Doubling Down

In November 2014, less than a year into his tenure as NBA commissioner, Adam Silver quietly staked his claim to the most consequential position in modern American sports. “Betting on professional sports is currently illegal in most of the United States,” he wrote in a New York Times op-ed. “I believe we need a different approach.” In 500 words of banal, press-release prose, Silver wrote fondly of England, where bets could be placed on a smartphone or “using a television remote.” He spoke optimistically of curbing the illegal betting industry’s “shady offshore” operations, which were, according to wildly inflated calculations, netting $400 billion annually. Silver ultimately made the case for bringing sports wagering “out of the underground and into the sunlight.” Only then could it be “appropriately monitored and regulated.”