According to Tony Jones, Adam Silver is sending independent doctors to verify the injury to Lauri Markkanen.
This news comes on the heels of those independent doctors visiting the Indiana Pacers and pressuring them to medicate an injured player to play.
What’s clear from this whole situation is that Adam Silver is not interested in what’s best for the players, the teams, or the fans. It’s solely the bottom line. If he really cared about the players’ and the league’s health, he’d lower the number of games to reduce injuries and make the games more meaningful. Instead, Silver is constantly looking to add games and tournaments to solve every problem.
What exactly happens here if Silver’s doctors disagree? Are they going to force the Jazz to play Markkanen? What happens if Markkanen has a serious injury like the one that happened to Vince Williams Jr.? Would that be a good thing? Utah should disregard anything these doctors say. The credibility is already gone, based on what we’ve seen in Indiana. Utah should do what’s best for Utah, something that Adam Silver has not considered even once.
This whole situation has proven Silver to be completely out of touch with the fans and what they actually want. Every all-star break, Silver presents some idiotic new tech feature like this one, where you can change a jersey number if your team trades a player.
You’ll be surprised that this feature didn’t take. Turns out, fans of teams stay fans of their team even if they trade away their favorite player. Embarrassing.
And this year, Silver introduced some AI integration to make things more hyper-personalized. Great, now we lose the entire communal feeling we get with sports. Why even go to games, right?
This is just more evidence of a commissioner who is not familiar with even the basic elements of what makes sports great. Fans want hope that maybe one day they can win a championship. A fanbase like the Utah Jazz has to do things differently than the larger markets in the league, the ones that Adam Silver is biased towards. Utah will only improve, and any bad team for that matter, by getting top-tier talent in the draft. If Lauri Markkanen has as much as a sniffle, the Jazz should rest him. If they lose this pick this season, it would be an absolute disaster, but maybe that’s what Adam Silver wants. The Jazz staying bad is better in his mind because it’s one more small market for the large markets to beat up one year after year.
So, ignore those doctors, Danny, Ryan, and Austin. They don’t have the team’s best interest at heart.
