Recently, the National Basketball Association rolled out their annual all star weekend festivities. Every year, things get a little worse. This year, the dunk contest was headlined by rookies and a G Leaguer. The celebrity game was a bore only comparable to the living sleeping pill known as the skills competition. The three point contest was the lone bright spot of the weekend. All this leads to the All-Star game itself, which features worse defense than the pickup runs at the fieldhouse.
The causes behind this decline are evident. The NBA season is a grueling eight months that has only gotten more arduous as the game has gotten quicker. Players are running more than ever and probably just want to take the weekend easy. Additionally, the weekend serves as a kind of mini-holiday for the basketball world. Players are whisked from media engagement to sponsor the event. It leaves the players cooked by the time the actual game comes.
The simple answer would be to cut down on all the fixings. Ditch the press conferences and tell the sponsors to hit the road. That will never happen because those sponsors pay for the weekend and the league as a whole. The league cannot tell Nike to stay away from the league’s big retreat and ask for their swoosh to be emblazoned on every league jersey. Something has to give and the excess has left us with a mediocre weekend.
All this illustrates the differences between NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. They are the differences between perception and power. Silver wants himself and the league to be viewed in a positive light. Goodell cares little about public opinion. All he wants is to hold the strings controlling the most popular sport in the country.
Case in point: Look at the Pro Bowl, the NFL’s equivalent to All Star Weekend. It too is a snoozefest of superstars waiting to catch flights the second the cameras turn off. The difference is that it is a sideshow. It gets little attention in favor of the real event a week later: the Super Bowl. In the week leading up to the main event, the league puts every major media outlet in one room (Radio Row) to build hype for the game. This keeps the focus on the game itself rather than making sponsors the stars of the show. The commissioner keeps attention on the game.
Goodell has centralized decision making in the commissioner’s office. Up until the 2020 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), disciplinary matters were decided by Goodell himself, a power that has made him famous for levying questionable suspensions and fines due to player conduct. Everything from touchdown celebrations to incorrect glove colors have resulted in fines. With everything he does, Goodell looks for ways to grab power.
In contrast to Goodell, Silver has presented himself as working in partnership with the players. Rather than acting like their boss, Silver has listened to players on issues ranging from reducing back to backs to embracing the Black Lives Matter movement.
This is not to say that either approach is better or worse. Goodell’s tenure, although controversial, has sheparded the league through some of its darkest moments. The era of 2011–2016 witnessed controversies regarding player conduct, anthem protests, prescription pills, a lockout with players, a lockout with referees and an existential concussion crisis that led many to speculate whether the sport could survive the future. However, an explosion of young quarterbacks on scale contracts (A triumph of Goodell’s 2011 CBA negotiations) created a new generation of stars on team friendly deals, creating parity with teams led by older, more expensive signal callers. While most of his moves have been derided by fans and players, Goodell has weathered the storm, and the NFL remains a juggernaut nationally, with upside to grow abroad.
Meanwhile Silver has relied on his ace during his decade as commissioner: LeBron James. In LeBron, Silver was gifted the rare individual prized by any sporting promoter, basketball’s equivalent to Muhammad Ali: A highly marketable figure blessed with innate talent with an off-the-field presence that gives fodder for endless debate. James has been brash, nicknaming himself “King,” and challenging Michael Jordan’s unanimous title of the greatest basketball player of all time. This makes him controversial but not someone the league needs to hide. Silver’s golden goose has never gotten involved with hard drugs or crime. This allows the league and the media apparatus around it to fill the airwaves with LeBron debates, without the scandals of a Brett Favre or Mike Tyson. With James, Silver has known who to build around for a decade. Now with LeBron nearing retirement, it is unclear how the commissioner will manage. Silver is staring down the wilderness years his predecessor David Stern encountered following the retirement of Michael Jordan, marketing a league while in search of its next star.
Silver will preside over nearly two decades of labor peace once the current labor agreement expires. This is despite a pandemic, an economic downturn, and conflicts with China. It makes sense that he takes a softer approach. Still, it is worth keeping in mind when we have abysmal showings like last weekend what things would be like with a different number one in charge.
