Adam Silver has a prologue to match Bud Selig’s epilogue. It is Silver’s mission in his first months on the job as Commissioner of the NBA to mirror the vigilance Selig exhibited in his final months leading Major League Baseball.
It is a given Silver will not please everyone, no matter what decision he renders Tuesday afternoon as he attempts to answer the pickle that Donald Sterling’s big mouth and small mind has created — much like there was no way for Selig to satisfy the various PED precincts that protested when he committed to making an example of Alex Rodriguez.
And just like Selig had to finally answer for a problem that had lingered in his sport for years predating his watch — unless you truly believe that the first player to dabble in steroids did so starting Sept. 4, 1992, the day the owners fired Fay Vincent — Silver must handle an issue that was a chronic stone in the shoe of his predecessor, David Stern: the loose cannon that Sterling has always been, the crazy uncle at the barbecue he was always destined to be.
“You look at what commissioners are paid — people shake their head and ask: can Roger Goodell really be worth $44 million or whatever the NFL pays him? Can Bud Selig be worth $22 million?” a longtime NBA executive said Monday, on the condition that his name be kept far away from this quote. “And I’m not going to say who’s underpaid or overpaid but I’ll say this: In moments like this, a commissioner earns whatever his paycheck is. It’s a hard, hard job.”
So this is Silver’s mission Tuesday afternoon: Find a way to make Sterling disappear, but do it in such a way that will not backfire and make Sterling omnipotent and omnipresent instead. There is little question the Clippers’ owner has to be dealt with severely: as sponsors run away in droves, as players protest, as his own coach refuses to even take his calls, this has become calamitous beyond measure.
But going quietly has never been Sterling’s style. He likes a good fight. Especially if it involves lawyers, judges and juries.
“I believe he said those things,” said Doc Rivers, who once played for Sterling, who last summer accepted a $21 million contract to coach his team and now wonders if he can continue working for him. “As far as [Sterling] believing those things, I heard what he said and I usually go with what people say.”
So this is Silver’s challenge, as it was Selig’s before him: Find a way to allow what common sense tells you to be true — that Rodriguez was a serial steroid user even after the basic agreement specifically outlawed them, that Sterling is a bona-fide racist in a league that is 70 percent African-American — in such a way that the problem recedes — for an unprecedented time in A-Rod’s case, forever in Sterling’s — without landing in the ultimate clusterbunch — a court of law.
Selig did that. He endured months of disingenuous Rodriguez prattle, more months of defiant thunder from his lawyers, loud segments of fans and media convinced that he was every bit as much to blame for the problem as A-Rod was. And he won. He made A-Rod disappear for at least a year, got his Pyrrhic victory, and made it to the other side with his legacy bloodied but intact as he walks out the door.
Walking in is Silver, who like everyone else in the NBA hierarchy knew full well what they were dealing with in Sterling and, like everyone else, was probably hoping nature would take its course before an incident like this would happen (especially since Sterling was clearly never going to sell the team). Silver wasn’t so lucky.
And so on a day that should’ve been reserved for the memory of Dr. Jack Ramsay, one of the most beloved figures in basketball history, his death is merely a footnote on the league’s business agenda. Instead of celebrating the life of Ramsay, a bright, forward-thinking ambassador who represented all the good the game harbors, the NBA instead found itself buried under the rubble of its least-common denominator, with so many of Sterling’s fellow owners running for cover.
Silver has been on the job only a few months. He makes only about $10 million at this point. Tuesday afternoon, he officially begins to earn every nickel.