I dont consider myself a journalist. And nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer, even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick . You have been the commissioner since 2014, and you had spent 22 years at the nba offices before that. And before that, you were a graduate of the two best schools to go to in combination Duke University and the university of chicago law school, right . [laughter] adam which you happened to go to as well. David right. Right. So you cannot do any better than that. So lets just start with the nba today and how it is doing. Honestly, since you have been the commissioner, revenues are up. Ticket sales are up. The owners value of their teams is up by about three times. So are you adequately paid for the job youre doing, do you think . [laughter] david today, the nba seems to be at a peak. Right now, it is very popular all over the world. Why do you think it is that nba basketball is so popular around the world, whereas our Major League Baseball and professional football is not quite as global a sport . Adam well, i think part of the reason is that it has been an olympic sport since the 1930s. I think that has made a big difference, in that it is a sport that has been played around the world. It was actually invented by christian missionaries. James naismith was a Christian Missionary and the game, shortly after it was invented in springfield, massachusetts, it was brought to china. So it has been global since its earliest days. And i think when you think of the two most popular global sports, i dont think it is an accident that both involve round balls, one that you kick and one you shoot with your hands. I think there is almost something evolutionary about it, about round balls, and i think most people, even if you are not a basketball player, whether you are balling up paper and shooting it into a garbage can, or you are a little kid i have a young daughter, when she sees a little ball, she kicks it, or she picks it up and she throws it. David so today, are there any more franchises that might be for sale, by the way . [laughter] adam not that im aware of. David not that you are aware of, ok. Some of these people that have bought these franchises had done extremely well. The 76ers were bought a few years ago for 300 million or 400 million, the bucks for 400 million or 500 million, and when Steve Ballmer came in and paid 2 billion for the clippers, were all the other owners happy, because it made their team look more valuable or not . Adam yes, they were happy. [laughter] david ok. Adam and since steve bought the clippers, two teams have sold for more than he paid, the Houston Rockets and the brooklyn nets. David so one of the most difficult things you had to do after you became the commissioner was to, in effect, ban the then owner of the l. A. Clippers. Was that a tough decision for you . Adam um, yes. I think people may not realize it, but he is the only owner who has ever permanently been banned from a sport. It is difficult because i work, in essence, for the owners collectively. I dont work for any one owner. But my job is to do what is in the best interest of the league. And as people here may remember, the team that came out, 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. And he was banned on tuesday. So he received nbastyle due process, but i think in most walks of life, people would, you know, to think that from beginning to end, that was four days, thats remarkable. David i think he paid probably less than 100 million when he bought the team many, many years earlier. It was in san diego then. Adam i know that is the way you look at it, that he made a big profit. [laughter] david i know, my view is adam i dont think from his standpoint he is an extraordinarily wealthy guy, i dont think his reaction was, look how much money i just made. The team was worth that regardless whether he sold it or not. David the family 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 private equity. So one of the controversial things in college basketball, the socalled one and done situation, where High School Players go to college for one year, more or less, and then they get drafted into the nba. Are you in favor of continuing that one and done policy and what would you change it to if you did change it . Adam its interesting. So 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 changed it from 18 to 19, and that has to be collectively bargained with our Players Association. So 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, sort of how the recruiting worked, then there has obviously been some very highprofile criminal proceedings around sort of College Sports right now, and then in the middle of all that, mark emmert, 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. And ultimately, Condoleezza Rice and her Commission Recommended 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, in that it is hard to see it as a full year in many cases, most of them leave once the tournament is over. I have changed my position. The Players Association has historically been that it should be 18, but there are issues that need to be worked through, between us and the Players Association, so it is something we are in active discussions on. David a couple years away . Adam it is a few years away. Also, if we were to make the change, i think the first season it would make sense is 2022, in part because that is the current class that has finished their freshman year in high school. And the cohort is pretty well known. I mean, lots of these young men may move from 10th projected pick to third projected pick, but there are not that many surprises in the cohort. And so if there was no longer an issue of eligibility, because remember now, because of ncaa regulation, we cant be involved with that cohort of players. So if the rule were to change, we and our Players Association, usa basketball, other groups would work much more directly with those players to prepare them for the nba at 18. David the one and done, after they finished the ncaa tournament, they are not finishing their classes . Adam i dont want to say that is the case for all schools, but it is the case for many of those players. Understandably, because the moment they look, i think that is the whole hypocrisy, in a way, of the one and done program. Those top players are being recruited by those schools as the best path to being a top draft pick in the nba. David right. Adam so once they finish their collegiate career after one season, they are fully focused on preparing for the nba draft, so whether or not they are still going to some classes and remember, just to put it in context, for a player coming, for a top player coming into the nba, lets say a top 10 pick that is going to come into next years draft, given our pay scale now, and assuming the nba continues to prosper and assuming that player stays healthy and plays around with the expectations where that the player will play, that player, just in salary alone, will make over 200 million. David lets talk about