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Oh No He Didn't: Adam Silver: "It's a new era of NBA basketball. This will be the 8th different team that won a championship over the last 8 years. We've always talked about this parity of opportunity where teams can win multiple championships in a row? Great. But we want a league where every team has an opportunity to compete...it just really speaks to the state of NBA basketball and the state of the future of the game. There's just so much talent everywhere"
NBA Communications: Game 3 of the 2026 NBA Finals between the San Antonio Spurs and New York Knicks was the most-watched NBA Finals Game 3 in 28 years (since Bulls/Jazz in 1998), averaging 23.8 million viewers on ABC and ESPN. The audience peaked with 26.3 million viewers at 11:15 p.m. ET. Game 4 tips off tonight at 8:30 p.m. ET on ABC.
"The investigation has been conducted by a law firm independent of the NBA," Silver said at Frost Bank Center prior to Game 1 of the 2026 NBA Finals between the San Antonio Spurs and New York Knicks. "Yes, ultimately we're paying their bills, but they are doing the work independent of the league office, and my instruction to them is we can't be investigating forever, but at some point we have to wrap it up. But at the same time, the most important thing is that we get it right. "I think it's clear they're far along. I think those reports are reading all the time from people who are being interviewed by them and I think they understand that you can keep going on and on. But I think we're close to the point now where I think we need to wrap this up because you also need finality. Their team has to understand what the situation is they're going to be operating under, and so do the other 29 teams."
Oh No He Didn't: Adam Silver: "Tanking is not a new issue for this league. I think what maybe surprised us all a little bit is how quickly it became acceptable behavior in this league. I think it used to be limited, frankly, to a small group of teams. I think I could genuinely stand up and talk about rebuilding and not say tanking, and it was practiced in a different way"
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Tom Petrini: Adam Silver on the big Larry: "Even some of the ceremonial trappings that weren't there last year. I mean, it surprised me a bit. It seemed at the time that inserting the Larry O'Brien trophy digitally in our telecast was a good idea, because teams had complained about slipperiness of logos and other things on the floor, but we heard loud and clearly from people that that was just one indication of a lack of pomp and circumstance around the games."
Tom Petrini: Adam Silver on NBA Europe: "We have been pursuing an independent league in Europe, we are very much on schedule. It is our hope and anticipation that that league will launch in the 27-28 season in Europe. We are on track. Final bids from franchises are due at the end of this month, at the end of the month in June. It has been has been reported, we've seen record interest, and we're very excited about the ongoing opportunity, and working closely with FIBA."
Ramona Shelburne: Adam Silver says he’s “not ready” to support a change to the 65-game rule so soon after its implementation. From a rule incentivizing players to participate in 80 percent of the games, “the rule is working.”
Back in the early 1980s, when the NBA was still trying to regain its footing after falling out of favor with large swaths of the American sporting public during the ’70s, the league didn’t have much on which to hang its hat. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were just at the beginning of their pro careers. Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon and Patrick Ewing were in college. The NBA’s championship series was still being shown on tape delay — 11:30 p.m. ET, then-Johnny Carson time — to the East Coast of the United States. And no one knew what to call the series.
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Desperate to create some buzz, someone at NBA HQ in Olympic Tower — mercifully, no one can now remember exactly who, though the late commissioner David Stern’s name came up — pushed the idea to call the 1982 series between the Lakers and the Philadelphia 76ers “Showdown ’82.” It had a logo and everything. And it made the NBA’s championship look like a cheesy, made-up event that would run on ESPN The Ocho. (“Coming up after the Great Eastern Skeet Shooting Championships … it’s Showdown ’82!”)
Did Granik ask Brandon? Did Brandon volunteer his services to Granik? Neither really remembers. “I must’ve just said, ‘I’ve got a friend. He does this for a living,'” Granik said. “I think he said ‘Give me a weekend.’ Basically, it happened that fast. “The year, here — 1986,” Brandon said. “NBA — who is this? And, ‘Finals.'”
NBA Communications: The Western Conference Finals between the San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder finished as the most-watched Conference Finals in 24 years with an average of 10.8 million viewers per game on NBC/Peacock. San Antonio’s victory over Oklahoma City in Game 7 averaged 15.9 million viewers, peaking with 17.7 million viewers.
Having a player with championship experience on your roster used to be rare and somewhat valuable, as those players could be looked at as experienced locker-room leaders who know what it takes - and the sacrifices that need to be made - to win it all. Now, that's a lot less rare to find, as a record 70 players who took part in an NBA game in 2025-26 had won a championship before. That's two more than the previous record of 68 players in 2024-25, and eight more than the record before that, 62 players in 2023-24.