R.I.P. David Stern
- Thread starter cnc
- Start date
From Allen Iverson:
fuckin stern just came outta left field with the.. do you still beat your wife comment funny as fuck the way jim just stepped over that and kept being jim..
Nah, it’s a trap question that boxes the other person in; whether they answer yes or no they are essentially stuck in an admission of guilt; Stern was basically saying “back the fuck up off me.”
Full explanation at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question. From that page:
The traditional example is the question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" Whether the respondent answers yes or no, they will admit to having a wife and having beaten her at some time in the past. Thus, these facts are presupposed by the question, and in this case an entrapment, because it narrows the respondent to a single answer, and the fallacy of many questions has been committed.
Last edited:
His last interview on WFAN New York
wfan.radio.com
Tony Paige with David Stern
Former NBA Commissioner David Stern joins Tony Paige to wish him fairwell on his final show on WFAN.
RIP??? Fuck that. Not one ounce of sorrow at his passing. He ran the NBA like a plantation telling grown black men like Allen Iverson what they could and could not wear, not because of poor taste but rather because their taste did not reflect that of a middle age conservative rich white guy like himself and his antiquated assessment of what constitutes suitable attire. 
David Stern discusses the dress code, player power and the game today
‘I have no regrets,’ says the former NBA commissioner. ‘I know that sounds crazy.’
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September 10, 2019
NEW YORK — It’s been five years since NBA commissioner David Stern handed the baton to Adam Silver. A lot has happened in the league during that time, from former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling being banned from the league for racist statements to the Golden State Warriors winning three titles to LeBron James and other NBA stars making their voices known on social issues and calling shots as to where they want to play to women joining coaching staffs and front offices.
From the 33rd floor of a Manhattan high-rise office building near Central Park on this August day, the still-busy 76-year-old told The Undefeated that he loves the direction of the NBA and has “no regrets” about his own 30-year tenure.
Inductee David Stern speaks during the 2014 Basketball Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremony on Aug. 8, 2014, at the MassMutual Center in Springfield, Massachusetts.
NATHANIEL S. BUTLER/NBAE VIA GETTY IMAGES
“I have no regrets. I know that sounds crazy,” Stern told The Undefeated. “Other than the regrets of lockouts, I would love to have had clear sailing and unanimous agreement on collective bargaining, but I didn’t, and that’s a failure, I would say. I am so happy because when I took over the NBA, our players’ reputations were, I would say, in the basement of the pyramid of celebrity. And now they’re at the tippy-tip of the celebrity pyramid. They’re the most listened to, the most beloved, in some ways, and the most important athletes in all of sports.”
Stern recently took part in a Q&A with The Undefeated. Here are some of the former NBA commissioner’s thoughts on the NBA’s past, present and future.
What are you up to now?
I’m involved with many sports technology startups, which is a great deal of fun, and about the game, about televising the game, and about player health. That’s a very important issue for me. Imagine if we could extend the career of every player by a year. That would be great for the players, priceless for the league. And I think that technologically speaking, NBA games are going to stream, they’re going to use virtual reality, they can use artificial intelligence, they’re going to use wearable technology. It’s going to be really interesting, and so that’s the way I stay involved.
What do you think of the state of the NBA now?
It couldn’t be in better shape. The summer league is electrifying. The free-agent movement gives the NBA ownership of a huge chunk of calendar real estate. I like the international endeavors, with the academies and the announcement of the Basketball Africa League. Adam Silver is doing a great job of growing the sport on a global basis.
What do you remember about implementing the dress code in 2005?
The [players’] union said it was a good thing to do. I did it, and then they attacked me on it. And then our players [did too]. I’m not going to embarrass you by asking what the dress code is because you wouldn’t remember that the dress code was: You could wear jeans, just wear a pair of shoes and a shirt with a collar. But our players went over the top. They started dressing, and frankly, they’ve got these great bodies and they just began to be on Gentlemen’s Quarterly and Vogue and all kinds of fancy places. And then they took it to the next level. They started designing their own fashion lines. I think it’s great. I think it’s fun.
Philadelphia 76ers guard Allen Iverson (center) sits out the game against the Washington Wizards because of an injury in this Jan. 26, 2005, file photo in Washington. The NBA announced in a memo to teams on Oct. 17, 2005, that a minimum dress code would go into effect at the start of the regular season on Nov. 1. Players were expected to wear business casual attire whenever participating in team or league activities, including arriving at games, leaving games, and making promotional or other appearances.
AP PHOTO/CHARLES DHARAPAK, FILE
When you watch players walk in now for games with their fashion statements, do you think, “You guys gave me the worst time about this”?
‘You guys killed me on this.’ I was being made fun of on every nighttime talk show in America. They’d draped me in gold chains and all kinds of stuff. Tattoos. But it’s great. It was an opportunity for our players to shine, and I’m glad.
Did you find it offensive that some people thought your implementation of the dress code was racist?
Well, no, because race is always an issue, and that’s just the way it is. And the NBA has always been on the edge of discussions of race. At every collective bargaining negotiation, I was accused of having a plantation mentality. It depends who wanted to use it, but it didn’t surprise me, and it doesn’t offend me anymore. It just is what it is. People use what’s in their arsenal.
But the thing I take pride in is the number of millionaires that the NBA has made and developed. Not just the owners getting wealthier because of the asset appreciation, but the players getting contracts that are off the charts without regard to their race. That’s pretty exciting to me.
What do you think about the voice now? The players seem like they speak out more than perhaps 10, 15, 20 years ago.
Yeah, we always encouraged them. And we gave them instructions on how to use social media, and they just ran with it. LeBron [James] has, I think, 50 million-plus Instagram followers, or Twitter followers. It’s great. And Adam [Silver] is a leading voice in player entitlement and empowerment. And they should talk. They should speak out because they have the power to influence on social issues. I’m very pleased to see those developments.
What do you think about how LeBron James uses his platform?
I take enormous pride in watching LeBron and his school activities, his charitable activities, and his leadership activities on social issues. It’s a great thing.
It’s the five-year anniversary of Sterling’s incident and his eventual ban from the NBA by Silver. How were you involved in helping Adam make that decision?
I wasn’t involved at all. He made the decision all on his own. And he made the only decision that I think would have been the right one.
