Despite the bad press still leaking out from Atlanta, now is not such a bad time to be NBA commissioner Adam Silver. In the wake of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s disastrous mishandling of his league’s domestic violence crisis, which compares poorly to Silver’s swift and decisive action to oust the former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, it’s clear which man has had a better PR year.  Granted, the NBA actually has a spotty record when it comes to penalizing players over domestic violence charges, and Silver has not yet had to address the subject. But it might also be noted that Silver has not claimed, like the outgoing MLB commissioner, Bud Selig, that he can’t remember his sport’s last incident of domestic violence.  It is, therefore, hard to argue with those who believe that if Silver were in change of the NFL, he would have handled things much better, just as it is hard to argue with those believe that a pineapple in a top hat would be handling things better than Goodell.  Goodell’s troubles began with the public release of a video showing the Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice punching his then-fiancee in the face, rendering her unconscious. In July, when the only video publicly available showed Rice dragging Janay Palmer from an elevator at an Atlantic City casino, Goodell had suspended him for only two games. The release of the full video made that look like a sick joke. Still Goodell did nothing, until after the Ravens had cut Rice. Only then did he ban Rice, indefinitely, from the league.  Then the floodgates opened. The Minnesota Vikings made three decisions about franchise MVP Adrian Peterson, after child-abuse charges were made public. The Carolina Panthers waited too long before dealing with defensive end Greg Hardy. The San Francisco 49ers continued to play Ray McDonald, arrested on suspicion of assaulting his reportedly pregnant fiancee. On Wednesday, the, Arizona Cardinals running back Jonathan Dwyer was arrested.  Off-field violence involving NFL players has reached Onion-headline proportions – for anyone other than the reading public, that is never a good sign. And until a scheduled Friday afternoon press conference, Goodell had all but disappeared.  For the NBA, so far, the only serious fallout on the subject has come, inevitably, from Twitter. Shortly after the second Ray Rice video emerged, the Indiana Pacers’ Paul George went on online to engage in some victim-blaming:  Snapshot of a few Paul George tweets that appear to have since been deleted pic.twitter.com/qzyTCIyI1V  The Pacers were quick to condemn George, who made a quick apology. And that, in an ideal world, is how an “athlete saying something awful on social media” controversy should be handled.  In the midst of all of this, however, there seems to be a growing sense that domestic violence is a football problem, or even more narrowly an NFL problem, rather than a societal problem. It is a misconception perhaps not entirely helped by the media. The truth, of course, is that domestic abuse is a huge problem in the NBA as well and, at least until now, the league has not dealt with it much differently than the NFL has – which means it mostly hasn’t dealt with it at all.  As Aaron McGuire points out in a must-read piece, The NBA is Worse at Criminal Justice than the NFL, the league has earned very little praise. In the wake of Rice’s two-game suspension, in July, McGuire compiled a list of NBA players recently charged with violent crimes who were subject to no or few penalties from the league:  These are only some of the more high-profile players on McGuire’s list, which includes two cases which have occurred since Silver became commissioner and from which a strong case can be made that the NBA’s track record in such situations is mostly one of inaction. McGuire concludes:  If NBA fans are going to boycott the NFL for their treatment of the Rice case, they should probably start off by storming the NBA’s league office in New York and demanding answers on the NBA’s pitiful track record. And given the widespread love and adoration for some of these players – Lowry, Stephenson and Hill in particular – many might want to rethink the way they approach fandom as a whole. It’s easy to pick holes in sports you don’t love, but it’s much harder to honestly address very real moral failings in the sport you hold dearest. And it’s even harder to come to terms with the fact that the players we hold up as totems to virtue and aesthetics are real human beings with real human flaws.  So what does it take for the NBA to crack down on a player? In a column for NBA.com which goes into detail about the league’s policies, David Aldridge spells out the current protocol:  Under Article VI of the current Agreement, any player who is convicted of or pleads guilty or no contest to a violent felony will be suspended for a minimum of 10 games. If the league and Players Association concur that a player has engaged in violent off-court conduct (the umbrella term under which domestic violence currently is defined), the player has to undergo a clinical evaluation by a neutral expert. That expert may then recommend counseling. (As we’ve seen in recent cases, though – World Peace’s role in the Brawl at Auburn Hills in 2004, and Gilbert Arenas bringing guns into the Wizards’ locker room in 2010 – the league has exercised its discretion to hand out significantly higher punishments for egregious activities.)  Any player convicted of or who pleads guilty or no contest to a crime involving violent conduct must attend a minimum five counseling sessions with a therapist or counselor jointly selected by the NBA and the union. The counseling sessions are in addition to any penalties imposed by the league for the violent conduct.  According to Aldridge, the NBA has not made any changes in this policy in light of the growing NFL scandal.  That could very well change, especially if the public outcry aimed at the NFL redirects. Silver, who replaced David Stern on 1 February, was not the NBA commissioner when the policy was written up. How he responds to the next major domestic violence incident involving a notable NBA player, coach or executive will go a long way to determining his reputation.  He may rise to the occasion, of course. As we learned from his response to the Donald Sterling situation, he is not afraid to change the course set by his predecessor. Under his watch, the league also put pressure on controlling owner Bruce Levenson and general manager Danny Ferry, both now formerly of the Atlanta Hawks, for non-violent transgressions.  Until such a case occurs, as sadly we must assume it will, we won’t really be able to compare Adam Silver’s NBA to Roger Goodell’s NFL – no matter how tempting it is to assume Silver couldn’t possibly handle things worse.
Hunter Felt: New chief, praised for dealing with Donald Sterling, has not faced cases like those plaguing Roger Goodell and the NFL. Sadly – inevitably – he will