NBA commissioner Adam Silver outlines his plans for the NBA's bright future

NBA commissioner Adam Silver didn’t blow anyone away with his remarks about the league in his yearly All-Star weekend address on Saturday, but in a lot of ways this should be a warming note for fans to cling to.

Silver, who recently begun his second calendar year as commissioner, emphasized a commitment to improving the quality of play and enhancements to the game itself. There were no outsized statements meant to rattle the players union, and no marks of demarcation placed to throw off the scent. Insipid talks of brand culture and out and out lies about international commitments were cast aside as Silver stuck to the same series of talking points that have marked most of his press appearances in the days since he had to stop talking about Donald Sterling.

The former Los Angeles Clippers owner wasn’t mentioned once in Silver’s remarks, nor was his name brought up by reporters. Surprisingly, reporters also did not bring up the embarrassing work of co-All-Star host James Dolan, the tone-deaf owner of the New York Knicks who was incorrectly labeled a “consummate New Yorker” by Silver earlier in the week. Nor did anyone touch on the other co-All-Star host Mikhail Prokhorov, who could be looking to sell his Brooklyn Nets after just five years of tossing ridiculous salaries around.

The game, thankfully, was the focus. Silver began his news conference by discussing an eventual phasing out of back to back games, and schedules that often force teams to play four games in five nights. This sort of subject matter isn’t exactly a page-turner, but when NBA champions often have to field their stars over a hundred times between mid-October and mid-June, working in exhibition contests, regular season games, and a two-month postseason, the miles can start to add up.

The NBA spent the better chunk of its showcase Christmas Day schedule discussing a fatigued LeBron James and a weary Kobe Bryant, two players that jumped directly to the NBA at an early age prior to spending endless seasons not only working deep into the postseason, but also working in the summer when Team USA and its in-lockstep shoe company commitments came calling. The NBA is past a point where it can expect stars like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or Michael Jordan to turn in MVP-level seasons in either their late or even mid-30s, and an increase in days off will help even with the sort of age restrictions that prevent prospects like Kobe or LeBron from entering the NBA out of high school already in place to limit the wear and tear.

The commissioner was asked about his hopes to increase the league’s age limit from 19 to 20, something he believes is “better for the game,” but acknowledged that it will be a hard sell in negotiations with the players’ union. The union is adamantly opposed to such a change, and while the National Basketball Players Association was keen to accept a 19-year limit during collective bargaining agreement talks in 2005, a limit increase was one of the few negotiation wins for the union during the 2011 CBA discussions.

The league’s stance on this subject makes sense. The NBA product isn’t better off if an all-world prospect spends two years in the NCAA playing games against lacking competition while pretending to act as a student-athlete. The NBA features the greatest batch of coaches and development partners in the basketball world, expertly put in place for prospects even if the teenagers aren’t seeing regular game time.

However, while teams are happy to take their chances on the next 19-year old superstar, they’d much prefer allowing some money-raking NCAA team develop these players for two years for free, rather than spend millions on a teenager that might not start playing like an All-Star until the end of his rookie scale contract.

Along those lines, Silver also discussed re-working the league’s lottery system, reminding media that a majority of NBA teams were in favor of doing as much last fall prior to failing to secure a two-thirds vote needed to amend the system. Silver acknowledged what many longtime NBA observers have known for a while – that a “perception” that teams are losing games on purpose in order to gain better lottery odds is the real problem, rather than the setup itself. How any changes to the lottery process (which only rewards the worst NBA team with a one in four chance at the top overall draft pick) would work remains to be seen.

On his own, Silver also dove into the re-formatting of the current playoff system, something he discussed almost off-handedly earlier in February while talking with the Golden State Warriors’ broadcast team. Warrior fans know too well about the frustration of watching a very good team stuck in the Western Conference miss the playoffs while a substandard Eastern team sneaks in, and Silver has been proactive in his attempts to rectify the imbalance between the two conferences. An imbalance that has gone on far too long to ignore.

Silver made a point to remind that he “believe(s) in conferences and divisions,” while discussing a program that would possibly take the top two teams from each of the NBA’s six divisions before meting out the final six seeds amongst the six best records below that.

The commissioner, over this All-Star weekend at least, has yet to meet with NBPA head Michele Roberts. As is the case with Silver, Roberts is a relative newcomer to her position, but she comes to the gig with the highest of recommendations. Roberts has also turned in a sterling first season with the NBPA, while making the necessary and salient point on Friday that a gradual increase in salary cap allotments following the introduction of a $24 billion television deal in 2016 would not be in the best interests of her constituency.

Such a “smoothing” plan would be in the best interests of certain teams that, by poor luck or poor planning, would not be amongst those in line to reap significant salary cap rewards when the CBA agreement between the players and owners would push the salary cap tens of millions of dollars higher in the summer of 2016 when the new TV money starts rolling in. The NBA would not be denying its players the money they’re legally bound to earn by limiting a salary cap increase, the extra basketball-related income would still hit the NBPA coffers, but a smoothing proposal is not likely to be agreed upon. It’s absolutely just fine for the salary cap to shoot up dramatically in one year’s time, even if it feels abrupt to some observers.

Beyond that, Silver touched on all the usual talking points. Some 70 active NBA players would be taking part in this weekend’s televised festivities, with all manner of league-wide charity work hitting the New York metropolitan area. The NBA credentialed a record 1800 media members for the events, and the weekend was projected to bring in nearly $200 million to New York City. The typical and abstract relationship between Team USA, shoe companies, Jerry Colangelo and youth basketball was also discussed.

In all, though, the relatively benign subject matter – how to rest the league’s best players, when to introduce the NBA’s next great stars into the league, and how to handle and eventually spend the billions of dollars the league is set to take in – acts as a good sign for a league that is clearly thinking on its feet.