Journalist. On the life of being an interviewer even though i am in a state job of running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What makes somebody tick . You have been the commissioner since 2014 and you spent 22 years at the nba offices before you were aefore that graduate of the two best schools to go to in combination, Duke University and the university of Chicago Law School. You cant do any better than that. Lets start with the nba today and how it is doing. Since you have been the commissioner, revenues are up, ticket sales are up, the owners value of their team is up by like three times, are you adequately paid for the job you are doing you think . [applause] today the nba seems to be at its peak, it is popular all over the world. Do you think nba basketball is so popular around the world while Major League Baseball and professional football is not as global. It has been an olympic sport since the 1930s, i think that made a big difference. It is a sport that has been played around the world. It was invented by Christian James naismith was a christian missionary. Wastly after it, it invented in springfield, massachusetts and 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 round balls, one you kick and one you shoot using your hands. Almost something revolutionary about ground balls. Even if you are not a basketball whether you are calling up paper and shooting it into a garbage can. I have a young daughter and when she sees a ball she kicks it or picks it up and throws it. David are there any more franchises that might be for sale . mr. Silver not that im aware of. David some of the people who have bought these franchises have done extremely well. The 76ers were purchased for 300 or 400 million, when Steve Ballmer came in and paid to land dollars for the clippers come over all the other owners happy because it made their team look more valuable or not . Mr. Silver yes, they were happy. [laughter] steve bought the clippers, two teams have sold for more than he paid. The Houston Rockets and the brooklyn nets. David one of the most difficult things you had to do after you became commissioner was to ban the event owner of the l. A. Clippers, was that tough for you . Mr. Silver yes, i think people may not realize he is the only owner who has ever been permanently banned from a sport. It is difficult because i in essence work for the owners, i work for the owners collectively, not anyone owner. My job is to do what is in the best interest of the league. Tapee may remember, the that came outcome of the recording that he was banned for , it came out in the middle of the night l. A. Times. I was in new york so i did not hear it until saturday morning. He was banned on tuesday. If he were he received nba style due process but in most walks of life people would think that from beginning to end, four days is david he bought the team when it was in san diego. Mr. Silver i know that story when you look at it he made a big profit. [laughter] i dont think from his standpoint he is a next ordinary he is an extra ordinarily wealthy guy, the team was worth that regardless. David the family didnt call you up and thank you . [laughter] mr. Silver i understand thats how you look at it. David one of the controversial things in College Basketball has been the one and done situation where High School Players go to college for one year 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 . I first becamen commissioner five years ago i announced that 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 had to be collectively bargained with the Players Association. That is an area where i dont have the unilateral right to make a decision. Once i became commissioner and the oneore aware of how and done situation was actually there has operations obviously been some high profile criminal proceedings around College Sports. In the middle of that, marc emery at head of the ncaa appointed a commission and that was chaired by Condoleezza Rice to look at lots of issues involving College Sports but focusing on the one and done situation. Ultimately Condoleezza Rice and her Commission Recommended to the nba and our Players Association that we return to the 18yearold entry age. I would say that had a huge impact on me, that together with a better understanding of what is happening to these top players and it is hard to see it as a full year in many cases. Toave changed my position 18. The Players Association has historically been that it should be 18 but there are a bunch of issues that need to be worked through. David a couple years away . To make a if we were change the first season it would make sense to make the change for is 2022. That is the current class that has just finished their freshman year in high school. The cohort is pretty well known. May movehese young men from 10th projected pick to third projected take. There are not that many surprises. If there was no longer an issue of elle ability. Eligibility. Ncaa rules we cannot be involved in that cohort of players. Usthe rule were to change, and our Players Association and usa basketball would work more closely with them to prepare them for the nba. After the one in duns are done with the ncaa determined they are not finishing classes . Mr. Silver it is not the case with all schools are all players but it is the case for most players. 