NBA Commissioner Adam Silver addresses the media after the Board of Governors Meeting on April 10, 2024.
It has taken 169 days and 1,187 games to deliver the 2023-24 season to this point, and commissioner Adam Silver scarcely could have been happier.
“I’m thrilled with the level of competition,” Silver told a roomful of reporters and a global TV and internet audience Wednesday after a two-day Board of Governors meeting in New York.
When competition is good, after all, the NBA’s entertainment and business elements typically follow.
With a mere five days and 43 games left on the schedule when he spoke, most teams’ fates are still in play. Up for grabs: their positions in the standings, their seeding for the upcoming postseason and their matchups in the first round. Silver himself noted that only one team, Boston, was locked into its spot (No. 1 in the East).
That means 19 other slots are undetermined for the postseason, including the SoFi Play-In Tournament that begins Tuesday, with sites and dates still hanging on outcomes.
The expressed vision from NBA headquarters through multiple collective bargaining agreements, from David Stern’s tenure as commissioner to Silver’s move into the job a decade ago, has been consistent: 30 teams that, if well-managed, can compete both financially and for championships.
As of Wednesday, a glance at the upper portions of the standings – Boston, Milwaukee, New York, Orlando, Oklahoma City – shows teams from larger and smaller revenue markets alike. Teams near the bottom, meanwhile, are seeded with proven or promising young players such as Ja Morant, Cade Cunningham, Jalen Green, Victor Wembanyama and Brandon Miller.
“That’s what I love about a true 30-team league,” Silver said, “that players and teams should be judged by the quality of the team they put together and their success on the floor.”
The Celtics have run away with the East, but have been dominant only this season. Once home to the league’s most sustained dynasty, Boston has won just one championship (2008) in the past 38 years. Five different franchises have snagged the past five NBA titles.
“I’m not anti-dynasty,” Silver said, “but you want dynasties to be created, to the extent possible, with a level playing field. [Where] teams draft well, develop players well, trade well, but in essence operate roughly [with] the same number of chips.”
Salary cap restrictions and payroll luxury taxes have been implemented and tightened to thwart “super teams” that aren’t so organically grown – the ones created when several free agents land in one favored destination.
Stern famously once said that his dream Finals matchup would be “Lakers vs. Lakers.” What the NBA has this season, though, produced its all-time attendance high and has several media conglomerates competing now in ongoing, multibillion-dollar broadcast and streaming rights negotiations.
And a final week to savor.
“It’s far from a perfect system now, but I think we’re seeing that,” Silver said.
For more, watch the complete press conference here:
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver meets with the media following the Board of Governors meeting.
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Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
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