As Adam Silver demonstrated during his all-star media address, the NBA isn’t shying away from the politics of today.
NEW ORLEANS – As the sports industry gets ever bigger and with the revenue streams available for providing our amusement running ever deeper it’s inevitable that fun-and-games overlaps with the ultimate form of reality TV – global events.
One estimate suggests that in aggregate the four major North American sports will be a $70-billion industry by the end of 2017.
And as the sports industry expands and the world shrinks, the only thing that seems to fly around the world faster than money is athletic talent.
Sports brings us together, especially when the search is on for the next 7-foot-2 Latvian with guard skills in the mold of Kristaps Porzingis, the New York Knicks big man who won Skills Challenge at All-Star Saturday Night.
So no wonder NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s annual state-of-the-NBA address seamlessly veered from the politics of our times to the minutiae of the league’s collective bargaining agreement.
Pretending you can separate the business of sports from the business of politics is a fool’s game, and Silver is no fool.
Silver didn’t have to wait very long to be asked for a comment on the league’s position on U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order temporarily banning visitors from seven predominantly Muslim countries from traveling to the United States.
“I do have concern about travel bans. Putting aside the justification for them for a second because I don’t have access to the same intelligence, obviously, or security information that people in the government do, but we are a business based on global mobility,” said Silver.
“… As I said earlier, 25 per cent of our players were born outside of the United States. We do a tremendous amount of business on a global basis, and if you think about what the NBA stands for, it’s the very best all coming together, the very best in the world all coming together to perform at the highest level.”
For contrast, compare Silver’s take to the response by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell during his press conference during Super Bowl week, in the immediate days after the ban.
“We are aware of the conversations that are going on, and the divisions,” Goodell said. “As commissioner of the NFL, I’m singularly focused on the Super Bowl right now.”
And just to make sure, any politically-themed questions made of anyone during Super Bowl week were left off the official transcripts provided by the NFL to the media, which is not as nefarious as it sounds – most of the time the transcripts provided by the leagues at major events aren’t complete – it just paints a different picture than the one framed at all-star weekend.
The NBA seems at least kind of grown up in this sense. When Silver addressed the media he certainly didn’t use the opportunity to stand on a soapbox, but in a politically charged moment in time he didn’t turtle.
He couldn’t.
Just having the all-star game in New Orleans this week was political. The game was supposed to be played in Charlotte, North Carolina, but Silver and the league decided to move the game to the Big Easy because they felt bringing the game there with the state’s so-called bathroom law on the books – a series of legislative moves to roll back various anti-discrimination measures – a business that prides itself on representing diversity and inclusiveness couldn’t bring it’s showcase event there.
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Playing politics can be a slippery slope for any business, and the last thing it sounds like Silver wants to do is use his league as a blunt object against views he may not share personally, but there is no point in having standards and beliefs if you’re not going to adhere to them.
From stripping former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling of his franchise after he was secretly taped making racist comments to moving the all-star game in the name of inclusivity, so far Silver and the NBA has walked the walked.
“The NBA, I think, is at the forefront of social activism as far as the major sports are concerned [and] I’m very proud of the work that Adam Silver is doing and the league’s doing,” said Western Conference all-star head coach Steve Kerr, who has used his platform to speak out forcefully on several political issues recently. “They back up what they believe in. I think that’s important.”
Why has the NBA become a place where speaking out politically has suddenly become standard practice?
“That’s a good question. I’m not quite sure,” said Kerr. “It is an urban game. It’s an inclusive game. We have over 100 players from all over the world to mix in with our American players, and we’ve got a lot of strong leadership both in the league office but also amongst our players, guys who are not afraid to talk and take their stands.”
The league can tolerate diversity of opinion too.
For some reason Cleveland Cavaliers guard Kyrie Irving decided to use all-star weekend to argue that he believes the earth is flat. It’s not clear how serious he is or how much of it was kind of a social experiment of his own, but after it set social media on fire on over the weekend.
His view from inside a tsunami of media coverage was a thoughtful one, and once again brushed up against the politics of our times, where what is truth and what is news have become debatable topics.
“I think that there’s just so much, I guess – I don’t know if you can even call it news – there are so many real things going on, actual, like, things that are going on that’s changing the shape, the way of our lives,” Irving told reporters on Saturday. “And I think it sometimes gets skewed because of who we are in the basketball world, and, ‘Oh man, what does he actually think? Oh, no, I don’t like hearing … the world is flat, or he thinks the world can’t be round.’
“You know, I know the science, I know everything possible – not everything possible – but the fact that that actually could be real news, that people are actually asking me that – ‘It’s a social phenomenon. What do you think about it? Are you going to try to protect your image?’ I mean, it really doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter. The fact that it’s a conversation? I’m glad that it got people talking like this: ‘Kyrie actually thinks the world is flat.’”
Silver wasn’t afraid of that topic either.
“Kyrie and I went to the same college,” said Silver, a Duke graduate. “He may have taken some different courses than I did. But in all seriousness, as he made clear today, he was trying to be provocative, and I think it was effective. I think it was a larger comment on the sort of so-called fake news debate that’s going on in our society right now in terms of what’s reported, and it led to an interesting discussion.
“But personally,” said Silver. “I believe the world is round.”