The NBA has become one of the most — if not the most — progressive professional sports leagues in the world. With its popularity literally growing by the day, it appears as though NBA Commissioner Adam Silver would like to keep each and every franchise as competitive as possible for as long as possible.
Silver, who is quite open regarding most issues and topics, is definitely not a fan of the lengthy rebuild. It's a trend that has seemingly taken over the North American professional sports landscape as of late.
“What I really want to see is teams not stay in rebuilding mode for multiple years,” Silver recently told Chris Kirschner of The Athletic. “I understand that for any team that it’s going to make sense to break down an existing team which has peaked and to look for younger players. That appears to be what the Hawks are doing right now. It can be a very sensible strategy.
“I think the real test in terms of lottery reform is how teams perform and behave over a number of years. We’ll see. I recognize that short of a relegation system like they have in European soccer that there’s always going to be an incentive with these really smart people operating our teams to, at certain points, rebuild. I accept that. You just don’t want to see it go on for too long, not just because I think it games the system, but I think it’s unhealthy for the players and the league.”
Among the four main professional sports leagues in North America, the NBA is the one with the least parity. In any given year, there are only a handful of teams with a reasonable chance at a championship. If moderately successful teams had a better chance at making it to the NBA Finals, maybe less teams would feel the need to rebuild.
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