Why the NBA Feels Broken—and Why the League Can’t Fix It

On this episode

About this episode

The NBA’s vibes have been unusually awful recently. There has been widespread hand-wringing about the homogenization of modern offenses and the league’s notoriously weak regular-season TV ratings. A tanking crisis saw about a third of teams purposely try to lose games in a race to secure the top pick in the 2026 draft. A barrage of gambling scandals took out a head coach and several players. And the playoffs have brought relentless complaining from fans about foul-baiting and flopping, tactics that have often been rewarded by the referees.At the center of this is Adam Silver, who was once the most popular and celebrated commissioner in all of sports. In recent years, though, his reputation…