An hour before the 2019 NBA Finals tipped off in Toronto -- the first time the league's showcase event had been played outside the United States -- commissioner Adam Silver reminded those watching that basketball's founder, James Naismith, was a Christian missionary who brought the game to China and Europe in the belief that it could be a common language.
Silver is a like-minded optimist who believes in the NBA as an instrument of soft power across the globe. He is a willing ambassador who spoke that night about the league's foray into Africa and the Indian subcontinent, and its ever-expanding presence in China, where basketball can be used "maybe in the way pingpong was used in the days of Richard Nixon.