Related Story
The Sterling AffairsRead now
How do you look back on former Denver Nuggets guard Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf’s situation on March 12, 1996, when he was suspended a game for refusing to participate in the national anthem?
We had a rule at that time that you had to stand for the national anthem. It was a rule that I inherited. And he announced one day that he was not going to stand, and we said, ‘Please stand. You can stay in the locker room if you’d like, you can stay in the [hallway]. You don’t have to come on the court, but if you come on the court, on the bench with your team, you’re going to have to stand.’
And he decided that he wanted to make a statement, and I was commissioner, and I suspended him for one game, and then he stood. And when he stood he looked in the wrong direction. He muttered. He did other things. That’s OK. Our rule just says stand, and that’s all we were enforcing.
What did it mean to you to see the Toronto Raptors win the championship?
Very exciting. Larry Tanenbaum, their owner, who is the chairman of the board, is a great owner. He’s a great friend. He did a great job. And Toronto is a big city, and maybe one of the best cities in the league, and everyone says, well, it’s not a good city, it’s not an American city. It’s a great North American city, and I was very pleased to see it finally get a championship.
When you see Paul George and Kawhi Leonard make their decision and get together, and you see LeBron and Anthony Davis, is that good for the league? What do you think about the power that some star players have?
I don’t think that I would categorize it as LeBron and Anthony Davis. I think that Anthony Davis decided that he had been assigned to New Orleans for a given number of years and in that period of time there was not a team put around him that was capable of regularly getting into the playoffs. And he said, ‘I’m out of here.’ And he notified them. I think that it could have been done in a quieter way. I don’t agree with his agent’s public announcement, but he notified the team in one way or another and the team did very well in trading him to the Lakers. That’s all.
And that’s been something that’s happened for years. I was a fan when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wanted out of Milwaukee and wanted to go to the Lakers. And there was some equally robust trade that was made to accommodate him. It’s something that’s happened in our sport for years and years.
What do you think about the diversity in the NBA now?
When you say diversity, we’ve always had an extraordinary number of African American players, but I think that the sense of openness that exists in the league enables the league to now have female coaches because of the WNBA, female referees that are now moving over into the men’s game. And the NBA is really allowed to demonstrate its complete openness under commissioner Silver, which is terrific.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver (left) and his predecessor David Stern (right) attend the Kareem: Minority of One New York City premiere at Time Warner Center on Oct. 26, 2015.
BRAD BARKET/GETTY IMAGES
When you look at “The Malice in the Palace” and some of the things at that time, behind the scenes you had to do some fighting, probably deal with some racism, some racist thoughts from fans, sponsors and possibly owners. What did you deal with back then?
When I suspended Latrell Sprewell, when he attempted to strangle P.J. Carlesimo, there was stuff on talk shows about ‘this is just another case of the man telling the boy what he can do.’ And I thought that was a little bit over the line, but I understood it. And during collective bargaining, people would accuse me, as part of the rhetoric, as being or having a plantation mentality. I never was bothered by that because I knew what I was doing was the right thing for the owners and the players.
‘The Malice in the Palace,’ it just needed a strong reaction. We couldn’t allow the barrier between players and fans to be breached because that would have deprived us of having the most available game in the world, where you can literally sit at courtside and practically touch the players as they ran by. So I gave out very strong punishment, but at the same time I was visiting with [former Indiana Pacers forward] Ron Artest. I was helping him find the right medical attention for his family members. You do what you have to do and it’s always, behind the scenes, a little bit different than it appears in front of the cameras. But no regrets there. We did what we had to do to make sure the sport was going to grow.
What do you think about NBA players leaving money on the table to join teams with an environment that is more attractive to win or even be more comfortable with teammates they are friends with?
Players have grown to the extent that it is more important to win than make the last dollar. They are making very comfortable livings by every stretch of the imagination. And they want that ring. It’s the most important thing in our game now. And that is how it should be.
Being a New Yorker, what were your thoughts on Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving going to the Brooklyn Nets?
It’s going to make it exciting. But there is a big if, and that is Kevin Durant’s physical condition. Dominique Wilkins came back from an Achilles injury. I have every reason and hope to think that Kevin will come back [strong]. But it will be a year. … The Nets gave up a very good player in D’Angelo Russell [to Golden State for Durant]. It’s interesting.
Are you surprised that the Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers now have a real rivalry?
No. It was preordained and was always going to be. They’re going to hate each other. It’s going to be a great rivalry. And the Nets and Knicks are going to have a great rivalry too. A lot of people are counting the Knicks out, but they’re going to be better than people expect.
How often do you go to NBA games now?
I watch everything on TV. I don’t go to games often. I don’t remember the last time I went to a game. Every now and then I go. In February when it’s nice and cold out there, I have a 75-inch screen with Dolby surround sound, I opt to stay home. But I watch a lot of games.
What do you think about that Basketball Africa league? Were you surprised the NBA is doing this?
No, because we sent Amadou Gallo Fall over there to develop basketball on the African continent, and I think at every All-Star Game we always entertained federations from Africa: from Senegal, South Africa, Angola. There are serious African basketball countries and this is a natural outgrowth, to take some number of cities in Africa and make a league out of those cities. And outside the U.S., the format is a little different. It’s a little bit like soccer: You can play in two leagues at the same time. You can play in your country league and you can play in a transcontinental league. And I think that’s what’s going to happen in Africa as well.
What’s your take on notable players dropping out of the World Cup team?
FIBA made a mistake moving the World Cup into odd years. And as a result, you are asking players to play in the FIBA world championship, play in the season and then play in the Olympics. And I think that pushed a lot of players to feel that they should make a choice between back-to-back years of international competition. And that’s it. I actually love the idea that there are a bunch of young players that are playing in the World Cup. I hope they win. But I think they will, and I think it’s exciting to see the young players step out and be recognized.
‘I have no regrets,’ says the former NBA commissioner. ‘I know that sounds crazy.’
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By Martenzie Johnson
September 10, 2019
NEW YORK — It’s been five years since NBA commissioner David Stern handed the baton to Adam Silver. A lot has happened in the league during that time, from former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling being banned from the league for racist statements to the Golden State Warriors winning three titles to LeBron James and other NBA stars making their voices known on social issues and calling shots as to where they want to play to women joining coaching staffs and front offices.
From the 33rd floor of a Manhattan high-rise office building near Central Park on this August day, the still-busy 76-year-old told The Undefeated that he loves the direction of the NBA and has “no regrets” about his own 30-year tenure.
