All season, the NBA has been plagued by criticism of its on-court product.

While viewership trends are basically the same year over year, and the league just signed a massive 11-year media deal, even its most fervent fans will acknowledge that the game has changed—and not only for the better.

During a press conference ahead of the latest NBA game in Paris, commissioner Adam Silver finally addressed those criticisms. Silver didn’t shy away from the idea when asked whether the league may have to make rule changes to combat the effects of advanced analytics on the game.

Instead, the commissioner agreed that teams’ use of statistics to develop on-court schemes has made the game more predicated on jump shots and less physical. Yet Silver stopped short of pledging to shred the rulebook, instead affirming that the NBA owes it to fans to maintain both the “aesthetic appeal” and the “competitive tension” of the sport.

“I’m not sure what we need to do as a result, but yes, I would say analytics … takes sports in a certain direction because it’s a coach and a general manager’s job to win. They’re not necessarily focused on the aesthetic appeal of the game, understandably,” Silver said.

“And it’s our role … to work with our competition committee and say, ‘alright, we have to balance these interests.’ That they’re going to operate under our current rules, just as we saw in baseball, and do everything they can to win under those existing rules. And it’s on us if we need to make adjustments within those rules because we’re also looking at the aesthetic appeal of the game.”

Adam Silver’s full answer re: the state of the NBA on-court product and how efficiency/analytics affect it. pic.twitter.com/WerYIiXU7k

— Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob) January 23, 2025

In regard to the explosion of three-point shooting in NBA games, Silver expressed concern that even the best players are being pushed outside their comfort zone and what makes them special by modern coaches and executives.

Yet the commissioner emphasized that an increase in long jumpers isn’t the only change that has impacted the game and how fans enjoy it. At the Paris Olympics, Silver said, the medal round games featured a higher rate of three-pointers than the typical NBA game. Those games, which featured superstars from Steph Curry to Victor Wembanyama to Nikola Jokic dazzling in pressure moments, were celebrated as some of the greatest games in recent basketball history.

Not every trend is pointing in the same direction, which is why the league is being patient while still acknowledging its role.

“I want to let it marinate a bit,” Silver added. “I want to get direct feedback from our teams on what they’re seeing. I should add, I do find night in, night out, we’re watching the best athletes in the world do things that were unthinkable to me when I first joined the league. So I’m enjoying watching the games, but is there a tweak? I’m not necessarily sure that it’s just three-point shooting.”

Silver didn’t get into specifics of what potential rule changes might look like but admitted fans may also miss the physicality of previous eras that can be lost when the goal of so many possessions is to generate an open three-point shot. While explaining that the NBA may have “gone too far” trying to create more game flow in the early 2000s when it prohibited “hand-checking,” Silver said he knows fans want “competitive tension” in the game.

To Silver, that seems to mean a level of difficulty for the athletes on the court and a “physical grinding” that fans associate with basketball and all sports.

“I think that the most important part from our standpoint is ensuring there’s always a competitive tension on the floor, (and) there’s a physical part of it,” Silver said. “I think that partly what fans are responding to isn’t necessarily the number of feet from which the shot has been taken, but what they view as the level of difficulty. That becomes important, does the shot look too easy to the fans? And I think fans like a certain aspect of the physical grinding that comes with this game, and I don’t think we want that to be lost.”

With the NFL season winding down and the NBA taking center stage, the voices complaining about the sport will finally start watching it again. As with every sport (even football), its engagement and popularity are affected by factors beyond the games. If the New York Knicks make the NBA Finals, we already know the conversation around basketball fandom will look very different.

However, considering that even huge NBA supporters like Charles Barkley or Bill Simmons believe the league needs to address its product, Silver deserves credit for engaging with the topic directly rather than shying away from it.