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NBA commissioner Adam Silver has always been at the forefront of pushing the game beyond its rigid boundaries of yesteryear. This has been most recently evidenced by Silver and company introducing the inaugural in-season tournament, which seeks to spice up an NBA slate that tends to get a tad boring in the pre-Christmas portion of the schedule.
Another area of concern for the commissioner is the commentary on local NBA telecasts, in which broadcasters often get repetitive and sometimes flat-out off-base in their analysis of games.
Silver recently spoke on the issue of watered-down commentary on JJ Reddick's The Old Man & The Three podcast.
“The color commentary in our games gets reduced to ‘this team wanted it more,' or ‘this team tried harder,' as opposed to, like, there's really complex defenses,” said Silver. “What's the offense? Why is this team losing the way they are? Why is this team successful? …Kenny Smith, when he goes to that board, is a great example of helping explain the game.”
Kenny Smith on TNT's Inside the NBA is known to break down plays during the broadcast's halftime segments. Of course, referencing a show that actively mocks its own analysts' lack of NBA knowledge may not be the best example for Adam Silver to use, but his point remains correct in that listening to modern NBA broadcasts can sometimes feel like a contest of who can spit out the most cliches per game.
It's unclear whether there is a true fix to this issue outside of simply telling broadcasters to be better.
