NBA Commissioner Silver speaks at Marshall series


The Marshall Sports Business Institute hosted NBA Commissioner Adam Silver as a part of its ongoing Commissioners’ Series on Wednesday at Galen Center.

The conversation, which was moderated by David Carter, executive director of the Sports Business Institute and an associate professor at the Marshall School of Business, discussed the current state and future of the NBA, in addition to key accomplishments and challenges he has faced while in his role.

Silver has been busy in his first year as commissioner, handing  down a lifetime ban to former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling in response to racist comments he made in a recorded conversation, in addition to overseeing two separate NBA franchises being sold for record prices.

Silver began by discussing his long journey to the top of the NBA after starting his career there in 1992 as a special assistant to long-time serving commissioner David Stern, who Silver succeeded in February 2014 to become the league’s fifth commissioner. He was unanimously elected by the NBA Board of Governors after previously serving as deputy commissioner.

The commissioner role is Silver’s sixth job at the league, and we elaborated on his ability to  work his way up before moving on to credit Stern for helping him prepare for his new responsibilities and for making the transition process as smooth as possible.

“There’s no ultimate preparation for a job like commissioner or CEO or any jobs like that, until you actually do it — but I would say I was well-prepared as anyone could have been,” Silver said. “There’s a lot that swirls around quickly in this job.”

In 2014, the SportsBusiness Journal ranked Silver at the top of its list of the 50 Most influential People in Sports Business, which might have been attributed to the nine-year, $24 billion television rights deal he helped negotiate with ESPN and TNT.

Silver believes that the value of this media rights deal is only going to rise in the coming years and offered the NCAA tournament, which experienced its highest average viewership in 22 years, as a prime example of its success.

“It’s a really unique form of entertainment and programming and in an increasingly fragmented media world, the value of those premium live sports rights are going to continue to go up, whether on a local basis, national basis, or international basis,” Silver said.

The commissioner added that new technology and emerging platforms that world further enable the NBA the ability to make the game available to more people, which could drive up the value of these media rights in the foreseeable future.

Silver briefly touched on the NBA’s “soft” salary cap system and explained how their revenue sharing model -— players receive 51 percent — is beneficial because the players have the same incentives as the team owners to grow the pie.

“From our standpoint, the more the players make means the better the league is doing and it also means that we are truly partners in this enterprise,” Silver said.

Other topics Silver tackled later in the talk included the role of analytics in NBA front offices, the minimum age for players to enter the NBA Draft and the future of sports betting in professional sports, which he believes can deliver a direct economic benefit to sports.

Silver also left students with some career advice for breaking into the sports industry.

“I never thought I would work in the sports industry,” Silver said. “To me, what always worked was I just put my head down, worked very hard and then just see where it takes me.”

Overall, the conversation — which included a few jokes here and there about Silver’s alma mater, Duke, which won the national college basketball on championship Monday night — was well received by the 300 or so professional, alumni and students at the event.

“I was really grateful that he was as open and candid as he was about some of the more pressing issues that the league is facing, whether it’s upcoming labor relations issues or how to grow the game internationally and how to help put individual markets,” Carter said.

USC students were also content with the direction Silver is taking the NBA, especially when it came to its global development endeavors.

“Commissioner Silver did a really good job highlighting the future opportunities of the NBA both in the United States and around the world,” senior Matthew Prusak said.

Silver announced that the NBA will be playing an exhibition game in Johannesburg, South Africa in August, becoming the first U.S. professional league to play on the continent.

Commissioner Silver’s visit marks the SBI’s eighth Commissioners’ Series event, which is dedicated to hosting high-profile events and presentations involving the leaders of America’s premier sports leagues and organizations.

“We don’t get a lot of exposure to the leaders of the sports industry because we’re here in Los Angeles so every chance we get to have them come here is really great for the university, for our program and I think the students really enjoy it,” Carter said.