Adam Silver on NBA and ‘highlights’: Not wrong, definitely too glib

“This is very much a highlights-based sport.” – NBA commissioner Adam Silver

A lot of folks are dunking on the NBA commissioner for his comment earlier this week, emphasizing that the NBA is rooted in highlights, presumably at the expense of live games. However, that may not necessarily be the case, as it doesn’t have to be a zero-sum proposition, with two things can be true at once:

(1) Silver is directionally right.

NBA highlights are both the league’s gateway to reaching younger fans and a very real competitive advantage for fan attention.

The NBA’s virtuous flywheel goes something like this:

(a) An amazing event happens in a game, watched live by anywhere from a few hundred thousand people (random local game) to a couple of million (big national game).

(b) The amazing event is clipped and amplified by popular creators and media companies on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, IG and X.

(c) The amazing event is consumed by millions of additional fans, who are now that much more invested in the NBA. It is then amplified again by media companies picking up on a “trending” highlight, which in turn means the league is being discussed even more.

From “Bird stole the ball!” to “Blocked by James!” NBA highlights are at the core of its mythology and — more importantly — the pre-eminent currency of its fans, from Gen Z to X’s and O’s breakdown buffs.

My longtime hypothesis is that the NBA’s reach is vastly underrepresented by mere TV ratings, precisely because the league has been so innovative about meeting its fans where they are — very and vastly online.

The NBA has 90 million followers on Instagram, 48 million on X, 25 million on TikTok, 23 million on YouTube and 17 million on Reddit (not to mention the additional massive reach across all of those platforms of 30 team channels and — even more importantly — the legion of creators focused on the NBA).

At the start of the century, when the NFL and NCAA were churning out takedown notices to social media platforms posting league video content, the NBA was encouraging (by wink-wink declining to similarly police its video clips) then-bloggers, now-creators and fans to share, remix and aggressively promote everything from the most distinctive “Did you see that?!” moments to 10-minute forensic analysis of random individual players’ made shots.

The result? Far greater overall audience sizes than TV ratings of live games can (or could) account for. Ask your favorite teen sports fan how they consume the NBA or who their favorite NBA TikTok creator is, and they will be able to answer you with much more precision than their weeknight plan to watch a random live game. But if something happens in that game, they will see it — that is a net-positive for the league and, yes, for Amazon Prime Video.

Eventually, many of those younger consumers will mature into the “Unc”-level fans this week, howling about how Silver’s characterization sullies the sanctity of watching the full 48-minute Kings-Jazz experience on a January weeknight while re-upping their NBA League Pass access.

(2) Rhetorically, this was a clear “accidentally score on your own basket” moment by the NBA’s top executive.

The league just signed billions of dollars worth of TV deals with NBC and Amazon (along with longtime partner ESPN), precisely around the value of the league’s live games.

When Silver’s comment was filtered through NBA super-fans on social media, the commissioner seemed to be advocating that people don’t need to actually watch the games, and instead, can just catch the highlights for free on their preferred social media platform.

Quite simply, that is a terrible message for the league to be sending about its broadcast and streaming partners, who are relying on fans tuning into the live games to (a) sell advertising and get distributor fees around that attention and (b) sell subscriptions to access the games directly.

That is not inconsequential! I just did an analysis of what it will cost an NBA fan to have a “typical” TV experience this season — watching your local team and then having access to all the national games on ESPN, ABC, NBC, Peacock and Amazon Prime Video.

Presuming you can get access to your local RSN through your cable, satellite or multi-channel streaming service (like YouTube TV) and combining that with the $160 cost to access Peacock and Amazon Prime Video for the six months of the NBA regular season, an NBA fan’s wallet will be more than $800 lighter.

That is why these companies shelled out tens of billions of dollars over the next decade, so you can understand why the NBA commissioner advising “Just catch up the next day from a TikTok edit” might cause alarm.

Where should we land on this?

I personally relate to the NBA’s “Unc” culture, which insists that the true beauty of the NBA lies in watching it unfold over the course of a game. (Yes, yes, we all have read David Halberstam’s “Breaks of the Game” and have a definitive 20th-century-forged opinion in the “MJ vs. LeBron” debate.)

But we are a relatively small — if loud — group, especially compared to the tens of millions who very much enjoy NBA highlights as a core part of the experience.

Even the most die-hard NBA fan doesn’t (and can’t) watch every game every night. And we all have too much else to do to tune in for every single nationally televised game, all season long.

Highlights do critical fan service by filling us in on what we missed. Following a creator who makes a TikTok edit or a YouTube highlight reel or a subreddit where someone posts a video, or a friend dropping into the group chat a clip of “that play everyone is talking about,” are all essential parts of being a fan today — and being connected to all the other NBA fans.

Unsurprisingly, Silver’s comments were twisted from “very much a highlights-based sport” (true!) into something more like “all that matters is the highlights,” which isn’t what he said and most certainly is not what he intended. I think Silver was simply talking about how wide the entry points are to being an NBA fan — that you can be an NBA fan without necessarily tuning in for the live games themselves and that the league makes room for those fans (as they should!)

Was that an ill-advised talking point? Absolutely. I am betting he wishes he could take that back, or maybe try to rephrase it to emphasize that the live game will always be core to the fan experience — live games are the platform where the highlight originates.

But is he flat-out wrong that the NBA is “very much a highlights-based sport?” No.

(Photo: Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)