'Job well done': Inside Gregg Popovich's unparalleled NBA legacy

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YEARS BEFORE RISING to the post of NBA commissioner in 2014, Adam Silver spent eight years as the president of NBA Entertainment, where he helmed the league's marketing and production arm, charged with overseeing films, documentaries, highlight reels and more.

His tenure spanned eight years in the late-1990s through the mid-2000s, a stretch bookended by the end of the Chicago Bulls' dynasty under Michael Jordan and the rise and fall of the Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant era with the Los Angeles Lakers.

With those two storylines alone, Silver's department lacked little in the way of compelling material to help grow the game: global superstars, major markets, outsized…