Inductee David Stern speaks during the 2014 Basketball Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremony on Aug. 8, 2014, at the MassMutual Center in Springfield, Massachusetts.
NATHANIEL S. BUTLER/NBAE VIA GETTY IMAGES
“I have no regrets. I know that sounds crazy,” Stern told The Undefeated. “Other than the regrets of lockouts, I would love to have had clear sailing and unanimous agreement on collective bargaining, but I didn’t, and that’s a failure, I would say. I am so happy because when I took over the NBA, our players’ reputations were, I would say, in the basement of the pyramid of celebrity. And now they’re at the tippy-tip of the celebrity pyramid. They’re the most listened to, the most beloved, in some ways, and the most important athletes in all of sports.”
Stern recently took part in a Q&A with The Undefeated. Here are some of the former NBA commissioner’s thoughts on the NBA’s past, present and future.
What are you up to now?
I’m involved with many sports technology startups, which is a great deal of fun, and about the game, about televising the game, and about player health. That’s a very important issue for me. Imagine if we could extend the career of every player by a year. That would be great for the players, priceless for the league. And I think that technologically speaking, NBA games are going to stream, they’re going to use virtual reality, they can use artificial intelligence, they’re going to use wearable technology. It’s going to be really interesting, and so that’s the way I stay involved.
What do you think of the state of the NBA now?
It couldn’t be in better shape. The summer league is electrifying. The free-agent movement gives the NBA ownership of a huge chunk of calendar real estate. I like the international endeavors, with the academies and the announcement of the Basketball Africa League. Adam Silver is doing a great job of growing the sport on a global basis.
What do you remember about implementing the dress code in 2005?
The [players’] union said it was a good thing to do. I did it, and then they attacked me on it. And then our players [did too]. I’m not going to embarrass you by asking what the dress code is because you wouldn’t remember that the dress code was: You could wear jeans, just wear a pair of shoes and a shirt with a collar. But our players went over the top. They started dressing, and frankly, they’ve got these great bodies and they just began to be on Gentlemen’s Quarterly and Vogue and all kinds of fancy places. And then they took it to the next level. They started designing their own fashion lines. I think it’s great. I think it’s fun.
Philadelphia 76ers guard Allen Iverson (center) sits out the game against the Washington Wizards because of an injury in this Jan. 26, 2005, file photo in Washington. The NBA announced in a memo to teams on Oct. 17, 2005, that a minimum dress code would go into effect at the start of the regular season on Nov. 1. Players were expected to wear business casual attire whenever participating in team or league activities, including arriving at games, leaving games, and making promotional or other appearances.
AP PHOTO/CHARLES DHARAPAK, FILE
When you watch players walk in now for games with their fashion statements, do you think, “You guys gave me the worst time about this”?
‘You guys killed me on this.’ I was being made fun of on every nighttime talk show in America. They’d draped me in gold chains and all kinds of stuff. Tattoos. But it’s great. It was an opportunity for our players to shine, and I’m glad.
Did you find it offensive that some people thought your implementation of the dress code was racist?
Well, no, because race is always an issue, and that’s just the way it is. And the NBA has always been on the edge of discussions of race. At every collective bargaining negotiation, I was accused of having a plantation mentality. It depends who wanted to use it, but it didn’t surprise me, and it doesn’t offend me anymore. It just is what it is. People use what’s in their arsenal.
But the thing I take pride in is the number of millionaires that the NBA has made and developed. Not just the owners getting wealthier because of the asset appreciation, but the players getting contracts that are off the charts without regard to their race. That’s pretty exciting to me.
What do you think about the voice now? The players seem like they speak out more than perhaps 10, 15, 20 years ago.
Yeah, we always encouraged them. And we gave them instructions on how to use social media, and they just ran with it. LeBron [James] has, I think, 50 million-plus Instagram followers, or Twitter followers. It’s great. And Adam [Silver] is a leading voice in player entitlement and empowerment. And they should talk. They should speak out because they have the power to influence on social issues. I’m very pleased to see those developments.
What do you think about how LeBron James uses his platform?
I take enormous pride in watching LeBron and his school activities, his charitable activities, and his leadership activities on social issues. It’s a great thing.
It’s the five-year anniversary of Sterling’s incident and his eventual ban from the NBA by Silver. How were you involved in helping Adam make that decision?
I wasn’t involved at all. He made the decision all on his own. And he made the only decision that I think would have been the right one.
Related Story
The Sterling AffairsRead now
How do you look back on former Denver Nuggets guard Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf’s situation on March 12, 1996, when he was suspended a game for refusing to participate in the national anthem?
We had a rule at that time that you had to stand for the national anthem. It was a rule that I inherited. And he announced one day that he was not going to stand, and we said, ‘Please stand. You can stay in the locker room if you’d like, you can stay in the [hallway]. You don’t have to come on the court, but if you come on the court, on the bench with your team, you’re going to have to stand.’
And he decided that he wanted to make a statement, and I was commissioner, and I suspended him for one game, and then he stood. And when he stood he looked in the wrong direction. He muttered. He did other things. That’s OK. Our rule just says stand, and that’s all we were enforcing.
What did it mean to you to see the Toronto Raptors win the championship?
Very exciting. Larry Tanenbaum, their owner, who is the chairman of the board, is a great owner. He’s a great friend. He did a great job. And Toronto is a big city, and maybe one of the best cities in the league, and everyone says, well, it’s not a good city, it’s not an American city. It’s a great North American city, and I was very pleased to see it finally get a championship.
When you see Paul George and Kawhi Leonard make their decision and get together, and you see LeBron and Anthony Davis, is that good for the league? What do you think about the power that some star players have?
I don’t think that I would categorize it as LeBron and Anthony Davis. I think that Anthony Davis decided that he had been assigned to New Orleans for a given number of years and in that period of time there was not a team put around him that was capable of regularly getting into the playoffs. And he said, ‘I’m out of here.’ And he notified them. I think that it could have been done in a quieter way. I don’t agree with his agent’s public announcement, but he notified the team in one way or another and the team did very well in trading him to the Lakers. That’s all.
And that’s been something that’s happened for years. I was a fan when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wanted out of Milwaukee and wanted to go to the Lakers. And there was some equally robust trade that was made to accommodate him. It’s something that’s happened in our sport for years and years.
