Donald Trump summons Adam Silver

They used to call him “basketball’s righteous chief”

In the immediate aftermath, NBA star Tyrese Haliburton called it murder, as did Bucks Doc Rivers and Warriors coach Steve Kerr. The National Basketball Players Association released a statement:

Following the news of yet another fatal shooting in Minneapolis, a city that has been on the forefront of the fight against injustices, NBA players can no longer remain silent.

Now more than ever, we must defend the right to freedom of speech and stand in solidarity with the people in Minnesota protesting and risking their lives to demand justice.

The fraternity of NBA players, like the United States itself, is a community enriched by its global citizens, and we refuse to let the flames of division threaten the civil liberties that are meant to protect us all.

The NBPA and its members extend our deepest condolences to the families of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, just as our thoughts remain focused on the safety and well-being of all members of our community.

On Sunday the Wolves joined many others in signing an open letter calling for “an immediate de-escalation of tensions and for state, local and federal officials to work together to find real solutions.”

Over the weekend I also read Michael Wolff’s newsletter:

I was going through some files and old interviews the other day, yet again trying to figure out how we could have arrived at the past political year, the most extreme, peculiar, senseless, and inexplicable in American history. I happened upon a conversation I had with Steve Bannon during Trump’s first term, about what would happen if he ever got a second term. “Here’s what nobody gets,” Bannon said. “He’ll be unchained. Off the reservation. No moral constraints. No scruples. No cares.” And at this point, Bannon couldn’t contain his laughter—he’s laughing because it’s so absurd, and so beyond belief. “It’ll be vendettas and payback and fuck everybody. It’ll be an America that nobody ever dreamed of. Donald Trump off his meds is something that nobody is prepared for.”

What’s happening on the streets has been scary enough that even Victor Wembanyama weighed in.

I see the news and I’m horrified. I think it’s crazy that some people might make it seem like or make it sound like it’s acceptable, like the murder of civilians is acceptable. I read the news and sometimes I’m asking very deep questions about my own life. I’m conscious also saying everything that’s on my mind will have a cost that’s too great for me right now, so I’d rather not get into too many details. It’s terrible. I know I’m a foreigner, but I live in this country and I am concerned.

How many NBA games have been postponed because of political unrest? Not many. It can seem like everyone in the NBA is alarmed by what’s happening in the Twin Cities.

But there’s one key party who has been–I keep checking and rechecking, in disbelief–studiously silent. NBA commissioner Adam Silver.

Why?

Adam earned a certain reputation early. When his mom started a certain environmental protest, Adam wore a “Ban the Bridge” button to school. He and his dad loved Muhammad Ali because that boxer represented something about civil rights. When Barack Obama was a community organizer in Chicago, Silver was working long hours, for no pay, at the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic in the same neighborhood. Silver worked for Oregon congressman Les AuCoin, whose political career began with opposing the Vietnam War and continued in retirement in efforts to reduce the effect of money in politics.

“He tended away from the corporate side of things,” says law school classmate Michael Alter. “He believed in larger ideals of justice and equality.”

All that information on Adam’s young life is from the best article ever written about Adam Silver, by Lee Jenkins in Sports Illustrated. It opens with an anecdote about a chief of the Ngoni tribe in Malawi named Masawani Jere, whom knew Adam in childhood:

Those in Emchakachakeni own no televisions or computers. But their chief must maintain some connection with the modern world, so he has a BlackBerry, on which he created a Facebook account. When Jere logged in on the last day of April he was struck by a story that all his cyberfriends were discussing about the bold new NBA commissioner, who had permanently banished the league’s longest-tenured owner for making racist remarks on a leaked audiotape. “Oh, yes,” the chief thought as he scrolled through the commissioner’s forceful words. “This sounds just like Adam.”

