Companies can try to optimize for profit, but too much focus on the bottom line corrodes just about anything else the company wants to do in the world. And ultimately, the most profitable companies are usually the ones who make a profit on the road of caring deeply about something else. (Eg, Steve Jobs' - who cared about making great products made Apple into a massively profitable company).
> The Purpose Of A System Is What It Does
A complex system will have a complex mix of goals. Some of those goals will be mutually contradictory. For example, some people in NBA obsessively want to maximise profit, while others are there because they love the game. If you take money out, the NBA dies. But the NBA will also die if nobody loves basketball enough to watch the games!
A healthy complex system will navigate its multiplicity of objectives well. For example, as a human I need food. And I want to get work done today. Maybe I'll take a notebook to the cafe. Or maybe I'll relax at the cafe so I'm fresh when I get back home. I don't let either objective override the other.
The criticism here is that the NBA is letting its objectives simplify. The needs of marketing are overriding the team's choice to have creme colored uniforms. Of course this is worrying to some people.