Stephen A. Smith fires back at Adam Silver with a bold NBA fix

Adam Silver might be looking at trimming NBA games to 40 minutes, but Stephen A. Smith has other ideas.

With Anthony Edwards and Tyrese Haliburton already missing chunks of time, the league's health problem is front and center once again.

It's got Adam Silver seriously kicking around the idea of cutting games down to 40 minutes, similar to international ball.

The thinking is straightforward: less floor time means less wear and tear, and fewer stars potentially out on the sidelines.

But shaving eight minutes off the clock hasn't sat well with everyone.

There has been a huge pushback over whether trimming court time actually fixes player durability or just messes with the integrity of the game.

Stephen A. Smith wasn't buying Adam Silver's 40-minute pitch for a second.

His preference is to reduce the amount of back-to-back games instead.

He said, on his YouTube channel: "I think the priority should be eliminating as many back-to-back games as possible."

NBA teams still face an average of 14.2 back-to-backs during the 2026–27 season.

Some teams play as many as 16 back-to-backs.

The league has already eliminated four-games-in-five-nights stretches from the regular-season schedule.

But the 82-game schedule itself remains untouched.

Teams also cannot simply rest their biggest stars whenever they choose.

Under the NBA's Player Participation Policy, teams generally cannot sit two designated star players in the same game without an approved exception.

Nationally televised games also receive special protection, with stars generally expected to be available.

Exceptions exist for injuries, personal circumstances and approved rest restrictions based on age, career workload or serious injury history.

The policy was designed to keep stars on the floor, especially for big games.

But critics argue the schedule itself is the root cause of the problem.

Bill Simmons, founder of The Ringer, has been especially vocal.

He ripped Adam Silver's 'negligence and greed' over the 82-game schedule on his podcast.

Simmons wants the NBA to cut its regular season from 82 games to 70.

He blames Commissioner Adam Silver and the league's owners for the current schedule.

"Listen, I don't know how many times I've talked about this on the pod about the schedule and about how this, to me, is just inexcusable and semi-reprehensible that whoever is in charge of the league, which I think is Adam Silver these days, that he doesn't care," Simmons said.

The NBA has maintained an 82-game regular season since 1967-68, apart from seasons shortened by labor disputes or other disruptions.

He continued: "You're ruining your players … and you're hurting careers, and you're shortening careers. This should be a 70-game season. And if you talk to literally everybody who plays basketball, all of them would say the season needs to be shorter. And if you don't do it at this point, I just think it's negligent. I really do. I think it's actual negligence and greed."

The NBA has 30 franchises.

Adding teams in Las Vegas and Seattle would mark its first expansion since the Charlotte Bobcats joined the league in 2004.

That potential expansion is central to Simmons' argument because of the money he expects the league's current owners to receive.

"The question for me is, you're gonna make all this money … that's gonna be $9.5 billion for the [Las Vegas] expansion team … They're gonna get a second thing from Seattle, which is gonna be $7.5 (billion), something like that. … So all these owners are getting, I don't know, $16 billion in expansion fees," he said.

Those figures are his estimates.

In March, the New York Post reported that expansion fees could range from $7 billion to $10 billion per team.

The money would go to the NBA's current owners rather than being shared with players.

Cutting 12 games from each team's schedule would also mean fewer home dates and fewer opportunities to sell tickets and concessions.

Simmons questioned why the league would resist change when the owners stand to make billions.

The debate now has two clear camps.

Silver is leaning toward a 40-minute game as the fix.

Smith wants to eliminate back-to-backs.

Simmons wants to cut the season to 70 games.

The league has not announced any formal proposal to change game length or schedule length.

But the conversation is happening publicly, with major voices in basketball weighing in.

Injuries to stars like Anthony Edwards and Tyrese Haliburton early this season have added urgency to the discussion.

The league's Player Participation Policy already attempts to manage star availability.

But critics say the policy treats the symptom, not the disease.