What do you think about the diversity in the NBA now?
When you say diversity, we’ve always had an extraordinary number of African American players, but I think that the sense of openness that exists in the league enables the league to now have female coaches because of the WNBA, female referees that are now moving over into the men’s game. And the NBA is really allowed to demonstrate its complete openness under commissioner Silver, which is terrific.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver (left) and his predecessor David Stern (right) attend the Kareem: Minority of One New York City premiere at Time Warner Center on Oct. 26, 2015.
BRAD BARKET/GETTY IMAGES
When you look at “The Malice in the Palace” and some of the things at that time, behind the scenes you had to do some fighting, probably deal with some racism, some racist thoughts from fans, sponsors and possibly owners. What did you deal with back then?
When I suspended Latrell Sprewell, when he attempted to strangle P.J. Carlesimo, there was stuff on talk shows about ‘this is just another case of the man telling the boy what he can do.’ And I thought that was a little bit over the line, but I understood it. And during collective bargaining, people would accuse me, as part of the rhetoric, as being or having a plantation mentality. I never was bothered by that because I knew what I was doing was the right thing for the owners and the players.
‘The Malice in the Palace,’ it just needed a strong reaction. We couldn’t allow the barrier between players and fans to be breached because that would have deprived us of having the most available game in the world, where you can literally sit at courtside and practically touch the players as they ran by. So I gave out very strong punishment, but at the same time I was visiting with [former Indiana Pacers forward] Ron Artest. I was helping him find the right medical attention for his family members. You do what you have to do and it’s always, behind the scenes, a little bit different than it appears in front of the cameras. But no regrets there. We did what we had to do to make sure the sport was going to grow.
What do you think about NBA players leaving money on the table to join teams with an environment that is more attractive to win or even be more comfortable with teammates they are friends with?
Players have grown to the extent that it is more important to win than make the last dollar. They are making very comfortable livings by every stretch of the imagination. And they want that ring. It’s the most important thing in our game now. And that is how it should be.
Being a New Yorker, what were your thoughts on Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving going to the Brooklyn Nets?
It’s going to make it exciting. But there is a big if, and that is Kevin Durant’s physical condition. Dominique Wilkins came back from an Achilles injury. I have every reason and hope to think that Kevin will come back [strong]. But it will be a year. … The Nets gave up a very good player in D’Angelo Russell [to Golden State for Durant]. It’s interesting.
Are you surprised that the Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers now have a real rivalry?
No. It was preordained and was always going to be. They’re going to hate each other. It’s going to be a great rivalry. And the Nets and Knicks are going to have a great rivalry too. A lot of people are counting the Knicks out, but they’re going to be better than people expect.
How often do you go to NBA games now?
I watch everything on TV. I don’t go to games often. I don’t remember the last time I went to a game. Every now and then I go. In February when it’s nice and cold out there, I have a 75-inch screen with Dolby surround sound, I opt to stay home. But I watch a lot of games.
What do you think about that Basketball Africa league? Were you surprised the NBA is doing this?
No, because we sent Amadou Gallo Fall over there to develop basketball on the African continent, and I think at every All-Star Game we always entertained federations from Africa: from Senegal, South Africa, Angola. There are serious African basketball countries and this is a natural outgrowth, to take some number of cities in Africa and make a league out of those cities. And outside the U.S., the format is a little different. It’s a little bit like soccer: You can play in two leagues at the same time. You can play in your country league and you can play in a transcontinental league. And I think that’s what’s going to happen in Africa as well.
What’s your take on notable players dropping out of the World Cup team?
FIBA made a mistake moving the World Cup into odd years. And as a result, you are asking players to play in the FIBA world championship, play in the season and then play in the Olympics. And I think that pushed a lot of players to feel that they should make a choice between back-to-back years of international competition. And that’s it. I actually love the idea that there are a bunch of young players that are playing in the World Cup. I hope they win. But I think they will, and I think it’s exciting to see the young players step out and be recognized.
Remembering David Stern’s power moves
The former NBA commissioner, who died at 77, leaves behind a legacy of growing the game of basketball
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January 1, 2020
NEW YORK — It was a beautiful sunny day last August, but David Stern was inside his Manhattan office overlooking Central Park working just as hard as he did when he was commissioner of the NBA. He had retired in 2014, but stayed involved with the game. We talked about sports technology start-ups, virtual reality, player health, artificial intelligence, among many other topics.
Stern always looked toward tomorrow. As commissioner, he didn’t fear walking through an unpopular door he felt was the best for the NBA to open. He was a true basketball Hall of Famer, who was largely responsible for turning the NBA into a profitable company, netting $5.5 billion annually when he retired with a $1 billion annual television deal (which grew astronomically when it expired in 2016), and turning many basketball players into millionaires. He was not only one of basketball’s greatest ambassadors during his 30-year career as the commissioner, but sports worldwide.
While we reflected on his NBA tenure in August, Stern said, “I have no regrets. I know that sounds crazy.”
Stern passed away on Wednesday after suffering a brain hemorrhage on Dec. 12 while at a restaurant in New York City. In remembrance of Stern, The Undefeated highlights some of the power moves that helped define his legacy using parts of our conversation from August.
American basketball players of The Dream Team receive their gold medal during the 1992 Olympics.
PHOTO BY DIMITRI IUNDT/CORBIS/VCG VIA GETTY IMAGES
INTRODUCING THE DREAM TEAM
Stern encouraged NBA stars, such as Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird to play on what would be called “The Dream Team” during the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. It was USA Basketball’s first team made up of professional players.
“The Dream Team ignited interest in basketball around the world,” Stern said in August. “I would say that prior to the ’92 Barcelona Olympics we had about 80 countries that were showing NBA basketball. Today, there are 215 countries showing NBA basketball. And you can see the chart and the graph that follows the Dream Team. You could say you saw Charles Barkley elbow the Angolan player, and then you can watch Charles play for Phoenix, or Houston, or wherever he was playing.
“And we began marketing the NBA to countries that were getting it from the Olympics. And actually, China had the Olympics in 2008, and when Yao Ming led the Chinese team against the US, I think it still is the most watched basketball game in the history of the world.”
The Dream Team made the world fall in love with the game. Several former international NBA stars, including Germany’s Dirk Nowitzki, France’s Tony Parker and Argentina’s Manu Ginobili were influenced by watching The Dream Team on television as children.
