If you look at Adam Silver’s background, you wouldn’t think he’d eventually come to lead the NBA, or make it the massive marketing and media powerhouse it is today.
The son of a labor lawyer, he grew up in Rye, N.Y., editing his high school newspaper and running cross-country. He studied political science at Duke University, clerked for a federal judge, and then became an associate at a major New York law firm. None of that would have screamed sports mogul.
