Short answers, pulled from the story.
Adam Silver officially became NBA commissioner on the 1st of February, 2014, when David Stern stepped down. The NBA Board of Governors had unanimously voted to approve Silver's succession after Stern announced his retirement on the 25th of October, 2012.
Four days after a recording of Sterling making racist remarks became public, Silver banned Sterling from the NBA for life and fined him $2.5 million, the maximum penalty allowed under the NBA constitution. Silver also stripped Sterling of authority over the Los Angeles Clippers and urged owners to vote to expel him from ownership.
Silver graduated from Duke University in 1984 with a Bachelor of Arts in political science, then earned a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1988. After law school he clerked for Judge Kimba Wood of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and later worked as an associate at Cravath, Swaine and Moore.
The NBA Bubble was a controlled environment Silver organized to resume the 2019-20 season after the COVID-19 pandemic forced a suspension on the 11th of March, 2020. The league invested $170 million to bring 22 of the 30 NBA teams together to complete the season safely.
In an op-ed published in The New York Times on the 13th of November, 2014, Silver stated he was in favor of legalized and regulated sports betting. He argued it should be "brought out of the underground and into the sunlight where it can be appropriately monitored and regulated."
Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey's October 2019 tweet supporting the Hong Kong protests prompted Chinese smartphone manufacturer Vivo to suspend all cooperation with the NBA. The rift persisted for years before the NBA returned to China in 2025 by signing a five-year deal to play two preseason games at Venetian Arena in Macau.