David i dont consider myself a journalist. 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. 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 . Happened to go to as well. David right. You cannot do any better than that. Lets start with the nba today and how it is doing. Honestly, since you have been 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 . Today, the nba seems to be at its 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, where is Major League Baseball and professional football is not as global a sport . Adam part of the reason is that it has been and a limp export 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, brought to china. It has been global since its earliest days. When you think of the two most popular global sports, i dont think it is an accident that both involve ground balls, when balls, one you kick and one you use 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, if you are bawling a 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 picks it up or throws it. David are there any more franchises that might be for sale, by the way . Adam not that im aware of. David some of these people that have bought these franchises have done extremely well. The 76ers were bought a few years ago for 300 million or 400 million dollars, the bucks for 400 million or 500 billion and when Steve Ballmer came in and paid 2 billion for the clippers, with the other owners happy because it made their team look more valuable or not . Adam yes, they were happy. [laughter] since steve bought the clippers, two teams have sold for more than he paid, the Houston Rockets and brooklyn nets. David one of the things you had to do after you became commissioner was to ban the then owner of the l. A. Clippers. Was that a tough decision for you . Adam yes. i think people may not realize it, but he is the only owner who has ever been permanently banned from a sport. It is difficult because i work in essence for the owners in essence work for the owners collectively. Not any one owner. My owner is to do what is in the best interest of the league. People may remember the recording came out for which he was banned, in the middle of the night l. A. Times, so i was in new york and did not hear it until saturday morning. He was banned on tuesday. He received nbastyle due process, but in most walks of life, to think that from beginning to end david i think he paid less than 100 million when he bought the team many, many years earlier. It was in san diego earlier. 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, he is an extraordinarily wealthy guy, and 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 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 wanted on policy . That one on 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 changed it from 18 to 19. That had to be collectively bargained with the Players Association. 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 very 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. And 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 , 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 that it should be 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 just finished their freshman year in high school. And the cohort is pretty well known. 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. 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. David after they finished the ncaa tournament, they are not finishing their classes . Adam i do not 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 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 top 10 top 10 pick a pick 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 million. David lets talk about that. [laughter] adam if you were that parent or guardian, it is hard to say you should go to three more classes instead of preparing for an important decision. 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. 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 you can say about them. They dont have pot bellies. [laughter] david they seem to be in good shape, but are there women referees as well . 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. It is an area of the game where physically, certainly there is no open if it 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 we hired into the league, and they came from our development leaks, development league, two of the last five officials were women. The goal Going Forward is it should be roughly 5050. David ok, lets talk about one serious issue. I did not really address it before. 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 our 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 life or your family, that in 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. We had two high profile players 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 a certain machoism associated with it and perceived toughness, i think the stigma historically has been suck it up, and you are not tough if you are dealing with something that is not physical. 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 week morphed those programs into more about physical fitness and other 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 mental professionals we work with that kids are coming in and saying, 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 Sports Betting is more or less going to be legal, essentially legal so are you worried that in the 1950s in College Sports, we have Sports Betting shaving. People, because of the odds, work playing 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 Betting. I think we are better off with the regulated betting framework than keeping it underground and illegal. I know firsthand in the lead that 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 a consistent federal framework , because if you are a league and potentially dealing with 50 states and their different requirements, it becomes a bit of a huge burden 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 legal, we cannot 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 not only been legal in nevada for a long time, but for decades in europe, and i have learned a lot from our counterpart soccer leagues, had regulatedave betting frameworks for a long time, and they have much better control than we do. David would you like to own a part of the profits . Adam not the profits. It has been controversial, but we propose that we receive something i have called an integrity fee. Some people say that is a euphemism for you getting a royalty. My view is this year, the nba , spent 8 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 my view is we should get a fee, not off the profits, 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 as a business matter, we should show the proceeds. David he was a spectacular commissioner, he retired when he what 72. When he was 65, 66, 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 didnt grow up wanting to be the commissioner. I dont think i had any sense of what it was. David 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 asked me with the nba commissioner did, i would say 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. Then you went to a wellknown wall street firm. How did you go from there to the nba . A lot of Young Lawyers who are not happy practicing law would love to go be the commissioner of the nba. Adam honestly, i got incredibly lucky. I worked at cravat for two years. At the time, one of the big clients was time warner. I was working a lot of media 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 for sports to cable television, it was ted turner in essence through tbs and tnt who was leading that charge. David stern, 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 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 the 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, 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 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 . I said i have an idea. 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 by everybodys account. He did it for 30 years. I think he retired when he was, like, 72. When he was 65, 66, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, did you say, david, im ready, 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. I was interested in the television and media and begin the internet 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. He sort of set his own timeline for when he was going to step down. Also, i was very fortunate the league was in great shape at that moment. There could have been a scenario where things are not going so well that they could have it outside the nba, but i owe a lot to david and was fortunate to be in that job. David what is the Leadership Trait that you had that enabled david to think you deserve to be deserved to be commissioner . Adam 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 much of my job now is spent on media, the primary Revenue Source for the nba, the fact that i developed an expertise in media over the years was very important. While certainly being a lawyer is not a prerequisite to being nba commissioner, 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 collective bargaining, commercial relationships we enter into, so it was all those skills. David a lot of media today is social media. You encouraged your players to be involved in social media, you encourage lebron james and your bestknown players to have public and controversial 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 and earnest with their views, and i make sure that they know that within certain boundaries, frankly, i think still they are more issues around decency, not political speech, but i think 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 directly to fans. They were portrayed in many cases as being onedimensional people. They were just sort of ball players. People didnt understand where they were from, what they did, and what their other interest were. Or if they were from other countries, they were just from china. There is no sense. It is a big place and they are from beijing and this is what they did and this is how they grew up. 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. David thank you. 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. 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 other 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 by a a team, go into private equity, nothing like that . Adam no plans to go anywhere. David thank you very much for an interesting conversation. Adam thank you, david. [applause] erik hi. I am Erik Schatzker and welcome to bloombergs front row. Today, im talking to dinakar singh. For a while, he was one of the worlds Biggest Hedge Fund managers and before that, at goldman sachs, he ran the most Profitable Trading desk on wall street. Today, he will tell you that investing billions and billions of dollars is way more trouble than it is worth. Dinakar we have offices and people all over the place. You do not get any sleep or spend time thinking about what is what you love which is is the best thing, which is investing. Erik dinakar and i covered a lot of ground. This is what we talked about. How to make money in these crazy markets . What is wrong with hedge funds . Why he is ed
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