After reading countless fan forum posts on the inside and outside nets, I came to a conclusion: Adam Shaw, who has just signed an NBA contract extension until 2030, is very unpopular among the fan base.
Click on Reddit, the largest forum in the United States, and talk about Xiao Hua's posts full of comments such as "worst commissioner in sports", "full of bad ideas nobody wants", "piece of fxxking ** is a lump)". On China's largest basketball forum, Tiger Pounce, 7,388 people scored the article "Xiao Hua and the NBA reached a contract extension", which is a historically low score of 9731% of fans voted 1 star.
Obviously, for Xiao Hua, the fans don't buy it.
But what is interesting is that after that, Hu Pu put forward a score for "Xiao Hua's ten-year measures as president", citing 24 operations on the NBA after he took office, but netizens gave high marks to most of his operations - such as creating play-offs, joining the midseason, and modifying the team's probability of getting the top pick. This seems to contradict previous evaluations of him personally. If you support Shaw's strategy, why would you oppose Shaw himself? In my specific observations, the iron rule that loyalty is not absolutely equal to absolute disloyalty still applies here. It's hard to get the fans to like you, you need to do everything right, it's easy to make the fans hate you, you just have to do one thing wrong.
Of course, a president who is constantly doing things will do some things wrong, and in the end, he should be judged by the severity of those things. One of Shaw's most controversial actions is his support for NBA stars to make political claims. Sports fans and sports people tend to split their views on this issue, with those who believe that sports people should use their visibility to make an impact on society as a whole, and those who want to keep sports in the field of sports, do not want sports to be involved in politics, and do not want sports to be affected by any social problems. And Xiao Hua's attitude has always been the former, and under his rule, the NBA is much more tolerant of players than the NFL. The NBA has promoted "anti-gun violence", promoted "Black Lives Matter", and supported LGBTQ.
But this is a double-edged sword. NBA practitioners have enough influence, but they don't have the knowledge and structure to face these issues properly. In the end, the NBA will have to face the consequences of the mental statements of those who know little about political events. Morey's tweets in 2019 were one of the most impactful of them, and Irving's comments on Jews pushed him to the forefront. Obviously, Xiao Hua's way of cleaning up these messes is not clever. This also made his image in the eyes of Chinese netizens plummet.
In addition, as far as I can see, there are many fans who hate Xiao Hua because they see Xiao Hua as artificially controlling the game, making their home team lose, or letting the team they hate win. Needless to say, since the time of Xiao Hua's administration, there have been more frequent and more clumsy signs of "manipulation" in NBA games. Some of them changed the outcome of a single game, some had an impact on the outcome of the series, and some even decided the championship to some extent.
If you only talk about the results, which players benefited and which team suffered, it's really a very one-sided question. For die-hard sports fans, the most important and beautiful thing about competitive sports is its "truth". If you don't even have "real", then you might as well go to see more *** concerts. Nowadays, almost everyone believes that the league manipulates the course of the game in order to prolong the suspense of the series or create a breaking point, and the impact on the league's image is huge and far-reaching.
But here we should talk about Xiao Hua's unique wisdom. What does the experience of the fans, the "huge and far-reaching" impact, have to do with him?
Ideally, happy bosses and happy fans are two circles that can overlap, but unfortunately, they don't always overlap. When the needs of the fans and the needs of the bosses conflicted, he stood firmly on the side of the bosses.
At the end of the day, Xiao Hua is not directly responsible to the fans. His job is not to make fans happy, not to improve competition in the league, not to produce the best American stars, not to improve the quality of the game, not to make competitive sports more real. Some of these things are just means to an end rather than the end of his work, and some of them even interfere with his end goal. His real purpose, of course, is to help the owners of 30 teams earn money as the big steward of this league - professional sports, what kind of career can you talk about without making money?
If you want to make money, you must first be able to get even. Under Shaw, the N.B.A. has reached two collective bargaining agreements, none of which has resulted in a league shutdown, the most recent of which was signed last year, enough to keep the league running until the 2029-30 season, when his contract expires. Despite the difficulties of the negotiation itself, Xiao Hua was able to be respected in the eyes of both labor and management, partly because he could make everyone earn, and on the other hand, of course, because of his carefully maintained personal image.
Stern is a brilliant trailblazer who reshaped the image of the NBA with an iron fist and freed the NBA from the chaos of the 70s, he was the most successful salesman in basketball history, opened up the global market, and brought the NBA to everyone in the world. Xiao Hua is a cautious and conservative man, he is very clear about his position, he treats team owners, management and NBA stars gently, has always advocated "open communication", "embrace reform", and has established a closer partnership with them while balancing the needs of all parties.
No one wants to go against Stern, but Shaw will cleverly shy away from going against anyone but Donald Sterling and Robert Saver. He defends the interests of the bosses and makes money for the bosses, but he also knows that in order to make the league more successful, he needs to also stand up for the stars, give them some power, support their personal careers, and build their social image.
Of course, Xiao Hua knows that it will always be difficult to let NBA players speak out in politics, but he understands that this method can increase the influence of the league and basketball practitioners, so he not only fully supports, but also always tries to help those players who cause trouble to wipe their butts afterwards. Of course, Xiao Hua also knew that the clumsy manipulation of the game would be discovered and complained about by the old fans, but he had nothing to fear, because making the game "more dramatic" was also a demand of a large part of the fans.
Xiao Hua also knows that creating a league where defense is easy to be blown fouls is not only not conducive to cultivating a new generation of young stars to become offensive and defensive, but also makes old fans who like to watch defense feel boring, but the continuous high scores can stimulate the box office, detonate social media and short ** platforms, so as to attract some lighter and more likely to convert. Maybe the old fans will have some complaints at the end, but Xiao Hua doesn't care. Because he has the audacity — for true basketball fans, the NBA has no competition.
Yes, this is Xiao Hua's logic. It doesn't matter if the fans like him or not, what matters is whether he earns money or not. "The Avengers" will never match "The Godfather" or "The Shawshank Redemption" in terms of artistic achievement, but that is not their goal, Marvel only knows that they have grossed more than $18 billion worldwide. When Shaw first started working for the NBA in 1992 as Stern's assistant, the average NBA team was valued at $70 million, and now, ten years after he became president himself, Forbes puts the average valuation of the team at 38$500 million, 55 times more than that year. In February last year, Matt Ishbia bought the Phoenix Suns for 4 billion. For players, the salary cap of each NBA team in the 2013-14 season when Xiao Hua took office was only $58.67 million, and next season Brother Alphabet will receive a contract with a starting salary of $68.3 million.
Over the past 10 years, everyone in the league has become richer, more successful, and more influential, thanks to Xiao Hua's efforts, which is why he got this contract extension. He is 61 years old and will sit in the position of president of the league for another six years. His next big test is how to sign the league to a new broadcast contract that extends long into his departure, and it seems that things are also moving in his favor right now.
But we should also point out that his administration has also planted some potential crises in the NBA, the competitiveness of the game and the fun of the league are indeed declining, and the political statements of stars may one day step on the thunder. Maybe these problems will bring trouble to the NBA in the future, but it is likely that Xiao Hua will not be in office at that time?
When I die, what does it matter if it floods?