Adam Silver: “Public Trade Requests are Disheartening”

Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner, announced last night in Las Vegas, that the league needs new rules regarding free agency. All the blockbusting moves seen in the first days of the current free-agency period made Silver repeat his thoughts on this matter, as he already talked about it on multiple occasions in the past.

“My job is to enforce a fair set of rules for all our teams and a set of rules that are clear and make sense for everyone,” Commissioner Silver said. “I think right now we’re not quite there.”

The primary reason for his comments was the fact that all the big moves were already arranged before the free agency started. As we saw, in the first few hours of the free-agency period, several big names already announced what their next destination is. Some of them were even waiting for 6 p.m. just to ink the deal.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver says the league has “work to do” when it comes to free agency and the rules governing it. https://t.co/vQYIjin5Qs

— Tim Bontemps (@TimBontemps) July 10, 2019

It seems that Silver doesn’t like this, and it is quite possible that he received complaints from some franchises. He was pretty direct about this matter, saying that the teams are in a difficult position. There is nothing they can do to prevent their player from negotiating with another rival, even if they know about such activity.

“I think they’re put in difficult situations because when they’re sitting across from a player and whether it’s conversations that are happening earlier than they should or frankly things are being discussed that don’t fall squarely within the collective bargaining agreement, it puts teams in a very difficult position because they are reading or hearing that other teams are doing other things to compete,” Silver pointed out.

The ultimate goal for Silver is to secure equal circumstances for all 30 teams, regardless of their size, location, market, etc. According to his words, it is the only way to keep the NBA properly developing and to have an exciting competition which will be attractive and which will, later on, generate profits and amusement for the fans.

“At the end of the day, you want to make sure you have a league where every team is in a position to compete.”

He also mentioned one thing which deeply concerns him – public trade requests. For Silver, this is one of the biggest problems in the NBA, and although it is something present for quite some time, he believes that it influences the league in a bad way. They are ruining the chemistry on and off the court, and have a much deeper impact than anybody believes. Some of them are influencing the community, and not only the franchise or the player himself.

“Trade demands are disheartening. They’re disheartening to the team. They’re disheartening to the community and don’t serve the player well.”

NBA commissioner Adam Silver acknowledges that "trade demands are disheartening" at his annual July news conference in Las Vegas and says they have to be "addressed" in some manner

— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) July 10, 2019

Some of the reporters wanted to hear Commissioner’s thoughts on the fact that many clubs decided that some of their rookies sit out games in the Summer League. In his opinion, that is not a problem. He also commented on Zion’s early shutdown, calling it a “unique circumstance.”

Among other topics, TV ratings were interesting too. Some of the present journalists stated that the NBA’s figures in that area are going down, but Silver isn’t seeing that as something problematic. Though he did leave a room for improvement, especially in restructuring the deal between the NBA one side and ESPN and Turner media on the other, which was sign five years ago.

The league also approved the use of the coach’s challenge, which was revealed yesterday. Board of governors included that and the usage of the replay center, which will be required in the last two minutes. Both of these novelties are included to increase the regularity of the competition and to lower the possibility of the referee’s mistake influencing the final outcome.