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Adam Silver Tried Like Hell To Dispel The Notion That He Had Any Involvement In The Luka Doncic Trade

Katelyn Mulcahy. Getty Images.

One thing you knew was going to happen once the Luka Trade was announced was that the creation of conspiracy theories around the move was inevitable. Given the magnitude of the trade, the return, the NBA ratings element, and then where Luka ended up, it was a perfect storm for tin foil hat theories

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How many of those conspiracy theories are actually true, we'll never know. But one you couldn't seem to get away from was the idea that Adam Silver and the league office were behind the scenes pulling the strings to make something like this happen. At the end of the day, the NBA is a business right? It sounds insane to think the Commissioner would do something like that, but then again the trade itself was so insane that you couldn't really rule out any potential possibility.

As you can imagine, that's a conspiracy theory/narrative that Adam Silver and the league cannot have floating out there. Which is why it was not at all surprising that he was on TV today, making it very clear that he had "nothing to do with it"

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Interesting explanation as to how the blocked CP3 trade to the Lakers went down, if only there was a way we could ask David Stern himself to verify it. Oh well! Sounds like hiding behind semantics to me, but whatever. I'm certainly not crying that the Lakers may or may not have gotten screwed when that happened. 

Even if Adam Silver thinks he's ending the conspiracy theory that he put the call in from the league office, it's hard to ignore that when he was also talking about how much the ratings picked up in the second half of the year, he couldn't help but mention a certain trade being a contributing factor

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You're crazy if you think Adam Silver would go on TV and admit to having any sort of involvment in the Luka Trade, and even if the rational side of my brain understands his point and mostly agrees with it, I'm still calling bullshit to some degree. That nugget where he talked about how the league office does know a little bit earlier than everyone else? Something happened in those conversations. 

While it won't be possible for everyone to fully agree on whether or not Silver played a role, one thing we can all agree on is that he's absolutely thrilled that it happened. How could he not be? Not only did it help his ratings, but it also boosted a blue-blood franchise both in the short and long term. The Lakers have their succession plan for a post-LeBron world, you don't think that matters to Adam Silver and the NBA? Don't be naive. You don't think the league would be interested in seeing LeBron/Luka make a deep playoff run? Grow up Peter Pan, Count Chocula. Just wait until you see the whistle this team is about to get. I feel for Wolves fans already, because it's going to be brutal.

For all we know, this Luka Trade was just the league office's way of making up for what happened with CP3. Adam Silver may be denying it, but when has that ever changed anyone's mind before? This is the same league that still can't shake the rigging of the Lottery allegations, so it doesn't matter how many times Adam Silver denies it. People will always think he and the league office were involved.