Bill Simmons questions whether Adam Silver should remain commissioner

Although the NBA commissioner Adam Silver has achieved success in his tenure at the helm of the NBAthere were many NBA fans and members of the media frustrated with his leadership. Add Bill Simmons to an ever-increasing number critic Silver, as in the latest episode Bill Simmons PodcastSimmons asked if Adam Silver should stay on as commissioner.

Simmons thinks Silver doesn’t care what fans want to see fixed in the NBA and believes there is a growing lack of interest in competing teams and players. Ultimately, Simmons believes that Silver may not be the person for the job, as several of what he sees as problems have not been addressed.

“Everything they do, they don’t serve the bigger picture, what the fans want,” Simmons said. :How can we preserve the health of our players? How do we have a competitive season from start to finish? How do we avoid over a quarter of our league not giving as—t in the last two months? How do we fix this? For the first time, I really asked myself, do we have the right guy running the league? Because he doesn’t seem interested in solving the real problems that everyone can see. And it’s not, look at the NBA Cup. Oh, we created this thing, as if your schedule was too long. You need to fix this, it’s taking too long. It should be 70 games.”

Silver’s tenure is often criticized by NBA fans who point to an increase in injuries and absenteeism due to his leadership. He is also guilty for the alleged fall of the All-Star Game and what many believe is the stratification of NBA media rights.

But Silver also achieved success in his tenure, including securing a $2.6 billion media rights deal that reinstated NBC as the primary broadcast partner and brought in Prime Video as a streaming partner, while Disney and ESPN remained the primary partners for the NBA’s regular season and Finals.

He sought to combat the setback by changing the rules of the lottery and creating the NBA Play-In Tournament, which gives the 7th to 10th seeded teams in each conference a chance to make the playoffs. To boost early-season play, Silver spearheaded the creation of an NBA in-season tournament, which led to higher viewership for pre-Christmas games.