Commissioner the since 2014 and have spent 22 years in the nba office before that, and before that, you graduated from the two best schools, duke and University Chicago law school, right . Adam which you happen to go to as well. David right. You cant do better than that. Lets start with the nba today. Since you have been the commissioner, revenues are up, ticket sales are up, the value of teams is up three times. Theyou adequately paid for job youre doing, do you think . [applause] seems to be at its peak. It is popular all over the world. Why is nba popular around the world, while mlb and nfl is not quite as global as a sport . That part of the reason is it has been an olympic sport since 1930. That has made a big difference. It is a sport that has been played around the world. It was actually invented by christian missionaries. Was ine shortly after springfield, massachusetts, then brought to china, so it has been global since its earliest days. The two most popular global sports, its not an accident that both involve round balls. There is almost something evolutionary about round balls. Is bawling up paper and shooting it into a garbage when i have a daughter she sees it, she kicks it. David are there any more franchises that might be for sale, by the way . Adam not that i am aware of. David some people who have bought franchises have done extremely well. For 300 were bought million, 400 main dollars, and when Steve Ballmer paid 2 billion for the clippers, where the owners happy because it made their team look more viable or not . Adam yes, they were happy. [laughter] david ok. Since he bought the clippers, two teams have sold for more than he paid, the rockets and the brooklyn nets. David one of the more difficult things you had to do is ban the owner of the l. A. Clippers, was that a tough decision for you . Adam yes. Butle may not realize it, he is the only owner who has been permanently banned from a sport. I workifficult because for the owners collectively. Myont work for one, but owner is to do what is in the best interest of the league. The recording came out for which he was banned came out in the middle of the night l. A. Time, so i was in new york and did not hear it until saturday morning. He was banned on tuesday. Nbastyle due process, but in most walks of life, to think that from beginning to end i think he paid less than 100 million when he bought the team. Adam i know that is the way you look at it, that he made a big profit. [laughter] david no, my view is adam i dont think from his standpoint, i dont think his reaction was not, money i just made. The team was worse that regardless. David they did not call you up and say thank you for doing that . Adam no, but i understand that is how you look at it. [laughter] david one of the controversial things in college basketball, the socalled one and done situation, where highs go players go to college for one year, then they get drafted in the nba, argue in favor of contending that one and done policy . And what would you change it to if you did change it . Adam when i became commissioner five years ago, i announced i thought the minimum age for entering the nba should be 20 instead of 19, roughly 11 years ago, we change from 18 to 19, and that has to be collectively bargained was that that is an area where i dont have the unilateral right to make a decision. I would say then, once i became commissioner and became more aware of how the one and done situation would actually work in operation, how the recruiting worked, then there has been some highprofile criminal proceedings around sort of College Sports right now, then in the middle of all that, the head of the ncaa appointed a commission that was chaired by Condoleezza Rice to look at lots of issues in College Sports particular to focus on the one and done situation. Ultimately Condoleezza Rice and her commission recommend to the nba and the Players Association that we return to the 18yearold entry age, and i would say that had a huge impact on me. That together with a better understanding of what is happening to these top players come it is hard to see it as a full year in many cases, and then leave once the tournament is over. I have changed my position. The Players Association has historically been at 18, but there are issues that need to be worked through, so it is something we are in active discussions on. It is a few years away. Also, if we were to make the change, the first season it would make sense is 2022, in part because that is the current class that has finished her freshman year in high school, and the cohort is pretty well known. Lots of these young men may move from tent projected picked a third projected pic, but there are not that many surprises in the cohort. If there was no longer an issue of eligibility, the ncaa regulation says we cant be involved with that cohort of players. If the rule were to change, we and our Players Association, usa basketball and other groups, would work directly with those players to prepare them for the nba. Thed after they finished ncaa tournament, they are not finishing your classes . Adam not for all schools, but those players, understandably look, that is the whole hypocrisy of the one and done program. Those top players are being recruited by those schools as best path to a top draft pick in the nba. Once they finish their collegiate career after one season, they are fully focused on preparing for the nba draft, so whether they are going to classes and remember, just to put it in context, for a player coming, for a top player coming into the nba, a topic that will come into next years draft, given our pay scale now, assuming the nba continues to prosper in that player stays healthy and plays around with the expectations are that the player will play, that player in salary alone will make over 200 main dollars. 