Entering this season, the NBA featured 108 international players.
NBA Commissioner David Stern presents Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls the championship trophy after the Bulls defeated the Phoenix Suns in Game 6 of the 1993 NBA Finals on June 20, 1993 at America West Arena in Phoenix, Arizona.
ANDREW D. BERNSTEIN/NBAE VIA GETTY IMAGES
GROWING THE GAME GLOBALLY
In 1989, Stern stood outside the Chinese Central Television offices in Beijing for four hours until he got a meeting. He next convinced CCTV to air NBA games initially for free. Today, 18 million fans are watching NBA games in China. Last July, Tencent and the NBA announced a five-year extension through the 2024-25 season paying $1.5 billion.
The rest of the world eventually followed China on NBA viewership, as the 2019 NBA Finals were shown live in 215 countries in 50 languages. The NBA also now has offices internationally in Hong Kong, Manila, Toronto, Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei, London, Madrid, Mumbai, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro and Johannesburg thanks to Stern’s influence.
“We’ve worked with cities to help them understand what they needed in buildings,” Stern said. “We’ve opened up academies there, and under Commissioner Silver there are four or five academies all over the world. In India, in China, Latin America, etc. And it’s very exciting. And now they’re about to open a league in Africa, the Basketball Africa League, which I think is a terrific opportunity.”
The NBA will debut its Basketball Africa League in March.
STERN SUSPENSIONS FOR PALACE BRAWL
Stern made one of the toughest decisions in sports when he levied major penalties after “The Malice in the Palace” in Detroit on Nov. 19, 2004. The fight was one of the worst in the history of sports at the end of a game between the Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons that bled into the stands. Stern suspended the Pacers’ Ron Artest for 86 games, Stephen Jackson for 30 and Jermaine O’Neal for 15, while banning the Pistons’ Ben Wallace for six games and Anthony Johnson for five.
In an NBA statement the next day, the league described the brawl as “shocking, repulsive and inexcusable – a humiliation for everyone associated with the NBA.”
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“The Malice in the Palace,’ it just needed a strong reaction,” recalled Stern in August. “We couldn’t allow the barrier between players and fans to be breached, because that would have deprived us of having the most available game in the world, where you can literally sit at courtside and practically touch the players as they ran by. So, I gave out very strong punishment …
“But at the same time I was visiting with (former Pacers forward) Ron Artest. I was helping him find the right medical attention for his family members. You do what you have to do and it’s always, behind the scenes, a little bit different than it appears in front of the cameras. But no regrets there. We did what we had to do to make sure the sport was going to grow.”
IMPLEMENTING A DRESS CODE
On Oct. 17, 2005, Stern implemented the first league-wide dress code in major professional sports. The dress code required players to wear a sports coat on the bench during games, and business or conservative outfits when arriving to games or conducting NBA business. He also banned clothing that often was associated with hip-hop culture, like do-rags, gaudy jewelry, hats, jerseys, t-shirts and boots. NBA players that didn’t adhere to the rules could be fined and suspended for repeat offenses.
While notable NBA players, including Allen Iverson, Marcus Camby and Chauncey Billups, criticized the dress code — some people thought it was racist — the players adhered to it.
“The (players’) union said it was a good thing to do,” Stern recalled. “I did it, and then they attacked me on it. And then our players (did too). I’m not going to embarrass you by asking what the dress code is because you wouldn’t remember what the dress code was. You could wear jeans. Just wear a pair of shoes and a shirt with a collar, but our players went over the top. … And then they took it to the next level. They started designing their own fashion lines.
“I was being made fun of on every nighttime talk show in America. They’d draped me in gold chains and all kinds of stuff. Tattoos. But it’s great. It was an opportunity for our players to shine, and I’m glad.”
Today, NBA players are now known for their fashion sense and making fashion statements when they arrive to the arena or grace the cover of magazines.
NBA Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver and Commissioner David Stern addresses the media prior to the Miami Heat against the San Antonio Spurs during Game 1 of the 2013 NBA Finals on June 6, 2013 at American Airlines Arena in Miami, Florida.
GARRETT W. ELLWOOD/NBAE VIA GETTY IMAGES
GROOMING ADAM SILVER
There is currently no commissioner in North American professional sports more popular than Adam Silver, who Stern hand-picked and groomed to be his replacement.
In 2014, two months after Stern retired, Silver quickly made his presence known by banning then-Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling from the NBA for life after racist statements Sterling had made came to light. During Silver’s five years as commissioner he has built on Stern’s foundation by securing a strong television deal and growing the brand globally. Silver also has developed a strong relationship with the players.
In August, Stern spoke on the state of the NBA under Silver.
“The summer league is electrifying. The free agent movement gives the NBA ownership of a huge chunk of calendar real estate. I like the international endeavors, with the academies and the announcement of the Basketball Africa league. Adam Silver is doing a great job of growing the sport on a global basis.
“(The NBA) couldn’t be in better shape.”
The former NBA commissioner, who died at 77, leaves behind a legacy of growing the game of basketball
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By Randall C. Williams
January 1, 2020
NEW YORK — It was a beautiful sunny day last August, but David Stern was inside his Manhattan office overlooking Central Park working just as hard as he did when he was commissioner of the NBA. He had retired in 2014, but stayed involved with the game. We talked about sports technology start-ups, virtual reality, player health, artificial intelligence, among many other topics.
Stern always looked toward tomorrow. As commissioner, he didn’t fear walking through an unpopular door he felt was the best for the NBA to open. He was a true basketball Hall of Famer, who was largely responsible for turning the NBA into a profitable company, netting $5.5 billion annually when he retired with a $1 billion annual television deal (which grew astronomically when it expired in 2016), and turning many basketball players into millionaires. He was not only one of basketball’s greatest ambassadors during his 30-year career as the commissioner, but sports worldwide.
While we reflected on his NBA tenure in August, Stern said, “I have no regrets. I know that sounds crazy.”
Stern passed away on Wednesday after suffering a brain hemorrhage on Dec. 12 while at a restaurant in New York City. In remembrance of Stern, The Undefeated highlights some of the power moves that helped define his legacy using parts of our conversation from August.
American basketball players of The Dream Team receive their gold medal during the 1992 Olympics.
