NBA commissioner Adam Silver said team building is poised to improve. While many have questioned the proposed anti-tanking system, which includes lowering the odds for the bottom-three teams, Silver sees the current league leaders as evidence that other avenues to constructing successful rosters exist.
Speaking on “The Pat McAfee Show” on Wednesday, Silver explained why the emphasis on scouting overseas and deep into draft boards will become more important. Silver mentioned that New York Knicks star Jalen Brunson was a second-round pick in 2018, and the stars of the San Antonio Spurs (Victor Wembanyama) and Oklahoma City Thunder (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander) both came from outside the United States.
Wembanyama, from France, was the No. 1 selection in 2023, while Gilgeous-Alexander, who is Canadian, was selected No. 11 in 2018.
“You want the greatest incentive to be successful,” Silver said. “So those teams still have very good chances to get a top draft pick, but I’ll just also add that’s not the only way to build a team. It may put more of an emphasis on scouting.
“We’re now at a point where 30 percent of our players are from outside the United States. So you have a much larger pool of players. Rosters are much deeper than where they used to be.”
Under the newly proposed lottery system, the franchises with the bottom three records, considered in the “relegation zone,” drop from a previous 14 percent chance to just a 5.4 percent chance at landing the No. 1 pick. The fourth- through 10th-worst teams now have 8.1 percent odds of landing the first pick.
There have been concerns that teams that genuinely struggle and finish with bottom-three records, without tanking, now have lower odds of improving. Silver considers it fair punishment for losing, similar to the competitive structures used in European soccer. In those leagues, the bottom-three teams in the end-of-year standings get relegated to lower leagues and face significant financial pitfalls as a result.
“There should be a penalty for performing poorly,” the commissioner said. “In real relegation, you’re actually out of the major league. Here, if you’re the worst-performing team in the NBA, you still get your same economic share of national and global television revenue. You still get your same share of national and global merchandising revenue.”
Silver was also asked about concerns surrounding flopping and officiating, specifically regarding the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference finals. Many believe that Gilgeous-Alexander, who just won his second consecutive regular-season MVP award, has a habit of exaggerating contact for foul calls.
To that, Silver felt it was important to make the distinction between embellishing contact to draw a foul, a genuine part of the game, and actually deceiving the officials.
“Even as I sit in the stands at games, players may be falling down, players may be reacting to a call,” Silver said. “But to me, if they’re not fooling the referees, it’s OK. Players are taught to sell calls these days.”
Silver agreed the league is “always working on that,” in reference to officiating improving, but he doesn’t see it as a pressing issue and called the league’s officiating “incredible.”
He does, however, see a future where, in terms of out-of-bounds calls, the league moves to a system like tennis’ Hawk-Eye system, in which objective calls can be quickly replayed and decided by an automated AI system powered by cameras around the court. So-called objective calls, Silver said, currently handled by referees, will eventually become instantaneous.
Indiana Pacers point guard Tyrese Haliburton appeared on the show after the commissioner. He explained that the art of embellishing contact to draw fouls is taught at the player development level. It stems from a desire by the game’s best scorers to understand methods of generating as many free-throw opportunities as possible.
He mentioned that NBA officiating is a stark contrast from international FIBA or Olympic officiating in this aspect. Overseas, FIBA referees enforce stricter policies against flopping and will assess technical fouls to any player they deem to have grossly exaggerated or faked contact to deceive officials. A practice Haliburton says makes him appreciate the refereeing back home even more.
“Every time I go do that, (play in international tournaments for Team USA), I get back. I go to the refs like, ‘Hey, I missed you guys. You guys are awesome,’” Haliburton said. “They’re really good at what they do, the refs are. More times than not, there’s embellishing going on, more so than just falling over out of nowhere, no question.”
The roster of referees who will take charge of the 2026 NBA Finals won’t be released until after the Spurs and Thunder series is decided. Either way, they’ll have the support of Silver, who will be looking at the finals matchup as proof of concept for what he believes will be a new age of roster building