The tall geeky white guy there...Aah, why am I getting emotional, c'mon man. Butch up...No. No, I am going to stay emotional.
That tall, geeky white guy has a good soul. He is a leader, a moral leader. He is Adam Silver, the Commissioner of America's National Basketball Association and the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). The NBA and the WNBA are the first American professional sports leagues to participate in New York City's annual Gay Pride Parade and they were represented by the most powerful figure in the sport.
Adam Silver's calling is as a moral leader. Two years ago, just on the job, Adam faced the gravest crisis that any sports commissioner has ever faced. One of those owners, Donald Sterling, who had hired him had made the most painful, vulgar, racist remarks in a league whose players are 75% Black and who were threatening to boycott. The future of the NBA literally hung on Adam Silver's words that day and as he stepped from behind the curtain and into public to deliver his sentence one writer wrote, the first thing you noticed was Adam Silver's anger. Adam conceived the issue in the only manner he could conceive it-as a moral issue, first, second, and last. His demeanor and his sentence were cold and durable as crystal:
With today's Gay Pride Parade participation we now have another of what Earvin Magic Johnson said malappropriately but entirely appropriately about the Donald Sterling crisis: it was a "binding moment for Adam Silver. Both were the quintessential Adam Silver. A great soul, a great moral leader. May God keep Adam Silver.