PHOTO BY DIMITRI IUNDT/CORBIS/VCG VIA GETTY IMAGES
INTRODUCING THE DREAM TEAM
Stern encouraged NBA stars, such as Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird to play on what would be called “The Dream Team” during the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. It was USA Basketball’s first team made up of professional players.
“The Dream Team ignited interest in basketball around the world,” Stern said in August. “I would say that prior to the ’92 Barcelona Olympics we had about 80 countries that were showing NBA basketball. Today, there are 215 countries showing NBA basketball. And you can see the chart and the graph that follows the Dream Team. You could say you saw Charles Barkley elbow the Angolan player, and then you can watch Charles play for Phoenix, or Houston, or wherever he was playing.
“And we began marketing the NBA to countries that were getting it from the Olympics. And actually, China had the Olympics in 2008, and when Yao Ming led the Chinese team against the US, I think it still is the most watched basketball game in the history of the world.”
The Dream Team made the world fall in love with the game. Several former international NBA stars, including Germany’s Dirk Nowitzki, France’s Tony Parker and Argentina’s Manu Ginobili were influenced by watching The Dream Team on television as children.
Entering this season, the NBA featured 108 international players.
NBA Commissioner David Stern presents Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls the championship trophy after the Bulls defeated the Phoenix Suns in Game 6 of the 1993 NBA Finals on June 20, 1993 at America West Arena in Phoenix, Arizona.
ANDREW D. BERNSTEIN/NBAE VIA GETTY IMAGES
GROWING THE GAME GLOBALLY
In 1989, Stern stood outside the Chinese Central Television offices in Beijing for four hours until he got a meeting. He next convinced CCTV to air NBA games initially for free. Today, 18 million fans are watching NBA games in China. Last July, Tencent and the NBA announced a five-year extension through the 2024-25 season paying $1.5 billion.
The rest of the world eventually followed China on NBA viewership, as the 2019 NBA Finals were shown live in 215 countries in 50 languages. The NBA also now has offices internationally in Hong Kong, Manila, Toronto, Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei, London, Madrid, Mumbai, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro and Johannesburg thanks to Stern’s influence.
“We’ve worked with cities to help them understand what they needed in buildings,” Stern said. “We’ve opened up academies there, and under Commissioner Silver there are four or five academies all over the world. In India, in China, Latin America, etc. And it’s very exciting. And now they’re about to open a league in Africa, the Basketball Africa League, which I think is a terrific opportunity.”
The NBA will debut its Basketball Africa League in March.
STERN SUSPENSIONS FOR PALACE BRAWL
Stern made one of the toughest decisions in sports when he levied major penalties after “The Malice in the Palace” in Detroit on Nov. 19, 2004. The fight was one of the worst in the history of sports at the end of a game between the Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons that bled into the stands. Stern suspended the Pacers’ Ron Artest for 86 games, Stephen Jackson for 30 and Jermaine O’Neal for 15, while banning the Pistons’ Ben Wallace for six games and Anthony Johnson for five.
In an NBA statement the next day, the league described the brawl as “shocking, repulsive and inexcusable – a humiliation for everyone associated with the NBA.”
Stay undefeated with our culture newsletter
SUBSCRIBE
“The Malice in the Palace,’ it just needed a strong reaction,” recalled Stern in August. “We couldn’t allow the barrier between players and fans to be breached, because that would have deprived us of having the most available game in the world, where you can literally sit at courtside and practically touch the players as they ran by. So, I gave out very strong punishment …
“But at the same time I was visiting with (former Pacers forward) Ron Artest. I was helping him find the right medical attention for his family members. You do what you have to do and it’s always, behind the scenes, a little bit different than it appears in front of the cameras. But no regrets there. We did what we had to do to make sure the sport was going to grow.”
IMPLEMENTING A DRESS CODE
On Oct. 17, 2005, Stern implemented the first league-wide dress code in major professional sports. The dress code required players to wear a sports coat on the bench during games, and business or conservative outfits when arriving to games or conducting NBA business. He also banned clothing that often was associated with hip-hop culture, like do-rags, gaudy jewelry, hats, jerseys, t-shirts and boots. NBA players that didn’t adhere to the rules could be fined and suspended for repeat offenses.
While notable NBA players, including Allen Iverson, Marcus Camby and Chauncey Billups, criticized the dress code — some people thought it was racist — the players adhered to it.
“The (players’) union said it was a good thing to do,” Stern recalled. “I did it, and then they attacked me on it. And then our players (did too). I’m not going to embarrass you by asking what the dress code is because you wouldn’t remember what the dress code was. You could wear jeans. Just wear a pair of shoes and a shirt with a collar, but our players went over the top. … And then they took it to the next level. They started designing their own fashion lines.
“I was being made fun of on every nighttime talk show in America. They’d draped me in gold chains and all kinds of stuff. Tattoos. But it’s great. It was an opportunity for our players to shine, and I’m glad.”
Today, NBA players are now known for their fashion sense and making fashion statements when they arrive to the arena or grace the cover of magazines.
NBA Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver and Commissioner David Stern addresses the media prior to the Miami Heat against the San Antonio Spurs during Game 1 of the 2013 NBA Finals on June 6, 2013 at American Airlines Arena in Miami, Florida.
GARRETT W. ELLWOOD/NBAE VIA GETTY IMAGES
GROOMING ADAM SILVER
There is currently no commissioner in North American professional sports more popular than Adam Silver, who Stern hand-picked and groomed to be his replacement.
In 2014, two months after Stern retired, Silver quickly made his presence known by banning then-Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling from the NBA for life after racist statements Sterling had made came to light. During Silver’s five years as commissioner he has built on Stern’s foundation by securing a strong television deal and growing the brand globally. Silver also has developed a strong relationship with the players.
In August, Stern spoke on the state of the NBA under Silver.
“The summer league is electrifying. The free agent movement gives the NBA ownership of a huge chunk of calendar real estate. I like the international endeavors, with the academies and the announcement of the Basketball Africa league. Adam Silver is doing a great job of growing the sport on a global basis.
“(The NBA) couldn’t be in better shape.”
The Profound Legacy of David Stern, the NBA’s Most Consequential Off-Court Force
Stern, one of the most influential commissioners in the history of U.S. sports, died on Wednesday. While his tenure was often complicated, the league reached astronomical heights during his 30 years.