200 million. David lets talk about that. [laughter] adam if you are a parent or guardian, it is hard to say you should go to three more classes instead of preparing for an important decision. That is where the hypocrisy lies. David would you like to own a piece of the betting profits in the league . Adam not the profits. Our proposal is, it has been a bit controversial, but we propose that we receive something that i have called an integrity fee. David your referees seem to be in good shape. They are not 20 years old. You require them to exercise a lot . They dont seem to have pot bellies. They seem to be in good shape. Adam i hope thats not the best thing you can say. [laughter] david they seem to be in good shape, but are there women referees . Adam absolutely. We have three female referees. It is an area where i have acknowledged im not sure how it remained so maledominated for so long. ,t is a game that physically certainly if there is no benefit to being a man as opposed to a woman when it comes to refereeing in fact, in terms of the last group of referees we hired, and they came from our of thement league, two last five officials were women. The goal Going Forward is it should be roughly 5050. David ok, lets talk about one serious issue. You have said players have depression and melancholy and feel isolated. Can you explain someone is making 50 million a year, seem to be well respected by everybody, why are they so depressed and isolated . Adam in all seriousness, what i have said is when talking about her players, i have said they are no more immune from Mental Illness than any other sector of our society. Im sure people in this room know families firsthand that, regardless of how much money you are making or your position in that inyour family, some cases it is chemical, in some cases environmental, but it cuts across all socioeconomic groups. What is changing in our league, and again, it is wonderful that players are now willing to talk about these things. Playerswo high profile who came out publicly and said they were suffering from depression and had issues with anxiety. I know firsthand they werent the first players in our league suffering with issues like those , but certainly they were the first players while they were current players in the nba to talk about it. I have heard from so Many Mental Health professionals that it goes to the heart of your question, when people who are perceived as having everything, and especially something in professional sports where there is certain macho wisdom and perceived toughness, and the stigma historically has been you are not tough if you are dealing with something that is not ,hysical, and where, originally our junior basketball programs were literally about basketball skills, keep your elbow in and shoot this way and this is how you play defense, then we had more programs about physical fitness and other skills, and in the last year, we have added a Mental Wellness component that has been well received by people throughout the country, because i know from the letters we get in professionals we work with the kids are coming in and saying this nba player is able to raise their hand and say i am suffering and i need help. Regular kids feel comfortable doing that. [applause] the Supreme Court has said Sports Betting is more or less going to be legal, essentially legal so are you worried that in the 1950s in , people because of the odds related to the point spread, are you worried about that in the nba . Adam i am always worried we can have a scandal of any kind, certainly one involving sports bedding. We are better off with the regulated bedding framework than keeping it underground and illegal. Something like eight states have legalized Sports Betting. Our preference would be a consistent federal framework because we are a league and you are dealing with different states and different requirements, and it is a bit of a race to the bottom from a regulatory standpoint, but in terms of our concern, any public market, think of nasdaq in the new york stock exchange, part of their ability to ferret out illegal activities and algorithms that show when there is deviations that cause their anduters to issue red flags saying something operational is happening here, when everything is illegal, other services and relationships, we cant know tose things, so it is better be transparent, regulated, and controlled and authenticated, and people are betting with their credit cards, so you know who they are. It has not only been legal in nevada for a long time, but indicates for europe, and i have learned a lot from her counterpart soccer leagues with regulated bedding frameworks come in they have much better control. David would you like to own a part of the prophets . Adam not the prophets. It has been controversial, but we propose that we receive something i have called an fee. Rity are spent 8, the nba billion creating the nba. We will generate 9 billion and spent 8 billion, and the creators of the intellectual property, the organization in which the burden of regulation has been imposed on us by the state, and the Supreme Court did what it did, and now states are doing what they are doing legalizing Sports Betting, they are now imposing a set of requirements on us in terms of how they expect us to protect the integrity of the product, so ,y view is we should get a fee not off the prophets, because i dont want anyone thinking we are incentivized for a particular team to win or a game to go or a particular score or seven games instead of six games or whatever else, but i feel like as a business better that