I am trying to envision Adam Silver’s reaction — just a few hours before he called “the state of the game excellent” — to hearing that Draymond Green, a high-profile employee and active NBA participant, labeled his league “very boring.”

Green didn’t stop at regular boring. He jumped to “very.”

“It’s just who can run faster, who can hit more 3s,” Green told a standing swarm of reporters, both international and local, from a podium in San Francisco. “It’s no substance. I think it’s very boring.”

There are strong arguments to both sides of this debate — which is a subset of the complicated question of whether, or why, the NBA is less popular — but what’s undeniable is the league has a perception problem.