Adam Silver has spent years watching the NBA’s competitive balance problem from the commissioner’s seat. And he’s sick of pretending it doesn’t exist.
During a recent appearance on The Dan Patrick Show, Silver laid out a vision that’s been quietly taking shape inside the league office: the NBA should try to be more like the NFL. Not the TV deals or the helmet commercials, but the part where any fan wakes up in September thinking their team has a real shot.
“The goal over time has been, and I’ve said it, to be more NFL-like. Where you believe your team has a shot,” Silver said, via Awful Announcing. “Maybe not every single season, but your view is, regardless of the market size, if your team is well-managed, if you have a little bit of luck in there, you have a good chance to be in the playoffs and potentially be the champion.”
That line matters because it comes right after the New York Knicks finally won their first title in 53 years. The Knicks knocked off the San Antonio Spurs in the 2026 NBA Finals, reversing a recent trend where smaller-market teams kept climbing the mountain. Oklahoma City won it all in 2025. The Denver Nuggets broke through two years before that. And before those two, the Bucks and Raptors both had their moments.
So the commissioner’s timing is interesting. He’s basically saying the league’s biggest market just won, and he still wants the system tilted toward parity. That’s not exactly what you’d expect from a guy whose job partly depends on the Knicks and Lakers being good.
The Spurs are his Exhibit A
Silver pointed to San Antonio specifically as proof that a smaller market can still command global attention. He mentioned Victor Wembanyama by name.
“I think what we’ve seen is societal changes; I think that nobody’s going to say that Victor Wembanyama in San Antonio can’t get global attention because it’s a smaller market,” he said.
It’s a fair point. Wembanyama is arguably the most hyped rookie since LeBron, and he plays in a city that’s not exactly New York or Los Angeles. But the Spurs have also spent two decades proving that good management and a little luck can sustain relevance. They drafted Tim Duncan. They built a culture. They won five rings. Wembanyama is just the latest chapter.
The NBA has already made structural moves in that direction. The play-in tournament, the lottery reform and the new collective bargaining agreement all aim to keep teams from tanking for too long and to make it harder for superteams to stockpile stars. The results? The last six champions have been from six different franchises: the Bucks, Warriors, Nuggets, Celtics, Thunder and Knicks. That’s a more varied list than you’d see in most NFL stretches.
But the NFL has 32 teams and a hard salary cap. The NBA has 30 teams, a soft cap and max contracts that let three stars eat up 90 percent of the payroll. The gap in competitive balance is still real. Silver’s challenge is convincing fans in places like Indiana, Memphis and Sacramento that their window isn’t just a once-every-15-years fluke.
For now, the small-market faithful will have to bank on what the commissioner is selling: good management, some luck and a league that’s actively trying to make sure everybody gets a turn.
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