Adam Silver slips up and tells the truth
A brutal appearance in front of the media for the Commish, trying to defend an indefensible decision.
Good morning. Let’s basketball.
More Sarver Fallout
Adam Silver gave a press conference related to this week’s Board of Governors meetings. When asked by the great Howard Beck about why rank and file employees are held to a different standard than NBA team owners, Silver slipped and told the truth.
Basically: employees can be fired, owners can’t. Except that one time the NBA did fire an owner. Just forget about that — slippery slope, bad precedent, yada yada. Pretty outrageous that Silver claims that Sarver’s reputation will suffer for the punishment. I believe Baxter Holmes, not Adam Silver, gets that credit.
The NBA had to later “clarify” Silver’s comments by … not telling the truth.
“Commissioner Silver’s answer to a question about the rights of business owners did not mean to suggest that NBA players, team employees, and team owners are not held to the same standard of appropriate conduct. They absolutely are.”
That’s straight up not true based on the very thing Beck highlights in his (brilliant) question: employees would get fired on the spot with no questions asked, but the league finds it difficult to fire owners, so owners can get fined $10 million and maybe suspended. Different standards of appropriate conduct based on status and power. It is completely full of s—t to suggest otherwise. Silver accidentally told the told in his response, and we all already knew that truth, and that’s why so many people are so mad about this weak penalty.
Chris Paul spoke up on Wednesday. He called for tougher sanctions against Sarver.
Like many others, I reviewed the report. I was and am horrified and disappointed by what I read. This conduct especially towards women is unacceptable and must never be repeated. I am of the view that the sanction fell short in truly addressing what we can all agree was atrocious behavior. My heart goes out to all of the people that were affected.
The executive director of the NBA Players’ Union, Tamika Tremaglio, said that Sarver should never hold a managerial position in the league again. LeBron James expressed similar sentiments.
ESPN’s Tim Bontemps has some additional Silver quotes from the press conference. You can tell Silver’s punitive decision-making process was pretty awful because he’s absolutely struggling to maintain any sense of logic in explaining said process, the constraints, the rationale for just a 1-year suspension. In one breath he says he cannot take away Sarver’s team; in the next he says that if the investigators found “racial animus” then “absolutely that would have had an impact on the ultimate outcome here.” I don’t know how Silver or anyone could read that report and determine that Sarver didn’t have animus toward women at minimum.
I’ll say that CP3 — a star player on Sarver’s team and a prominent spokesperson on behalf of players broadly — stepping out to call for stronger sanction is powerful. Will pressure build from here? Or is this the gasp of disappointment before everyone moves on to a new topic and battle? I fear the latter and hope for the former.
EuroBasket Update: Luka Out
Oof. On Sunday Nikola Jokic’s Serbia got knocked out of the EuroBasket tournament. On Tuesday time ran out for Giannis Antetokounmpo and Greece. And on Wednesday Poland beat Slovenia, sending Luka Doncic home without another trophy.
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