we should share in the proceeds. David he was a spectacular commissioner, he retired when he was 72, so when he was 65, 60 6, 67, 68, 69, 70, did you ever give him a little push . Adam never, never, never. David how do you get to be nba commissioner . Did you grow up saying i want to be nba commissioner . Adam i dont think i had any sense of what it was. Onid you did not go to duke a basketball scholarship . Adam i didnt. Even when i went to law school, if somebody asked me with the nba commissioner did, i would say he hands out rings and does the schedule. David you clerked for a federal judge, then you went to a wellknown wall street firm, how did you go from there to the nba . Goot of people would love to and be the commissioner of the nba. Adam i got lucky. I decided i was working at the of thet the time, one big clients was timewarner. I was working a lot of media cases and i became fascinated with the media business. While i was working on a particular litigation, i was following sports media. And the move for sports to cable television, it was ted turner through tbs and tmt leading the charge. , the commissioner, was at the forefront of that movement, and david stern had worked in new york, the same law firm my father had worked at. I wrote a letter and ask him if he could give me some advice about transitioning from law into a media job, at the time not even thinking about understanding was this is. Omething i could do at the nba long story short, this is preemail. I wrote him a letter, and his assistant told me a few weeks later he could see you. I met with him for a halfhour and he gave me some advice that i did not follow. About a month later, he called me and said, what are you up to . After a series of meetings, he hired me as his assistant. David if you got a letter from a young lawyer today, what would you do . Adam pass it to our hr department. [laughter] david david stern was a spectacular commissioner, did it for 30 years. He retired when he was 72. 66, 67,was 65, 60 6, 68, 69, 70, did you give him a little push . Adam never, never, never. Again, being commissioner was my sixth job at the nba, and five of those six jobs were directly with david. He was a brilliant guy. I ended up running an entity called nba entertainment. Many years later, i became the Deputy Commissioner of the nba, but ultimately, david could recommend me, but they require the team owners voting me. That is how the commissioners are determined. He set his timeline for when he was going to step down, and also i was very fortunate the leak was in great shape at the moment. There couldve been a center where things were not going so well, i couldve been outside the nba, but i o a lot to david and was fortunate to be in that job. David what is the Leadership Trait that enabled david to think you deserve to be commissioner . Nothingthink, you know, necessarily so unique to me. I was willing to work very hard, and i did work very hard over the years. I certainly love the sport of basketball. I think much of my job now is spent on media, the primary Revenue Source for the nba, the fact that i developed an expertise is important. While certainly being a lawyer is a prebrexit to being nba commissioner, i think you and i would say the same thing, and having gone to law school, though skills have been very beneficial. A large part of my job is being a professional negotiator, whether collective bargaining, commercial relationships we enter into, so it was all those skills. David a lot of media today is social media. You encourage your players to be involved in social media, you encourage lebron james in your bestknown players to have public views. Why do you do that . Has it been helpful to the nba . Adam i dont encourage them to be controversial. I encourage them to be genuine in earnest with their views, within certain boundaries, frankly. I think there are issues of decency, not political speech, but they should feel safe as nba players. It is in our business interest to demonstrate to our fans in the Greater Community that these are multidimensional people. Early on in the career, one of the biggest issues as a league, and this is before the opportunity of social media, for players to have that ability to show who they are likely to fans. They were portrayed in many cases this onedimensional people, just ball players. People didnt understand where they were from, what they did, and what their other interest were. They were just from china. There is no sense that they are from beijing and this is how the corrupt. Social media as a complement to the traditional media which is helpful allows them to show who they are and helps to engage fans. David who is the best player in the nba . Adam there are many great players in the nba . David you recently married a couple of years ago. Adam four years ago. David you have a baby. Is she interested in basketball . Adam absolutely. That is why i have to make sure the wnba prospers. I may get some other tips from our cochair in the audience. I would love to coach her one day. She loves the game. David you are going to stay in this position for the foreseeable future and will not go in buy a team . Adam no plans to go anywhere. David thank you very much for an interesting conversation. [applause] bill winters is a global banker with a track record that speaks for itself. Jpmorgan,5 years at rising to the top to lead the investment bank. During his fouryear tenure at standard chartered, he has turned around the company with the Bank Delivering its first by back in 20 years. In july i welcomed him back. Bill winters, thank you for joining us on leaders. He took over the bank and reshape it, what was the hardest part of the business transformation