It’s an inescapable conclusion of Jenkins’ story, published in the heat of the Donald Sterling controversy: Silver brings his conscience to the commissioner job. An unnamed owner is quoted saying “If people thought the NBA was not sensitive to civil rights even for a moment, it would have been permanently damaging.” Silver talked to Clippers employees and discussed “pain in their eyes.” Silver said his approach to tough issues was “Reflect on your life experiences. Then go with your gut.”

The article ends by calling Silver “basketball’s righteous chief.”

Now that we have pain in our eyes, we could use a chief like that. The shooting is on video, from many angles–and it packs implications for our nation. Ice is everywhere today, and so is ICE. A German soccer official is calling for a boycott of this summer’s World Cup because it’s in the United States where people are “dying in the streets.”

NBA commissioner might be a weird job for a person who “believed in larger ideals of justice and equality” and “tended away from the corporate side of things.” But that’s the guy Adam is and that’s the job Adam has. Even if many days are about buttering up the decision makers from official sponsors like Kia and American Express, Saturday offered an opportunity for some other Adam, slow-cooked through a plucky childhood, to reaffix a button with a political message.

The NBA has often published joint press releases with the National Basketball Players Association. (Like, for instance, when they get vaccinated or start a social justice coalition.) That was how basketball leadership responded to George Floyd’s murder.

But on the matter of Alex Pretti, the players spoke and the league stayed silent.

The NBA has a governing body for giving a shit: even the National Basketball Social Justice Coalition has been silent. The NBA formed it, a little hastily, to talk players out of striking in the heat of the Black Lives Matters protests. (Amazingly, the first named member in the press release was cruise line billionaire Micky Arison.) But the coalition has a website and a staff and exists for times like now. I can picture the harried phone calls from the league office, imploring the people hired to seek social justice not to seek social justice this time around.

Those conversations must have been stressful. At the time of this writing, the coalition website and social media accounts are full of old calls for action on topics like gun violence and police brutality, but somehow have nothing whatsoever to say about this famous example of both. The coalition is led by James Cadogan who, after the Kyle Rittenhouse shooting, said things like “The right to peacefully protest is the bedrock of our democracy and the National Basketball Social Justice Coalition remains committed to preserving that right for all.” What appears to be Cadogan’s personal Instagram gives a sense of his current thinking.

To whom is it important to prevent that kind of talk under the NBA umbrella?

Soccer has an interesting lesson about the political calculus of leaders in times of autocracy. FIFA head Gianni Infantino has a job like Adam’s. Oliver Kay profiled Infantino in the Athletic last summer.

Upon his election in 2016, Infantino’s sister Daniela told Swiss newspaper Der Bund that he was a “very sensitive, harmonious person” who still called his mother every night. “He will not suddenly take off and fly to another planet when he comes FIFA president,” she said. “I don’t see him as a careerist who would walk over dead bodies for his success.”

His former colleagues remember a funny, quiet, sensitive guy.

Things have changed. As the head of FIFA, Infantino has delivered World Cups to a who’s who of global autocrats: Vladimir Putin of Russia, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani of Qatar, Donald Trump, and Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. Sometimes people say sports and politics should be separate, and usually by that they mean athletes and coaches should not weigh in on politics. But in the case of Infantino, political watchers wonder why the head of FIFA, of all people, tagged along with Trump to October’s Gaza summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. (Infantino has suggested Netanyahu’s Israel should host a World Cup.)

When Donald Trump grew bitter he had not been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Infantino invented a FIFA Peace Prize and handed it to Trump saying:

We see images of war all over the world, and like everyone, we suffer for every child that dies. We cry with every mother that loses someone she loves, and we want to see hope … we want a leader that cares about the people. We want to live in a safe world, in a safe environment. We want to unite.

“I don’t recognise the Gianni I see and hear now,” one of Infantino’s former coworkers told Kay.

John Oliver, a massive fan of the game he calls football, has dedicated so much of his HBO show to investigating FIFA that he says he didn’t attend the last World Cup out of fear for his safety. He recently described Infantino’s organization to Trevor Noah this way: “I have to think of it in terms of crime. You can’t really think of them as a sporting organization. The sport is somehow immune from their fuckery.”

