NBA commissioner Adam Silver ‘is finalizing contract extension amid media rights negotiations as the league’s $24billion deal with Turner and ABC/ESPN is set to expire’

Adam Silver is reportedly close to signing a contract extension with the NBA that will see him through his 10-year anniversary as commissioner while he continues to work out the league’s next media rights deal.

Silver is finalizing an extension to remain NBA commissioner for several more years, a person with knowledge of the deal said Saturday evening. The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because no announcement had been made from the league.

ESPN, which first reported the agreement, said Silver’s new deal will last “until the end of the decade.” It’s the second time league owners have approved an extension for Silver, who also received one in June 2018, keeping him under contract through the end of this season’s NBA Finals.

Silver became commissioner on February 1, 2014, officially succeeding former commissioner David Stern, his mentor. That move had been in the making for years; Stern officially announced his retirement over a year earlier, and the Board of Directors unanimously approved the plan to have Silver, the longtime deputy commissioner, take over.

Fans were predictably divided over the news.

“I wish they would hire someone new,” one person wrote on X. “I don’t like the way the NBA is run.”

Another disagreed: “He earned this. The NBA is incredibly exciting and feels the best it has been in years. Plus, they handled Covid perfectly.”

At least one minority owner of the NBA team has approved the move.

“He’s been a tremendous leader who built on David’s legacy and really turned us into a great multinational organization,” said Mark Cuban, who until recently was the principal owner of the Dallas Mavericks.

And the league has seen tremendous success under Silver, who has overseen the ratification of two collective bargaining agreements between the league and its players since he became commissioner. He also served as chief negotiator and then as deputy commissioner when the NBA and its players struck. a deal in 2011. The most recent CBA went into effect this season, ensuring labor peace in the NBA for at least several more years.

Silver also led the league in talks for what would be a nine-year, $24 billion media rights deal with ESPN and Turner Sports, which sent revenues skyrocketing and in turn served as a catalyst for player salaries to rise as well. The league is currently negotiating its next media deal, which is widely expected to be worth more than the existing agreement.

ESPN said commissioner Adam Silver’s new deal will last “until the end of the decade.”

“The NBA’s reach is enormous, although in many ways we are only at the beginning of our international growth,” Silver wrote in an essay for AP commemorating the league’s 75th anniversary in 2022.

He led the league through the COVID-shortened 2019-2020 season, the season in which the league brought 22 teams into a bubble at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida, to conclude the regular season and the full playoffs to keep. Silver has also successfully navigated a very difficult first few weeks in office; Less than three months into his tenure, he banned then-Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling from the league for life for racist comments.

Silver, 61, graduated from Duke and, like Stern, left the legal field to join the NBA. He joined the league as a special assistant to Stern — “he read everything I asked him to read,” Stern said in 2014 — before becoming the league’s chief of staff, running NBA Entertainment for about a decade and then leaving the position in 2006 took over from deputy commissioner.

He is the league’s fifth commissioner, preceded by Stern, Larry O’Brien, J. Walter Kennedy and Maurice Podoloff.