need from the American fan base to find the next American faces for the NBA, for example, your fellow Duke Blue Devil Cooper Flagg? Do you think he could be one of the next faces of the league?

ADAM SILVER: I'm going to build off Tim's question, and the last person I want to put pressure on is Cooper Flagg, but he looks pretty spectacular so far.

I will just add that while it's amazing to see the breadth and depth of international players coming into the NBA, 70 percent of our players in the NBA of course are still U.S. players. Could we do a better job working potentially with other youth programs in the U.S. developing U.S. players? Absolutely.

I think it's something -- you happen to be sitting next to Kathy Behrens from the NBA, who's very involved in that program that we're taking a very close look, working with the NCAA, working with Nike on what more we can do to help bring elite players along, at the same time focusing on participation generally for boys and girls, and I think there's lessons to be learned from Europe, from their system, in terms of development.

So I'm not concerned at all about the pipeline of American players, but I think there's more we can do, and incidentally in Europe, having some of the conversations that we've had while we were here with some former NBA players who grew up in European systems, and as I said before, if we were to look at a league opportunity, we want to be part of a larger ecosystem, and what we've heard is there's been some significant cuts in some of the traditional nationally funded programs that have helped develop basketball, and I know that's something that our partners at FIBA are very focused on. Anything we do, they want to be supportive of the local leagues and they want to be supportive of development programs to ensure that we're doing as good a job as we can supporting youth basketball.

I'll just add, when I talk to great players in the NBA, yes, you have to have incredible physical talent, but Victor is a great example of it; he had incredible training as a youth player and was part of first-class organizations. That's necessary. I think just for someone like me who had the opportunity to go to great schools and be trained by David Stern and others, I don't think sports is any different. It's not an accident that these players reach these levels, and I think so the more we can do to support the ecosystem to ensure that basketball is played -- lastly I'll say, yes, with a focus on elite sports, but just one additional word just about the wonders of sport, and this is not limited to basketball, but it's something we spend a lot of time at the NBA and WNBA and that is just encouraging young people to be actively involved physically with all these screens that people spend all their time looking at, you need to remind them how important it is to be physically active.

Basketball happens to be one of those sports where for boys and girls you can play it alone, you can play it 3-on-3, 5-on-5, et cetera, that's why I'm so encouraged by what they're doing at the Olympic movement, getting kids active and then teaching them the values of sports: Respect, responsibility, hard work, all those wonderful things that come with sport. Then for the vast majority of them or almost all of them who will never go on to play sports at an elite level, those are the important qualities that allow them ultimately to become top-notch journalists or league executives, lawyers, doctors, et cetera, all those common values.

Traditionally we've had so much support from governments around the world when we've brought the game and the investments to these communities because they see well beyond the commercial opportunities. They're focused on what we can do for these communities.

Q. I'd like to follow up on two different points that you've made. One with the European venture that you have been considering. Is it fair at all to say that some of the momentum has stalled on your side as far as moving towards having your own league over here? Then the other thing I wanted to follow up with, is there something about European development that you think could work in the U.S.?

ADAM SILVER: I usually agree with you on most things, so I'd say, no, it's not fair at all to say that momentum has stalled. From what we've been doing at the league office in terms of the process we've been following, we're right on track. I'm not sure what anybody else's expectation was.

Our plan all along was to spend time here this summer when we were here for the Olympics to have a series of meetings and we were on the ground here for roughly two weeks to watch basketball ourselves, certainly all the stakeholders were here watching the Olympics, to go back, do some additional work, always knowing that we would be here for this week in January to set a set of meetings here and take advantage of that opportunity. We have an NBA board meeting late March where we'll be giving an update to our bosses, in essence.

From that standpoint, we're right on track. So, I don't feel that way at all.

I'd say in terms of what we see from a development standpoint, I think, sure, when I talk to Luka Doncic or certainly Victor or Giannis, other top-notch international players and talk about the track they were on in developing as players, there's a lot that is preferable in many ways to the American system.

It's an exaggeration to say it, but often people shorthand it to say, in Europe basketball elite players practice six days a week and play one, and in the United States they play six days a week and practice one. That's not quite true. I'm looking at Joe Dumars who's sort of shaking his head saying in essence yes. I think in youth basketball in the U.S., the young players are playing too many games, and I think that there's sometimes too much of a focus on skill. It's not that they're not working as hard. Certainly in some cases I think they're working too hard and need to be playing more sports at once.

But my feeling here is that there's something to be said when youth players are part of a singular organization, in some cases maybe 14 through 19, there's much more of an incentive to bring players along as opposed to a win-now mentality.

I think that's something that if we can bring back to the States, again, working with the NCAA, potentially working with EYBL, the program that Nike runs, I think at an elite level, and the data supports it, that we think some of the injuries that our young players are experiencing are overuse injuries, not because they're being too physical but it's from the repetition of certain things.

That's why I think certainly Joe Dumars' generation, those players in the league also happened to be the best at every other sport in their schools because they played different sports depending on the season. We're not necessarily going to move away from specialization, but I think there is an opportunity here using the kind of data that we now have. AI is going to be extraordinarily helpful because now when a player is injured, you can go back through AI and see every move that player made and see common patterns, what's a player doing, what necessarily led them to that injury.

The answer is we can do a better job and we can learn from European development.

