Silver

Why wait? We go V.

Adam Silver says he was just as surprised as the rest of us when he found out about the Mark Walter thing.

What comes next for the Lakers? Well, he didn't say much.

That's next.

Lots to get into today as we may even, uh, check out, we, you know, we teased it yesterday and we didn't quite get to the Clippers, uh, and their upcoming penalties and the trade that went through and all that kind of stuff.

Um, interesting news about the salary cap that could help the Lakers going forward.

But we'll start with the league meetings, Adam Silver meeting with media for the first time since the big Clippers hammer came down, uh, and, uh, you know, took away five first round picks from the Clippers.

$30 million fine for Steve Ballmer.

And so we gotta start selling off pieces," thus making it very difficult to, uh, create and maintain any sort of, like, dynasty.

Now, Silver loves this it feels like.

He lo- He can't stop talking about, "Oh, we got a different winner eight consecutive seasons." Like, he seems anti-dynasty, where a lot of other people are like, "Hold on, dynasties are badass." 'Cause either it's your team and you're like, "Hey, we're, we're trying to build one of the best teams of all time," or, more likely, you hate said dynasty, you wanna see the, the dynasty fall.

Who's gonna be the team that knocks them off? And you root against them.

And I know a lot of people have talked about this.

You can really get into the weeds with this stuff.

And yeah, that makes sense, 'cause, like, why are we punishing franchises for doing a great job of drafting and building up these players, and then, you know, they get to a point where you're like, "Okay, well, now we can't have two three-max guys, so bye"? But again, I think the league and Silver loves that.

They wanna, like, spread the wealth around.

Who in sports would you put in charge of the WNBA to help them grow to the next level?

Ah, honestly Silver.

Put, uh, put it under one purview.

Is that crazy?

Yeah.

Does he got too much going on? The WNBA's an off-season sport.

I know Silver's kind of got his own, his own t- his own circus, but that's ...

Is that not an obvious answer? I don't know what type of personality they're looking for to run that league, but they need to get somebody who doesn't take any crap and actually understands the entertainment business, not for headlines and politics and all the crap that the WNBA has a dark cloud because of, but instead about building a sport, making it must-see, leaning in to event style either TV or live events.

Guys, what are we doing? If Ballmer gets suspended by the league for a year, he might not like it, but he's going to have to comply.

And if he doesn't comply, you know what Silver's going to do? You think Silver wants to look like a joke? I don't think he does.

If the NBA told you one thing with this ruling with the Kawhi Leonard situation, for those who don't know, Clippers, the Los Angeles Clippers circumvented the salary cap by paying Kawhi Leonard under the table with fake business endorsement opportunities that were funded by the owner of the team.

This goes against the salary cap rules.

And I'm sitting here having to rationalize.

What good would it do anybody involved with the Clippers...

If the owner wanted to secretly show up to games, try not to get caught, and risk not only his ownership stake in the team, but also risk further draft compensation, further restrictions, anything Silver wants.

If he goes against you, my ruling, that opens the book for Silver to do whatever he wants to him in terms of punishing.