that. [laughter] adam so the stakes, its hard. Its hard. I think if you were that a parent or guardian, to say to that player, it is hard to say you should go to three more classes as opposed to preparing for such an important decision, and i think 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. I think our proposal is, i mean, it has been a bit controversial, but we have proposed that we receive something that i have called an integrity fee. David your referees are they seem to be in pretty good shape. Sometimes 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 you can say about them. [laughter] adam they dont have pot bellies. [laughter] david for guys their age, they seem to be in pretty good shape, but are there women referees as well . Adam absolutely. We have three female referees right now. And i think it is an area, frankly, where i have acknowledged that im not sure how it was that it remained so maledominated for so long, because it is an area of the game where physically, certainly there is no benefit to being a man as opposed to a woman when it comes to refereeing. In fact, we are now in terms of the last group of referees that we hired into the league, and they came from our development league, it is called our g league, two of the last five officials were women. The goal is, going forward, it should be roughly 5050 of new officials entering the league. David ok, lets talk about one serious issue that i did not really address before. You have said that players have depression and melancholy and they feel isolated. Can you explain how someone who 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 our players, i 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 life or your family, that, in some cases it is chemical, in some cases environmental, but it cuts across, you know, all socioeconomic groups. And what is changing in our league, and again, i think it is wonderful that players are now willing to talk about these things, we had two highprofile players, Demar Derozan and kevin love, who came out publicly and said they were suffering from depression and had issues with anxiety. And 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. And i think and 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 in something, professional sports, where there is a certain machoism associated with it and a certain perceived toughness, i think the stigma historically has been suck it up, right . You are not tough if you are dealing with something that is not physical. Where originally our junior basketball programs were literally just about basketball skills keep your elbow in and shoot this way and this is how you play defense, then we morphed those programs into more about physical fitness and other in addition to basketball skills, and in the last year, we have added a Mental Wellness component that has been incredibly well received by people throughout the country. I know from the letters we get and from the mental professionals we work with that kids are coming in and saying, wow, this nba player is able to raise their hand and say im suffering, i need help regular kids feel comfortable doing that as well. [applause] david the Supreme Court has said that Sports Betting is more or less going to be legal, essentially it is legal. So are you worried that in the 1950s and so on in College Sports, we had Sports Betting shaving. People, because of the odds, related to the point spread, are you worried about that in the nba . Adam i am always worried that we could have a scandal of any kind, certainly one involving Sports Betting. I think that we are better off with a regulated betting framework than keeping it all underground and illegal. And i know firsthand in the league, that, you know, the Supreme Court decision has only been within the last year, and now Something Like eight states have now legalized Sports Betting. Our preference would be that there would be a consistent federal framework, because of your league and you are potentially dealing with 50 different states and all their different requirements, and it is a bit of a huge burden for the business and a race to the bottom from a regulatory standpoint, but putting that aside, in terms of our concern, like any public market, when you think of nasdaq or the new york stock exchange, part of their ability to ferret out illegal activities from the algorithms that show when there is deviations that cause their computers to issue red flags and Say Something aberrational is happening here. When everything is illegal, other than having Tipping Services and relationships, we cant know those things. So i think it is better that it be transparent, regulated, and controlled and authenticated. In this way, people are betting with their credit cards, so you know who they are. It has been not only legal, obviously, in the state of nevada for a long time, but for decades in europe, and i have learned a lot from our counterpart soccer leagues with working and living with regulated betting frameworks for a long time, and they have much better control than we do. David would you like to own a piece of the betting profits in the league . Adam not the profits. I think our proposal it has been a bit controversial, but we propose that we receive something that i have called an integrity fee. Some people said oh, that is a euphemism for you getting a royalty. I say all right, call it a royalty. My view is, this year, the nba spent 8 billion creating the nba. We will generate 9 billion and spend about 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. I mean, again, this is, you know, 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 my view is we should get a fee, not off the profits, because i dont want anyone to think in any way that we are incentivized for a particular team to win or for a game to go or a particular score or seven games instead of six games or whatever else, but yes, i feel as a business matter, we should share in the proceeds. David david stern was a spectacular commissioner, by everybodys account. He did it for 30 years. I think he retired when he was 72. When he was 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, did you say, david, maybe i am ready, did you ever give him a little push . How did that happen . Adam never, never, never. David how do you get to be nba commissioner, really . Did you grow up saying, i want to be nba commissioner . Adam i didnt grow up wanting to be the commissioner. I dont even think i had any sense of what it was. David but you did not go to duke on a basketball scholarship . Adam i definitely didnt. Im pretty sure that when even when i went to law school, if somebody had asked me what the nba commissioner did, i what have said he hands out rings and does the schedule. I would not have really even understood the job. David you graduated the university of chicago law school. You clerked for a federal judge. Adam i did. David then you went to a wellknown wall street firm. Adam i did. David and then how did you go from there to the nba . Because a lot of Young Lawyers who are