Q. We've been praising European basketball all night long. Regarding the upcoming All-Star Weekend, you had a new plan to attract some new viewers and to make the game more competitive. Is something like a Team USA versus Team World something you've been thinking about, as it is used in different European leagues as an All-Star Game?

ADAM SILVER: Yeah, we have explored the idea of doing a U.S. team versus a World team, and maybe we will do that one day. A couple thoughts on that. One is, as I mentioned, 30 percent of the league is international and the rest American players. Not to say we couldn't figure out a way around this, but to the extent we want to have a fair process for picking All-Stars, if you're picking half the players from a 30 percent pool and the other half from a 70 percent pool, it might not be fair to the players. So that's one thing we're looking at.

In addition, I want to be respectful of not just international basketball but the incredible work that individual countries are doing. Just by way of example, there's 14 NBA players from France. I could see that some international players would say, that might have been the old days when it was U.S. against all of us, but we're not so bad that it takes you -- it's U.S. against 200 other countries that have players.

It may be, to me, a little bit of an old-fashioned concept where we come in as Americans and say, we'll take on the world. I'm not sure how well that would be received by our international players.

We're experimenting, as you mentioned, with a new format this year. I haven't given up on All-Star still being competitive, entertaining games for the fans. That's certainly not what we were this [past] year.

We went back to the drawing board. We had direct conversations with many of the players, many of the perennial All-Stars, to talk about what it is that we could put together from a competitive standpoint. I'm optimistic this year that we landed on a formula that will work.

Q. You mentioned I think last week in a podcast you're looking at the three-point issue. Aside from asking what are you considering in terms of fixes, do you feel like the NBA has kind of reached an efficiency trap that baseball reached a few years ago where teams were behaving in a way where they were trying to maximize winning but it ultimately hurt the product and baseball took a number of measures to try to fix that, and if you feel it has, does the NBA need to do something small or big in that regard?

ADAM SILVER: The answer is I'm not sure what we need to do as a result. But yes, I would say analytics, call it, takes sports -- since, to your point, it's not unique to basketball or the NBA, takes sports in a certain direction because it's a coach's and a general manager's job to win. They're not necessarily focused on the aesthetic appeal of the game, understandably, and then it's our role, and working here, Byron Spruell and Joe Dumars and Evan Wasch, to work with our Competition Committee and saying, all right, we have to balance these interests, that they're going to operate under our current rules just as we saw in baseball and do everything they can to win under those existing rules, and then it's on us if we need to make adjustments in those rules because we're also looking at the aesthetic appeal of the game.

I think in the case of the three-point shooting, it's absolutely that the analytics have taken teams in certain directions, to the point where -- one aspect in particular that concerns me, and I've heard this directly from some players, that when you get to a point where something to a great player feels a bit unnatural, and in certain cases in that category I would put necessarily a shot that they would otherwise take that the coach is saying that's a bad shot because it's not an efficient shot to take, that two-pointer.

Having said all that, as Joe has said before, the game changes over time. We're in a transition now.

The other thing I've learned -- and this also came directly from one of our advisors, speaking of Duke, Mike Krzyzewski from Duke University. He's also said to me in our Competition Committee, be careful not to overreact. Sometimes as adjustments happen, teams may swing a little too far in one direction and they may pull back. One example maybe is the Boston Celtics were an all-time high in three-point shooting in the league and already those numbers are coming down midway into the season.

I want to let it marinate a bit. We happen to have a Competition Committee meeting on Monday of next week. We have a general manager meeting on Tuesday. I want to get direct feedback from our teams on what they're seeing.

I should add, I do find night in and night out we're watching the best athletes in the world do things that were unthinkable to me when I first joined the league. I'm enjoying watching the games. Is there a tweak? I'll just add, I'm not necessarily sure it's just three-point shooting.

Again, one of the things maybe that we've swung too far on is -- well, I remember there was an era in the NBA, largely in the '90s, where there was a sense that we had taken away some of the finesse aspects of the game; the game had become too physical. Maybe we went too far in the other direction, and we made some adjustments last year to allow defenses to be a little bit more physical. Fans responded positively to that, and I think teams did, as well. Some teams may have had some concerns with exactly how that adjustment was made, but the end result I think has been very positive from a fan standpoint.

Those are the kinds of things that we're continuing to look. I've seen some incredible games -- just look at those Olympic Games that I was here for, USA-Serbia, USA-France in the medal round. Many people have said to me those are two of the best basketball games they've ever seen. It just so happens that the three-point shooting in those games was at a higher rate on average than the average we're seeing in the NBA right now, and I don't think anyone said, oh, there's too much three-point shooting in those games.

It's a beautiful game. It's an incredible game. I think that the most important part from our standpoint is ensuring that there's always competitive tension on the floor. There's a physical part of it. I think that partly what fans are responding to isn't necessarily the number of feet from which the shot has been taken but what they view as the level of difficulty. That becomes important. Does the shot look too easy to the fans?

I think fans like a certain aspect of the physical grinding that comes with this game. I don't think we want that to be lost.

I have tremendous confidence in our Competition Committee, my co-workers who are really expert on the game. I think it's my job to listen to the fans, as well, and to ensure that what we are presenting ultimately as the NBA product has the greatest appeal possible.

I'm listening to the critics. I don't want to overreact, but I think there are potentially some adjustments we can make.