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. Once they finish their collegiate career after one season they are fully focused on preparing for the nba draft. Whether or not they are still going to some classes, just to put it in context, a player coming in a top player coming into the nba, a top 10 pick that will come into next years draft pay scale and assuming the nba continues to prosper and that player stays healthy and plays where the expectation for that player is, that player in salary alone is going to make well over 200 million. David lets talk about that. [laughter] mr. Silver if you were that parent or guardian, it is hard to say to that player that it is toe important that you go three more classes as opposed to preparing for a more critical decision. That is where the hypocrisy lies. David would you like to own a piece of the betting profits in the league . Mr. Silver not the profits. I think our proposal is it has been controversial but we have proposed that we receive something i would call and integrity fee. David your referees seem to be in good shape, you require them to exercise a lot . They seem to be in good shape. Mr. Silver i hope thats not the best you can say about them. They do not have pot bellies. [laughter] david they seem to be in good shape. Are there women referees . Mr. Silver absolutely. We have three female referees right now and i think it is an area where i have acknowledged i am not sure how it was that it remained so maledominated for so long. 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 terms of the last group of referees that we hired into the league, they came from our Development League called the league, two of the last five officials were women and the goal Going Forward is it should be roughly 5050. David lets talk about one serious issue i did not address before. You said players have depression and melancholy and they feel isolated. You explain, if somebody is making 50 million a year and they seem to be well respected by everybody, why are they so depressed and isolated . Mr. Silver in all seriousness what ive said is that when i am talking about our players i said they are no more immune from Mental Illness than any other sector of our society. In this room know families that firsthand regardless of how much money are you are making or your position in life or your family, in some cases it is chemical and some cases it is environmental. Social economic groups and what is changing in our league, and i think it is theyl that players had issues with anxiety. I know firsthand they were not the first players in our league suffering from issues like those. They were certainly the first players, they were the first ones to talk about it. I have heard this from so Many Mental Health professionals, it goes to the heart of your question, when people were perceived as having everything and especially in something in professional sports where there and certain macho attitude a perceived toughness. The stigma historically has been that you are not tough if you are dealing with something that is not physical. Junior basketball programs were literally just about basketball skills, keep your elbow in and shoot this way. We morphed those programs into more about physical fitness in addition to basketball skills. Added aast year we have Mental Health component that has been incredibly wellreceived by people throughout the country. I know from the letters we get from the Mental Health professionals we work with that kids are coming in and saying this nba player is able to raise their hand and say i am suffering and i need help. Than regular kids feel comfortable doing that. [applause] the Supreme Court has said that Sports Betting is more or less going to be legal, essentially it is legal. Sports1950s in college we had Sports Betting shaming, because of the odds people were obsessed with the point spread. Are you worried about that in the nba . Mr. Silver i am always worried that we can have a scandal of any kind especially one involving Sports Betting. I think we are better off with a regulated betting framework then keeping it all underground and illegal. I know the Supreme Court decision has only been in the last year and Something Like eight states have legalized Sports Betting. Our preference would be that there would be a consistent federal framework because you are a league and you are dealing with 50 different states and all the requirements, it becomes a huge burden for the business and it is a race of the bottom sometimes from a regulatory standpoint. Race to the bottom from a regulatory standpoint. Like any Public Market like nasdaq or the new york stock exchange, part of their ability to ferret out illegal activity is from algorithms that show when there are deviations, they cause the computers to issue red flags and Say Something aberrational is happening. Legal weything is cant know those things. 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 legal in the state of nevada for a long time, but for decades in europe. Lot from ourd a counterpart soccer leagues because they have worked and lived in regulated betting frameworks for a long time. Would you like to own a piece of the betting profits in the league . Mr. Silver not the profits. I think our proposal, it has been controversial. We propose that we would receive something that i called an integrity fee. Some people say that is the euphemism for a royalty. I said, call it a royalty. This year the nba will spend 8 billion creating generate around 9 billion and create around 8 billion. My feeling is as the creators of the intellectual property and the organization on which the burden of regulation has been imposed by the state. The Supreme Court did what it did and now states are doing what they are doing to legalize 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. Feeiew is, we should get a not off the profits. I dont want anyone to think in any way that we are incentivized for a particular team to win or seventicular score games instead of six games or whatever else. I feel as a business matter we should share in the proceeds. He did it for 30 years, i think he retired when he was 72. 