NBA commissioner calls Kissinger ‘exemplar’ of ‘great global diplomats’

Adam Silver, the National Basketball Association (NBA) commissioner, says he can relate to Henry Kissinger, “one of the great global diplomats.”

“I will say, I was reading a lot of those long obituaries around Henry Kissinger’s death at 100, and where he was sort of an exemplar of one of the great global diplomats, and I want to say I understand, and this is going to be far afield of your question, I of course believe we have to have a strong military,” Silver told Pat McAfee on his show Wednesday.

Kissinger, the divisive diplomat, died Nov. 29.

Silver, 62, who has been NBA commissioner since 2014, has entertained some controversy, but he’s been largely mum on the NBA’s ties to China.

The NBA has had at least $5 billion in business in China through the years.

“Our current national deals with ABC, ESPN, and TNT go through the end of next season. And the reason we wanted to get those deals done, no secret, is we want to have a better understanding of what the economics would be going forward,” Silver said online. “You want to understand what the economics are you’d be delivering to new teams that came into the league.”

In recent years, Silver has seemed to reject the idea of an NBA expansion.

“I think that public markets worked very well in this country,” Silver told reporters in July. “But the other side of a public market is the potential for insider trading. And there’s very sophisticated algorithms, etc., that track it. It’s not that different in sports now, especially when you get higher volumes of betting. You have very sophisticated computers; when they see aberrational betting…you’re going to get caught.”

Silver also has been a longtime backer of legalized sports betting, despite his reservations about the potential for abuse.