“I mean, this is very much a highlights-based sport.” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s words, delivered in the recent Board of Governors meeting amid mounting fan frustration, were meant to soothe concerns over skyrocketing costs to watch full games. Instead, they landed like a poorly officiated foul call—tone-deaf and sparking instant backlash. Silver pointed fans toward free clips on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube as a silver lining, but for die-hards craving the full 48 minutes of drama, it’s no consolation. The NBA’s new media rights deal has changed the way basketball fans will consume the sport moving forward. Gone are the days when a single cable subscription gave access to most games.

For fans already juggling multiple subscriptions, the shift is more of a burden than an upgrade. NBC is back in the NBA mix, but TNT is gone. Peacock is now streaming Monday games. Tuesday games are split between NBC and Peacock. ESPN handles Wednesdays, Amazon Prime owns Thursdays, and both ESPN and Prime cover Fridays. The weekend? You’ll need ABC, NBC, Peacock, and Prime again. Local games? Still tied up with cable, sometimes on obscure channels. In-market viewers cannot use NBA League Pass, because those games are blacked out. It’s all fragmented. So when Adam Silver’s attempt to address it publicly went sideways, Mark Cuban stepped in with his take.

Cuban, one of the league’s most outspoken figures, taking to X, wrote: “Adam definitely whiffed on this one. But I can tell you that unless a lot has changed in the last 20 months, he is one of the people standing up for fans in a room where a lot of owners are not.”

It was a rare but measured call-out from Cuban—acknowledging the commissioner’s misstep while defending his broader track record. In doing so, Cuban hinted that Silver’s personal stance remains more pro-fan than his words suggested, but made clear he wasn’t about to sugarcoat the moment either.

Over the past few years, the NBA has aggressively pivoted toward streaming as a way to modernize its broadcast model. The NBA signed a landmark $76 billion media deal, which placed games across ESPN, NBC including Peacock, and Amazon Prime, and dropped long-time partner TNT. The idea was to meet younger fans where they already are.

But in doing so, the league may have overreached. Instead of centralizing NBA viewing, this shift has fragmented it across multiple platforms—each with its own subscription fee. The average fan could be spending well over $100 per month, depending on where they live and how they watch. That’s more than a typical cell phone bill. And even then, some games might still be unavailable due to blackouts or exclusivity deals.

Silver’s response to a very real concern, accessibility, was tone deaf. Cuban, the former Mavericks owner, has always advocated for technology-driven growth in the NBA. But he also understands the baseline that if fans can’t watch the games, the product doesn’t matter.

Why Adam Silver’s Response Misses the Mark for the NBA Community’s Real Issue

This all came to a head during a press conference following the NBA Board of Governors meeting. Adam Silver was asked by the press about the rising cost for fans of a specific team to watch a season, given the games’ distribution across cable, League Pass, and several streaming platforms.

Silver’s response was immediate and revealing, “There’s a huge amount of our content that people can essentially consume for free. I mean this is very much a highlights-based sport. So Instagram, TikTok, Twitter you name it. Any service, the New York Times for that matter to the extent that your content is not behind a paid firewall. There’s an enormous amount of content out there. YouTube, another example that is advertising based that consumers can consume.”

Silver’s tenure has modernized the NBA into a $10 billion juggernaut, but fandom thrives on intimacy, not infinity. Fans aren’t demanding a time machine back to cable bundles; they want a unified app or bundle that prioritizes the 82-game slog over global conquests.

He followed up by mentioning that more games will be available on free broadcast TV under the new deal, jumping from 15 to 75 per season, but the damage was already done. Suggesting fans just watch highlights instead of full games didn’t feel like a solution. It felt dismissive. Silver called the NBA a “highlight league,” but fans aren’t asking for clips. They want to watch their team play 48 minutes without juggling six different apps or paying over $100 a month.

For years, Adam Silver has pushed for global expansion, tech innovation, and youth engagement. He’s focused on planting the NBA flag in Europe, building custom streaming experiences, and chasing the NFL’s digital success. But that vision has left many domestic fans behind. The average fan doesn’t care if Paris gets a team. They just want to know where they can watch their hometown squad without taking out a second subscription or second mortgage.

This isn’t about being stuck in the past. Streaming is the future. But execution matters. Right now, it’s a mess. There’s no one-stop place to watch games. Local RSNs are dying or bankrupt. League Pass still blacks out in-market games. And now, fans are being told to settle for highlight reels.

The numbers only highlight the disconnect. The 2024-25 regular season saw national TV viewership dip 2% to 1.53 million per game on ABC, ESPN, and TNT, a modest slide but symptomatic of broader fatigue amid the access wars. While the 2025 playoffs and Finals bucked the trend—averaging 6.13 million viewers, up 10% year-over-year, with Game 7’s Thunder-Pacers thriller peaking at 19.3 million—the regular-season erosion signals trouble.

It’s not a bad product. The access is. Fans are speaking clearly. They want better, simpler, and fairer ways to watch basketball. Adam Silver’s job is to listen. And to fix it.