Adam Silver may have gone too far when he said he would “vow to fix the system” after the 73-win Golden State Warriors signed Kevin Durant this summer.
At least Jerry West thinks so.
West, now an executive board member for the Warriors, didn't like Silver's comments regarding the situation.
“It's sour grapes,” West said. “We signed Shaquille O'Neal and it wasn't as big an uproar as this. Listen, the owners make the rules. They negotiate with the players. And for them to say something like that, to me it's wrong on their part. The commissioner said something like that and I called him about it. I told him I didn't think the comment was fair. It's not fair to Kevin. It's not fair to the Warriors. It's not fair to any team going forward who will sign a free agent of this stature.
“The players bargained for this. They have a chance to go play where they want to. I only wish I had that opportunity in my career and I'm sure a lot of other people felt the same way.”
West has a point.
The Warriors played within the rules to get Durant. Just not many people saw this kind of salary cap spike coming. The franchise was truly in the right place at the right time to pull this off. A situation quite like this may never happen again.
But what won't ever change is stars joining up. That's been going on since the start of the league and likely will always be a part of the NBA fabric. Some fans don't like it, but at the end of the day the players seem OK with it more often than not.
It's Silver's job to determine how much he should intervene in shaping the rules in the future to promote parity.
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