It’s week 2 of the new NBA season, but a lot of action is taking place off the hardwood as its leadership deals with a federal gambling investigation and a looming labor deadline. Sports business reporter Ira Boudway has a primer. Plus: How New York City mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani plans to win over Wall Street skeptics, and the success President Donald Trump has shown against the climate fight.

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There’s a thing in journalism called the “rule of three.” It’s often deployed in headlines for stories full of colorful details. The idea is to pique readers’ curiosity with three seemingly random items, followed by a unifying theme. Here’s a classic of the form from The Athletic in 2021: “A ‘hibernating’ bear. Drinking water. And corny road maps: How the Grizzlies are thriving without Ja Morant.” What could those three things possibly have to do with the success of the Memphis Grizzlies? Read on.

Anyway, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is having a difficult couple of months, and it’s causing me to write “rule of three” headlines in my head. My current favorite: “Cap Circumvention, Labor Strife and Gambling Probes: How Adam Silver’s Fall Turned Messy.” Silver came into this NBA season riding high on a new 11-year, $77-billion TV rights deal. Now he’s dealing with three disparate but urgent problems.

In early September, the league announced that it had opened an investigation into the Los Angeles Clippers and their owner Steve Ballmer over an alleged attempt to circumvent the salary cap by funneling money to star player Kawhi Leonard through a sham endorsement contract. The NBA has brought in the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to look into the matter. You can read more about it, but what it boils down to is that, depending on what Wachtell finds, Silver could have some delicate decisions to make about how to discipline the league’s wealthiest owner. (Ballmer and the Clippers have denied breaking any rules.)

Leonard during the Clippers game on Sunday in Inglewood, California. Photographer: Ronald Martinez/Getty Images 

Then, during a press conference at the end of the September, WNBA superstar Napheesa Collier unleashed a withering, four-minute critique of Commissioner Cathy Engelbert, saying that the league has the “worst leadership in the world.” For months now, the NBA has been watching its sister league fly headlong toward a work stoppage that could undo its booming momentum. The collective bargaining agreement between the WNBA and its players is set to expire at the end of this month, with no sign that the two sides are anywhere near an agreement. Although Engelbert, who said she was “disheartened” by Collier’s remarks, is running the negotiations, she works for Silver. The responsibility for keeping the W from grinding to a halt ultimately rests with him.

And finally, last week, the NBA landed in a fresh scandal when federal prosecutors unveiled charges in a sprawling investigation into gambling rings involving an NBA player and coach. On Friday, six members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, sent Silver a letter asking for a briefing on the allegations by the end of this week. The scandal has turned up the volume on already loud questions about how the spread of sports gambling, and in particular so-called prop bets on individual players, may be corrupting the league’s games.

It’s a lot for Silver to deal with. What will the rule-of-three headline be when the dust settles? Your guess is as good as mine.

In Brief

• Chinese and US trade negotiators have lined up an array of diplomatic wins for Trump and Xi to unveil at a summit this week. Those easy hits are pleasing investors but leave deeper core conflicts unresolved.
• Argentina’s dollar bonds soared on Monday as President Javier Milei’s strong showing in legislative elections beat forecasts, easing investor concern that his economic overhaul would stall.
• Trump’s tax overhaul solidifies write-offs of certain assets—setting off soaring demand from wealthy Americans for private jets and carwashes.

Where Mamdani Meets Business

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. Photographer: Evelyn Freja for Bloomberg Businessweek

One afternoon in late September, passersby gawked as Zohran Mamdani stepped out of a black SUV in Midtown Manhattan and strode to a small lectern his team had set up on the sidewalk. A gaggle of reporters, photographers and TV cameramen was waiting, their sight lines clear, on the stretch just south of Central Park known as Billionaires’ Row, a line of ultraluxury apartment buildings so tall they cast shadows over the park. Mamdani was standing in front of one with an $87.5 million listing inside: a four-bed, seven-bath excuse to talk about the cost of living in America’s priciest city. “This is a part of New York City that can boast the cost of an apartment exceeding $200 million,” he said, a world apart from the material concerns of most residents, “whether they can afford their rent, their child care, their groceries.”

Location aside, Mamdani’s remarks mostly matched the stump speech he’s spent this past year drilling at parks, church services, mosques, picket lines, rallies and other events throughout the five boroughs: The city needs lower rents, cheaper transit, affordable child care. But this press conference also captured a moment in time, a transition of sorts. It had been about three months since Mamdani’s decisive victory in the Democratic mayoral primary and just a few days since the sitting mayor, Eric Adams, had announced he’d no longer seek reelection. Mamdani was now firmly New York’s mayor apparent.

Since June, Mamdani, a three-term state assemblymember from Queens, has worked to build ties with unions, elected officials, the Jewish community and voters who aren’t sold on him. Fola Akinnibi and Laura Nahmias describe it as a second primary of sorts. Keep reading: Allow Zohran Mamdani to Reintroduce Himself. You can also listen to the story here.

Storm Watch

Trump’s Strong-Arming for Oil

Photo illustration: Daniel Zender; photo: White House

The world was on the brink of a climate milestone: adopting a global carbon tax for the shipping industry. Countries had spent years crafting the plan, hoping to throttle planet-warming pollution from cargo vessels. They had every reason to think the measure would pass when the International Maritime Organization (IMO) met in mid-October.

Enter Donald Trump. After returning to the White House for a second term, the president and his top officials undertook a monthslong campaign to defeat the initiative. The US threatened tariffs, levies and visa restrictions to get its way. A battery of American diplomats and cabinet secretaries met with various nations to twist arms, according to a senior US State Department official, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly. Nations were also warned of other potential consequences if they backed the tax on shipping emissions, including imposing sanctions on individuals and blocking ships from US ports.

Under that Trump-led pressure—or intimidation, as some describe it—some countries started to waver. Ultimately, a bloc including the US, Saudi Arabia and Iran voted to adjourn the meeting for a year, killing any chance of the charge being adopted anytime soon.

At first glance, it might look like the US has exited the climate fight, Jennifer A. Dlouhy and Akshat Rathi write. In reality, it’s still engaged in it, just on the other side: How Trump Pressures the World Into Burning More Oil and Gas

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