not happy practicing law would love to go work for the commissioner of the nba. [laughter] david how did you do that . Adam honestly, i got incredibly lucky. I worked at cravath for two years and decided that i was working at the time, one of the big clients was time warner. I was working on a lot of media cases at the time, for hbo in particular. And i became fascinated with the media business. While i was working on a particular litigation, i was following what was happening in sports media and the move of sports to cable television, it was ted turner, in essence, through tbs and tnt who was leading that charge. And david stern, then the commissioner, was at the forefront of that movement, and david stern had worked in new york, at the same law firm my father had worked at. And i didnt know david, but i wrote him a letter and asked him if he could give me some advice about transitioning from law into a media job, at the time, having written a letter, not even thinking about working at the nba or understanding that this was something i could do at the nba. To make a long story short, he gave me you know, this is preemail. I wrote him a letter, an oldfashioned letter. His assistant called me a few weeks later and said, he can see you on whatever date. I went over, met with him for a halfhour, and he gave me some advice, which i did not follow. [laughter] adam then about a month later, he called me and said, what are you up to . He said, i have an idea. After a series of meetings, he hired me as his assistant. And that was my first job. 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, by everybodys account. He did it for 30 years. I think he retired when he was, like, 72. When he was 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, did you say, david, maybe im ready . Did you ever give him a little push . How did that happen . Adam never, never, never. And again, being commissioner of the nba is my sixth job at the nba, so for five of those six jobs, i worked directly with david. He gave me enormous opportunities. A brilliant guy. I ended up running an entity called nba entertainment. I was interested in the media business, the television and media arm of the nba. Many years later, i became the Deputy Commissioner of the nba, but ultimately, david could recommend me, but it required the team owners voting me. That is how the commissioner is determined. And he sort of set his own timeline for when he was going to step down. And also, i think i was very fortunate that the league was in great shape at that moment. I assume there could have been a scenario where, if things were not going so well, that they might have looked outside the nba. But i owe a lot to david and was very fortunate to be in that job. David so what do you think is the Leadership Trait that enabled david to think you deserve to be the commissioner . Adam um, i think, you know, nothing 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 that much of my job now is spent on media. It is the primary Revenue Source for the nba, so the fact that i developed an expertise in media over the years is very important. I think while certainly being a lawyer is not a prerequisite to being nba commissioner, being a lawyer in your job, i think you and i would say the same thing. Having gone to law school, learning those skills has been very beneficial. A large part of my job is being a professional negotiator, whether it is collective bargaining, commercial relationships we enter into, so i think it was all those skills. David a lot of your media today and this is in contrast to other leagues is social media. You encourage lebron james and other players to not only be controversial, but be involved in social media. To have public and controversial views. Why do you do that . Has it been helpful to the nba . Adam i certainly dont encourage them to be controversial. I encourage them to be genuine and earnest with their views, and i make sure they know within certain boundaries, frankly. I think still they are more issues around decency, not political speech, but i think they should feel safe, frankly, as nba players. I ultimately think it is in our business interest to demonstrate to our fans in the Greater Community that these are multidimensional people. That earlier on in my career in the nba, i think one of the biggest issues as a league, and this is before there was the opportunity with social media for players to have that ability to show who they are directly to fans, they were portrayed, in many cases, as being onedimensional people. They were just sort of just ball players, and people didnt understand where they were from, what they did, and what their other interests were. Or if they were from other countries, they were just from china. There was no sense that it is a big place, they are from beijing, and this is what they they did and this is how they grew up. Social media as a complement to the traditional media, which is helpful too, allows them to show who they are and helps to engage fans. David who is the best player in the nba . [laughter] adam there are many great players in the nba, david. David thanks. You recently married, a couple of years ago. Adam four years ago. David now you have a baby, who is adam two years old. A little over two. David is she interested in basketball . Adam absolutely. [laughter] adam she watches and that is why i have to make sure the wnba prospers. My wife is tall. Im tall. She watches basketball with me. I may get some tips from our other coach k 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. You are not going to go buy a team, go into private equity, nothing like that . You are going to stay. Adam no plans to go anywhere. David thank you very much for an interesting conversation. Adam thank you, david. [applause] businesses are starting to bounce back. But what if you could do better than that . Like adapt. Discover. Deliver. In new ways. To new customers. What if you could come back stronger . Faster. Better. At comcast business, we want to help you not just bounce back. But bounce forward. Thats why were helping you stay ahead and adapt with a network you can count on, 24 7 support and Flexible Solutions that work wherever you are. Call or go online today. David over the last 30 years, ive seen a lot of crises and i have managed through some of them myself, but nothing i have seen before is like the crisis we now have. It is a health crisis, it is an energy crisis, it is a financial crisis. The combination of those is making the job of being a ceo extraordinarily difficult. I want to talk to ceos now and see how they are living through this crisis. I want to see how they are dealing with their customers, how are they dealing with their employees, how are they dealing with the government . How are they going to rise up to the occasion . What ig to make these ceos great . Thats what i want to know. This is leadership live. Today, we are very fortunate to have michael evans, who is the president of alibaba. Welcome, michael. Michael thank you, david. Nice to be with you