Although NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has seen success in his tenure leading the NBA, there have been many NBA fans and media members frustrated with his leadership. Add Bill Simmons to the growing number of critics of Silver, as on the latest episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast, Simmons questioned if Adam Silver should remain as commissioner.
Simmons feels that Silver isn't interested in what fans want fixed in the NBA and believes that there is a growing disinterest in teams and players in contending. Ultimately, Simmons believes that Silver might not be the person for the job, as several things that he deems as problems haven't been solved.
“Everything they’re doing, they’re not serving the larger picture of, what do fans want,” Simmons said. :How do we keep our players healthy? How do we have a competitive season from start to finish? How do we avoid over one fourth of our league not giving a s—t for the last two months? How do we fix this? It’s the first time I’ve really wondered, do we have the right guy running the league? Because he doesn’t seem interested in actually fixing real problems that everybody can see. And it’s not, look at the NBA Cup. Oh we created this thing, it’s like your schedule is too long. You have to fix this, it’s too long. It should be 70 games.”
Silver's tenure is often criticized by NBA fans who point to a rise in injuries and players sitting out due to his leadership. He is also blamed for the supposed decline of the All-Star Game and what many believe is the stratification of NBA media rights.
But Silver has also seen success in his tenure, including securing a $2.6 billion media rights deal that reintroduced NBC as a main broadcast partner and brought Prime Video on as a streaming partner, while keeping Disney and ESPN as primary partners for the regular season and the NBA Finals.
He's sought to combat tanking by changing draft lottery rules and creating the NBA Play-In Tournament, which gives the 7th- to 10th-seeded teams in each conference an opportunity to make the playoffs. To incentivize early-season play, Silver led the creation of the NBA In-Season Tournament, which has led to higher viewership of pre-Christmas Day games.
