Adam Silver Made His First Public Comments On The NBA's Alleged Gambling Scandal And He's Gonna Be In Hell For A While

Welcome to Amazon Prime, Mr. Commissioner! 

Yes, the NBA made its Amazon Prime debut Friday night in New York, as the Knicks hosted the Celtics. Basketball was not the sole focus. 

After the first quarter, Cassidy Hubbarth interviewed NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. To her credit, two of her three questions were about the league's gambling scandal that broke on Thursday, with arrests happening across the country. 

Hubbart opened by asking Silver his reaction to the indictments on Thursday. 

"My initial reaction was I was deeply disturbed," Silver answered. "There's nothing more important to the league and its fans than the integrity of the competition. And so I had a pit in my stomach, and it was very upsetting." 

I'm sure it was. The league fought through the Tim Donaghy days, and then in the opening hours of the 2025 season, it's back under fire for integrity issues. 

The more interesting answer was to Hubbarth's second question, when she asked about the decision to let Terry Rozier keep playing after an investigation into those 2023 allegations that were part of the indictments on Thursday. The NBA investigation found he had never violated any rules at the time. 

Of course, it would seem those indictments from federal investigators yesterday allege otherwise. 

Silver credits legal sports betting for finding the initial abnormalities, but said that in their investigations, the NBA could not find any wrongdoing. Silver says Rozier handed over his phone to the league office, but in the end, found insufficient evidence to move forward with any penalty for Rozier. 

"Two and a half years later, he still hasn't been convicted in fairness to Terry. Obviously, it doesn't look good…" Silver went on. 

I'll add here my own comment - It sure doesn't. 

Hubbarth's last question was a boilerplate "Tell us how great the start of the season is ON the court!" but that's to be expected with a league partner: credit to her and Amazon for leading with two questions on the alleged gambling scandal. Fans weighed in pretty quickly on X.com Friday. 

Silver will face more challenging questions down the road, and maybe some from his own players. Jaylen Brown had some strong comments earlier Friday, a day after the scandal broke. 

"That whole world was introduced a couple years ago, and I don't think they took players into consideration - especially with the energy, the behavior that goes around gambling and how that directly correlates with players. We don't benefit from any of the profits, but we've got to deal with a lot of the extra negativity and scrutiny behind all the gambling stuff. On top of that, it creates more integrity issues. I'm not sure what the answer is, but definitely something that people have to spend more time having conversations about," Brown said. 

I'd argue with Brown that indeed, the players have benefited from the profits. But I don't think he'll be the only player speaking out about this issue over the next few days. 

The Knicks and Celtics were supposed to be in the spotlight as Amazon and the NBA begin their partnership on Friday Night. 

But thanks to the arrest of over 30 individuals, including three with NBA ties, allegedly connected to a Mafia-linked gambling ring, Adam Silver has some other questions to answer on Friday Night.