News Summary

• Adam Silver is one of America’s most powerful men.
• He leads a multibillion-dollar international conglomerate and exercises soft power across continents.
• He is warm and dignified, a people pleaser who thinks in terms of negotiations and partners, not arguments and adversaries.
• Silver is also an anxiety case, a born worrier who lives with constant apprehension about dangers to his league and its legitimacy.
• Professional basketball has entered a moment of institutional crisis.
• The commissioner is confronting urgent, headline-grabbing allegations of corrupt ownership and betting scandals.