The lie of Adam Silver's Alley-Oop Diplomacy
Adam Silver talks up Kissinger and soft power diplomacy with a dude in a tank top surrounded by bobbleheads. This is the NBA.
Good morning. Let’s basketball.
Child With a Dove; Pablo Picasso; 1901
NBA commissioner Adam Silver, having a triumphant little media tour amid the successful NBA Cup in-season tournament, went on The Pat McAfee Show, a podcast turned ESPN-televised podcast hosted by Pat McAfee, a former All-Pro NFL kicker turned media superstar.
Silver is traditionally extremely careful with media appearances. McAfee’s show is pretty loose. To me, this speaks to Silver and the NBA C-suite’s interest is really boosting the profile of the NBA Cup heading into the Final Four. McAfee offers a huge audience, and getting to talk about how awesome the NBA is right now for a half-hour (with the interviewer wearing an “NBA Cup” tank top) looks like an obvious, unabashed victory.
Except when the conversation, as it is wont to do, turns to Henry Kissinger, neoliberalism and appeasing autocrats in the name of sport. We pick up the interview about 12 minutes in, following a conversation about the globalization of the game.
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