By Dan Devine Jan 1, 2020, 4:57pm EST
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The game is the thing. It always has been, ever since nail first met peach basket over the track at the YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts, 128 years ago last month. It’s why people lined up to watch the Black Fives, Rens, SPHAs, and Globetrotters barnstorm at the start of the last century. It’s why the greats—the ones who turn a ball and a hoop into fine art and high drama—have always become iconic figures, easily distinguishable by single names: Mikan, Russell, Wilt, Kareem, Magic, Larry, Michael, Shaq, LeBron. The game is the thing, and the players make the game; without them, there’s nothing to watch, no product to sell.
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David Stern Made the NBA Larger Than Life, but Kept It Small Enough to Touch
You can’t fully separate the selling from the game, though. The selling turned a modest regional attraction into a global behemoth that became one of the largest entertainment entities on the planet. The selling turned those single-name stars into crossover celebrities and eventually into capital-letter Brands, some of whom rank among the most recognizable public figures in the world, with spheres of influence that stretch far beyond the boundaries of the court. The selling fueled groundbreaking growth in just about any metric you can identify; the selling is part of the story too.
You can’t tell that story without David Stern, who reigned as the NBA’s commissioner from 1984 through 2014, a three-decade span in which the league reached new stratospheres of success, relevance, and international sporting primacy. Stern died on Wednesday, following a three-week hospitalization after suffering a sudden brain hemorrhage at a New York restaurant on December 12. He was 77 years old.
Under Stern’s leadership, the NBA expanded from 23 teams to 30, introducing new franchises that have stitched themselves into the fabric of a league that has evolved into a multibillion-dollar international enterprise and pop-cultural touchstone. With Stern, the NBA established and committed to the sustained viability of a legitimate women’s professional basketball league, began building a bona fide official minor league system, and helped find local ownership willing to keep beleaguered franchises in New Orleans and Sacramento.
Stern also let six franchises relocate, leaving several fan bases out in the cold. Businessmen were allowed to steal the SuperSonics from Seattle and abandon Vancouver, while metastasized ciphers like George Shinn and Donald Sterling got away with far too much for far too long. Under Stern’s leadership, the league’s owners locked players out four times in 16 years, with two of those forced stoppages wiping out months of games, all in favor of goosing owners’ profit margins and establishing beyond doubt who controlled the NBA.
It’s a complicated legacy, one that marks Stern—a renowned perfectionist with an iron-fisted style—as one of the most influential commissioners in the history of U.S. sports. It also presents a compelling case for him as arguably the most consequential off-court figure—for better, and in some cases for worse—the NBA has ever seen.
After graduating from Rutgers University and then Columbia Law School in 1966, Stern joined Proskauer, Rose, Goetz & Mendelsohn, the prestigious law firm that represented the NBA. He began acting as outside counsel for the league and represented it in Robertson v. National Basketball Association, a federal antitrust lawsuit filed in 1970 by superstar and National Basketball Players Association president Oscar Robertson aiming to end the “option clause” that kept players tied to a single team in perpetuity. Six years after Robertson filed suit, Stern was involved in crafting an out-of-court settlement that eliminated the option clause, established free agency for NBA players, and paved the way for a merger that would add four ABA franchises—the Nets, Spurs, Nuggets, and Pacers—to the NBA.
Stern then joined the league as its general counsel in 1978 and quickly rose through the ranks. Two years later, then-commissioner Larry O’Brien made Stern his second-in-command, naming him the NBA’s first executive vice president for business and legal affairs, which effectively put Stern in charge of marketing, television, and public relations for the league.
The NBA’s owners tapped Stern to take over for O’Brien when he stepped aside in 1984, making the son of a Manhattan deli owner just the fourth commissioner in league history. When his time came, just before the start of the 2012-13 season, Stern did the same for Adam Silver, the son of one of his former law firm colleagues, someone who’d spent more than two decades rising through the NBA’s ranks to sit at Stern’s right hand as deputy commissioner. (All three previous commissioners have a major NBA award named after them: Maurice Podoloff got the MVP trophy, J. Walter Kennedy got the Citizenship Award, and O’Brien got the NBA championship trophy. You wonder how the league will commemorate Stern’s contributions. One guess: If and when Silver manages to reorganize the NBA calendar to include an in-season tournament, maybe the winner will wind up hoisting the Stern Cup.)
Stern took over a league on unsteady footing, as detailed by Sports Illustrated’s E.M. Smith in a 1991 feature: “In the 1980-81 season, 16 of the NBA’s 23 teams lost money. Total attendance was down almost a million from the year before, and teams were playing to an average of only 10,021 fans per game, about 58 percent of the capacity of their arenas.” Public perception of the NBA had been harmed by multiple reports about widespread cocaine use. Citing “estimates by people in the game,” an August 1980 story in the Los Angeles Times suggested that between 40 percent and 75 percent of the NBA’s players were on coke. Interest lagged, even for the biggest games of the year; in the late 1970s and early ’80s, CBS famously broadcast NBA Finals games on tape delay at 11:30 p.m. ET, well after prime time on either coast.
While Stern did face challenges as he started the new gig, he also inherited the start of a solution. Some of that came from the work of his predecessor, O’Brien, and Larry Fleisher, then-head of the players association, in setting the table for several changes needed to help move the league in the right direction. A lot of it, though, came from two guys named Magic and Larry.
The 1984 Finals, the first of Stern’s tenure, pitted Johnson’s Lakers against Bird’s Celtics—two historic blue-blood franchises led by in-their-prime superstars who had battled for an NCAA championship and already each won an NBA title. It was a seven-game war won by the Celtics, with Bird winning Finals MVP. The series rekindled a rivalry that had defined the NBA throughout the 1960s, cemented Bird and Magic as opposing irresistible forces, and underscored the value of selling the NBA by highlighting its stars—a template that Stern and Co. would use for Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, and scores of other future Hall of Famers in the decades to come.
Stern also set about addressing the NBA’s off-court perception problems and systemic issues. Before he took over in 1983, he led the league’s negotiations with the players union on a trailblazing collective bargaining agreement that established an artificial limit on how much teams could spend on their rosters—a “salary cap,” as it would come to be called. The new deal also included several exceptions allowing teams to go over that cap to help keep their cores intact and established a revolutionary split of finances that would see players take home 53 percent of gross revenues generated by gate receipts and television fees, while team owners got the remaining 47 percent. (That split would become an ongoing point of contention under Stern.)