Oliver noted that New York’s new mayor, Zoran Mamdami, made a little video urging FIFA to “choose the game over greed.”

Oliver’s response: “Mamdami, who do you think you’re talking to? Infantino, the head of it is just going to [say] I choose greed. I’ve always chosen greed. There’s no moral compass that you can appeal to here. Nothing points North in my soul. FIFA is a terrible organization that happens to produce the best imaginable product.”

“What I don’t know is if this is the real Gianni Infantino, or if nine years in this job has done this to him,” said another source in Kay’s story. “These sports leaders are treated like royalty and it goes to their heads. It’s like living in a medieval court and their imperious behaviour is rewarded.”

Adam Silver and Gianni Infantino at the 2024 Paris Olympics. MICHAEL REAVES/GETTY IMAGES

Adam knows that royal court. He’s sitting with Josh Kushner and Bob Iger at the U.S. Open. He just spoke in Davos. Pablo Torre just published a story about how one of the NBA’s richest billionaires is essential to Putin’s war crimes.

At TrueHoop we are years into investigating ways the sordid and powerful have gotten their hooks into sport. One throughline: the deep pockets that fuel the spread Silver and Infantino’s sports are from places like Moscow, Riyadh, and Abu Dhabi. Those pools of money have also poured into private equity, venture capital, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and a lot of things around Jeffrey Epstein.

The NBA may have conceded the moral high ground, but not the financial high ground.

Anyone and everyone on that gravy train might prefer Adam and Gianni make nice with the powers that be in that world.

Everyone’s doing it, at a certain level of income. Much has been written about how the Washington Post has tilted in Trump’s direction since being purchased by Jeff Bezos. Judd Legum’s Popular Information published a story over the weekend called “The corporate enablers of the ICE crackdown”.

Hours after Pretti was killed, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was in Washington, DC, visiting the White House for a screening of Melania, a documentary produced by First Lady Melania Trump. As Jassy and other guests entered, a military band played “Melania’s Waltz,” a song composed for the film. Guests received “glossy, commemorative black and white popcorn boxes for guests, served by gloved waiters.”

Amazon paid $59 million for the rights to the vanity project, most of which went to Melania Trump herself. According to Matt Belloni, Amazon is paying another $35 million to promote the film. Despite the massive budget, Amazon “has not shared the film with critics, and won’t before its release.”

Although Melania will almost certainly lose tens of millions of dollars for Amazon, it is a small price to pay to stay in the good graces of President Donald Trump and his administration. Amazon has billions in government contracts and provides much of the technological backbone for ICE’s surveillance and deportation activities.

The photo that goes with the story happens to be of Jassy at the Allen & Company Sun Valley retreat. Go through photos of that event through the years, and you’ll find Adam looking very much in his element, alongside NBA people like Wizards billionaire Ted Leonsis, Hawks investor Jesse Itzler, agency owner Casey Wasserman, Bucks investor Wes Edens, Nuggets honcho Josh Kroenke, and Grizzlies investor Josh Kushner–but also names from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal like Reid Hoffman, Bill Gates, and Larry Summers. Business as usual, at that level, feels tainted.

Donald Trump has said he thinks he’ll be impeached if the Republicans lose Congress, and the polls aren’t great. His biographer is saying “he knows his reign is nearly over.”

But we now know that over last weekend, at the peak of his Twin Cities political crisis, one of the projects of Trump’s White House was to summon the leaders of the major sports leagues to the oval office.

The meeting was postponed because of weather, which must have been a profound relief to Adam.

David Thorpe said something that I put on the wall: “It’s hard to be perfect, but it’s not hard to be decent.” It’s one thing for Adam Silver to put his core values on the back burner, it’s another entirely to go on camera and join Infantino in the Trump praiseathon.

Adam has shown us that he values the rule of law, the concept of decency, and the spirit of civil rights. As someone who used to know Adam pretty well, I know he has a beating heart, and a broadly aware mind. Or at least, I know he did.

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