NBA GMs Want Apron Rules Changed. Commissioner Says They Help Parity

​​NBA commissioner Adam Silver defended the increasingly controversial second apron of the league’s salary cap, saying it has helped promote broader competitive balance.

Speaking Thursday at the Columbia University Sports Management Conference in New York, Silver said the measure—a key feature of a collective bargaining agreement struck last year with the National Basketball Players Association—has shown strong early results. The commissioner in particular cited an ongoing run in which the last six NBA seasons have yielded six different champions. 

“The goal, in essence, is that every team, regardless of market size, has a roughly equal chance to compete, and to run a rational business,” Silver said. “It seems to be working so far.”

The second apron, in the NBA salary cap context, is a dollar limit that teams are penalized for exceeding. For the 2024–2025 season, it’s set at $188.9 million. Draft pick penalties and heavy restrictions on roster movement are levied on teams spending above that level. Already, the defending champion Celtics are grappling with the implications of the rules. Team GMs recently voted the apron as the league rule that most needs to change. Additionally, those rules have been increasingly seen as a potential impediment to dynasties. Silver said that might prove true, but added it could also promote a new kind of dynasty.

“For fans, the goal is certainly not to stop dynasties, but by drafting well, potentially by trading well, is there a different type of dynasty that’s created?” he posited.

In other matters addressed by the commissioner:

• Franchise values: Silver said he sees no bubble in NBA team values that last year reached an average of $3.85 billion, calling the ongoing growth something of a “high-class problem” and something advancing the notion of pro teams as a new asset class. That said, Silver acknowledged the role of institutional investors, something the league has allowed for several years, and said that at some point, franchise values could outstrip the wealth of even the richest individuals.
• Media: Silver said the league’s new national media deals are not a panacea to ongoing turbulence in the regional sports network business, highlighted by the ongoing bankruptcy of Diamond Sports Group. The new agreements with ESPN, NBC Sports, and Amazon, however, will help smooth out some market differences among clubs, he said. 
• International: After a long period of turbulence with China, particularly in the wake of a pro–Hong Kong tweet posted in 2019 by now-76ers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey, Silver said, “I think we will bring games back to China at some point. We had a well-known incident there pre-pandemic with a tweet and China’s government took us off the air for a period of time. We accepted that. We stood by our values.”

Standing Up to Hate

Silver and the NBA, meanwhile, are part of a new anti-hate advocacy effort led by Robert Kraft, owner of the NFL’s Patriots. The Kraft-led Foundation to Combat Antisemitism is starting a new campaign entitled “Timeout Against Hate,” which will seek to raise awareness of hate levied against a wide variety of groups and ethnicities. 

Debuting tonight on Amazon Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football, “Timeout Against Hate” will involve every major U.S. pro sports league, and features many major sports figures including Billie Jean King, Shaquille O’Neal, Jim Harbaugh, and Joe Torre, among many others.

Representing a significant expansion of Kraft’s existing work in this area over the past five years, the campaign seeks to lean in to sports’ role as one of the last great unifiers in society. 

“It’s important to understand that even if the hate isn’t directed at you or the group that you’re a member of, it’s corrosive to all of society and really the underpinning of our democracy,” Silver said earlier Thursday on CNBC.