66, closing inor on 70 did you say i am ready. Mr. Silver never never. The David Rubenstein show is sponsored by Wells Fargo Technology banking david how did you get to the nba commissioner . Did you grow up saying i want to be nba commissioner . Mr. Silver i did not grow up wanting to be the commissioner, i dont think i had a sense of what it was. David you did not go to duke on a basketball scholarship . Mr. Silver i did not. Even when i went to law school, if somebody had asked me what the nba commissioner did i would have said he hands out rings and sets the schedule. Thed you graduated from university of Chicago Law School and clerks 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 work for the nba. Mr. Silver i got incredibly lucky. At the firm for two years. At the time i was working on one of their big clients, time warner. I was working on a lot of media cases for hbo in particular. I became fascinated with the Media Business. While i was working on a particular litigation i was following what was happening in sports media. The move of sports to cable television. Through tbsurner and tnt was leading the charge. , the thenn commissioner, was at the forefront of that movement. Worked at a law firm in new york that my father had worked at. I did not know david but i wrote him a letter. I asked if he could give me some advice on transitioning from law into a media job. I wrote a letter not even thinking about working at the nba or understanding this was something i could do at the nba. This isshort pretty email. I wrote him an oldfashioned letter and his assistant called me a few weeks later and said i can see you on whatever day. He gave me some advice which 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 an assistance. David if you got a letter from a young lawyer today what would you say . Mr. Silver i would send it to our hr department. [laughter] david david stern was a fantastic commissioner. He did it for 30 years when he was like 72. When he was 65, 66, 67 did you tell him you are ready . Did you give him a push . Mr. Silver never. Being commissioner of the nba is my sixth job at the nba. For five of those jobs i worked directly for david. He gave me an enormous opportunity and he is a brilliant. I ran an entity called and the entertainment and i was in the Media Business for television and media then became the media arm of the nba. Then i became the Deputy Commissioner of the nba. David could recommend me but it required the team owners voting me. He set his own timeline for when he was going to step down. It is very fortunate the leak was in great shape at the moment. There could have been a scenario where if things were not going well they would have looked outside the usa. I am thankful to david. David what is the Leadership Trait that you add that david was able to think you deserve to be the commissioner . Nothing i think necessarily so unique to me. I was willing to work very hard and i did work very hard over the years. I love the sport of basketball. Hasink much of my job now been on media, it is the primary Revenue Source for the nba. The fact that i developed an expertise in media over the years was important area being a lawyer as a prerequisite for nba having gone to law school and learning those skills has been very beneficial, large part of my job is being a professional negotiator whether it is collectivebargaining or commercial relationships that we enter into. The contrast with other leagues is social media. You encourage your players to be involved in social media. James toraged lebron have public views. Why do you do that and has it been helpful to the nba . Mr. Silver i certainly dont encourage them to be controversial, i encourage them to be genuine and earnest about their views. Boundaries, i think there are some issues of decency not necessarily political speech. I want them to know they should feel safe as nba players. Businesst is in our interest to demonstrate our fans and the greater communities that they are multidimensional people. Career, wheny nba we had the biggest issues, this is before social media, for players to have the ability to show who they are directly to fans they were portrayed in many cases as being onedimensional people, just ballplayers. People did not understand where they were from, what they did, or what their other interests were. If they were from other countries it was just they are from china. It is not they were from beijing and this is how they grew up. Social media complements traditional media and allows them to show who they are. David who is the best player in the nba . [laughter] mr. Silver there are many great players in the nba. David you recently married a couple years ago. Mr. Silver four years ago. David you have a baby who is how old . Mr. Silver a little over two. David is she interested in basketball . Mr. Silver oh yes. I have to make sure the wnba is p