Silver In, Stern Out

Will Adam Silver be more successful than Stern?

It's all over the web. David Stern announced he will retire Jan. 1, 2014 and hand the reigns over to successor, Adam Silver.

Stern, 70, has been the NBA commissioner since 1984; he is currently the longest tenured commissioner in all professional sports. Why 2014? It marks Stern's 30yr anniversary of being the commish. Stern as been quietly grooming a successor, Silver, 50, to eventually take over.

Silver has more recently been a lead figure in helping the NBA reach a new collective bargaining agreement; hee has been Stern's right hand man for the last six years, and before that, spent twenty years in various NBA capacities. Stern has made it extremely clear the transition between him and Silver will be extremely smooth; Stern will stay in full control for the next 15 months.

Now that you know the story, here's a few questions I got:

Will Silver operate the NBA in a similar manner Stern has?

It is widely known the lashing Stern has received from players and critics over his tenure, more specifically in recent years. From recently reducing pre-game rituals to 90 seconds (No more LBJ chalk tossing???), to vetoing the Chris Paul to LA trade, to even fining players for wearing their NBA headbands the wrong way.

Stern is generally not favored by modern players (Magic Johnson had good words to say, though.) It will be exciting to see if Silver will make a priority to create a strong relationship with the players or if he will continue to be heavy handed in dealing with NBA operations (I did like the new flopping rules.

What new things will Silver bring to the table?

From advertisements on jersey to introducing franchise tags, there have been a few ideas floating around recently that could or could not go into effect, depending on Silver's agenda. With recent super teams popping up all over the NBA, with superstars leaving small market teams left and right, will Silver step up and help teams have more control in keeping their star players? Will stricter cap rules be established?

We have quite awhile till any of these questions will be answered, but it doesn't hurt to start building some exceptions for Silver.