Did someone say 'Joe Smith?'

There is a crisis among the 30 NBA owners, soon to be flush with the expansion gifts from teams No. 31 and No. 32.

The league's local broadcast lineups are in flux, save for a few major outlets, dipping the league's revenue a few percentage points lower than the double-figure percentage growth The Thirty expected.

Plus, The Big Knicks Finals only went five games. But that's basketball, they'll let basketball go, what worries The Thirty the most is the unsupportive revenue structure for local airings, in sharp contrast to the Fox Sports Network-led layout of the previous two decades.

That's about it. Otherwise, no low points for these owners, nothing the government won't bail out if things go awry a-with AI.

Drones still flock for Memphis, MLM rings doorbells down in Orlando, meanwhile James Dolan scans and seals the silhouettes of his enemies, which in James' mind are many.

None of these guys ever scanned the sore sight of 41 opened gates with a 12,000 attendance average, let alone single-digit dips. They've never relocated cities following a cable-televised sex scandal, or cheered the luxury of a broadcast rights deal totaling in the hundreds of millions. Six, hundreds of millions.

Nobody here's had a low point, let alone owned one. The only thing The Thirty has to worry about is people complaining over All-Star Weekend. Which people still tune into anyway because, the NBA posits, what else do you have do on a weekend in February? Practice playing the piano? You don't even own one. Not a tuned one, anyway.

An NBA players' strike – my presumption that every NBA player stashed a year and a half worth of salary in savings accounts reserved for labor emergencies such as this – would certainly create a few problems for NBA owners, though never any low points. People with money to own NBA teams in the 2020s are beyond low points, only embarrassments to write off.

That's the herd Adam Silver represents, thirty Hearsts. He's never seen any of these thirty NBA owners sweat, there's never been any reason to perspire. David Stern saw a lot of sweat, used it to see through the people who hired him.