Adam Silver Unhappy With Durant Situation

NBA commissioner Adam Silver isn’t happy about Kevin Durant‘s trade request after signing an extension last season, Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press writes.

Silver said that players need to “meet their end of the bargain” after a franchise provides them with long-term security.

“This needs to be a two-way street,” Silver said. “Teams provide enormous security and guarantees to players, and the expectation in return is that they’ll meet their end of the bargain. There’s always conversations that go on behind closed doors between players and representatives and teams, but we don’t like to see players requesting trades and we don’t like to see it playing out the way it is.”

Silver said there will be negotiations with the Players’ Association regarding possible remedies to discourage players from seeking a trade after signing multi-year contracts, Brian Lewis of the New York Post tweets.

“Its one of those issues that as we move into this collective bargaining cycle – we intend to discuss with our players association and see if there are remedies for this…We don’t want to see it playing out the way it is now,” he said.

Silver also addressed a number of other topics after the Board of Governors meeting on Tuesday:

  • With load management increasing every season, Silver would be in favor of rewarding players contractually for playing more often. “I’m all in favor of guaranteed contracts,” he said. “But maybe that on top of your typical guaranteed contracts, some incremental money should be based on number of games played and results of those games.”
  • He’s pleasantly surprised that league revenue topped $10 billion for the first time and basketball-related income reached a record $8.9 billion. “The numbers did surprise me to a certain degree because it exceeded projections, and the projections represent where we think our business is going,” Silver said. “I think it’s quite remarkable from where we came 2 1/2 years ago.”
  • The league is nearing “the last stage” of its investigation into the conduct of Suns owner Robert Sarver, Reynolds tweets.
  • Symptomatic persons will still test for COVID, but Silver could also see “pre-COVID protocols” becoming more of the norm again, Reynolds adds in another tweet.
  • Silver favors the age limit for the draft dropping from 19 to 18, Tim Bontemps of ESPN tweets, and is “optimistic” that it could happen during the next collective bargaining cycle.
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