He played a key role in the introduction of an antidrug policy that spoke softly (players could avoid punishment and receive help if they came forth voluntarily) but carried a big stick (those who tested positive would be banned from the NBA and eligible for reinstatement after two years). Stern wound up swinging that stick in 1986; after Micheal Ray Richardson, a four-time All-Star, tested positive for cocaine for a third time, Stern banned him from the league. “It was a shock that I had this guy’s life in my hands,” Stern said years later. “It was horrible. We agonized over it.” Richardson never played in the NBA again, finishing his career in Europe, but later credited Stern with saving his life through the ban.
Stern took aim at rejuvenating an All-Star Game that had long since lost its luster. He raided the ABA, introducing the slam dunk contest and 3-point shootout as marquee events, and turned an expanded All-Star Weekend into a sensory-overloading experience for fans of all ages and interests. When others looked at the NBA, they saw a second-tier league peddling a niche sport populated by players unlikely to ever break through into the national consciousness. Stern, on the other hand, saw Disney.
“They have theme parks,’’ he said. “And we have theme parks. Only we call them arenas. They have characters: Mickey Mouse, Goofy. Our characters are named Magic and Michael [Jordan]. Disney sells apparel; we sell apparel. They make home videos; we make home videos.”
And, like Disney, Stern’s NBA was also aimed at kids. He marketed the league’s stars as larger-than-life heroes capable of superhuman feats of athleticism—especially Jordan, whose artistry and excellence helped turn him into a ubiquitous multinational corporation, which in turn helped raise the league’s profile. He facilitated the slotting of those stars alongside the likes of the Looney Tunes on screens small and large. He paired highlight-package-heavy productions—it’s not a coincidence that NBA Inside Stuff ran after Saturday-morning cartoons; Stern specifically negotiated that time slot in the NBA’s broadcast contract with NBC—with a suite of on-the-ground community-based initiatives through the NBA Cares program. It all added up to help embed the league in the lives of generations of young people.
In 1985, Stern revolutionized the annual draft by instituting a lottery to determine which of the league’s worst teams would receive the no. 1 pick, an effort aimed at killing two birds with one stone. At that time, only two teams had a chance to land the top pick—the last-place finishers in each conference, who would take part in a coin flip to determine the first and second selections. Introducing a system that gave the five other teams who’d missed the playoffs a shot, too, with the winner selected by drawing an envelope out of a giant transparent orb, aimed to deter teams from doing their damnedest to sink to the bottom of the standings late in the season.
Second, and perhaps even more importantly: It created a made-for-TV event, just in time for the arrival of Georgetown’s Patrick Ewing, arguably the most dominant big man prospect in college basketball since Lew Alcindor. Before too long, the annual draft lottery became a signature event all its own, a spring staple that gave embattled fan bases reason to hope for better days even when their team was out of the postseason.
The Knicks won the ’85 lottery, which gave them the right to draft Ewing. It also gave the basketball world one of the truly great conspiracy theories of the last 35 years: that Stern and the league office rigged the draft to favor New York by freezing the Knicks’ envelope (and perhaps bending one corner) to ensure that it was selected for the no. 1 pick and would deliver college basketball’s biggest star to the NBA’s biggest market, thus resuscitating what had been one of the league’s marquee franchises in the early 1970s, but had sputtered since.
The envelope affair also underscored Stern’s penchant for showmanship and his combative nature. In the moment, he dismissed the idea that the league would fix the lottery: “If people want to say that, fine. As long as they spell our name right. That means they’re interested in us. That’s terrific.” As the years wore on, though, his answers on the matter began to differ in kind and tone, from joking (“We have the loot from the Brink’s robbery and the Great Train Robbery, as well”) to disdainful (“It’s crazy, ridiculous”) to venomous (like when he told Jim Rome, between games 1 and 2 of the 2012 NBA Finals, “Shame on you for asking” about whether the lottery was rigged, and followed it up with the lawyer’s rhetorical gambit, “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?”). Press him on the prospect that his lottery wasn’t always on the up-and-up, and Stern would parry or thrust, as needed or as he saw fit—and, seemingly always, in a manner that would keep us talking about the league’s machinations and melodramas.
One major source of drama and intrigue during Stern’s tenure: his efforts to steer the NBA into international waters. What began with exhibition competitions like the McDonald’s Open helped lead to the inclusion of NBA players on the U.S. men’s Olympic basketball team for the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, a blinding flashpoint in the globalization of the game.
Stern had reservations about the NBA’s brightest stars performing on the Olympic stage. “David and I thought global basketball came with as many burdens as benefits,” longtime deputy commissioner Russ Granik told Jack McCallum. But the Dream Team spread the gospel of NBA basketball to the world in a revolutionary fashion that’s still reverberating today.
The NBA now operates more than a dozen offices around the world, staging games outside of the U.S. and Canada every year. NBA games, once unable to get broadcast stateside in real time, now go out live in 215 countries and territories and in 50 languages. NBA rosters featured 108 foreign-born players hailing from 38 different countries and territories at the start of the 2019-20 season—a season that thus far has been defined in part by a 25-year-old Greek of Nigerian descent and a 20-year-old Slovenian, the latter of whom came of age in a world where NBA players always participated in international competition.
The start of this season was defined by the NBA’s involvement in an international incident that cast a glaring spotlight on the league’s extremely fraught business relationships in China and the challenge of maintaining the league’s purported progressive principles when working in nations where “human rights defenders continue to endure arbitrary detention, imprisonment, and enforced disappearance.” Stern saw the potential for such a conflagration from miles (and years) away. He proceeded with his full-steam-ahead push into China anyway, though, because “at the end of the day, I have a responsibility to my owners to make money.”
It was a responsibility he took seriously. Almost a half-decade after Stern stepped away from the league, Sports Illustrated’s Chris Ballard noted that the ex-commissioner still referred “to the NBA as ‘an asset’ and [that] his goal was to ‘make the asset more valuable.’”
Sometimes, the pursuit of that goal led to good-of-the-game tweaks, like eliminating illegal defense guidelines, introducing defensive-three-second violations, and cracking down on hand-checking, with an eye toward allowing offensive players to move and attack more freely, shifting the game toward talent and skill rather than strength and brute force. Whether you find the wide-open style more pleasing to watch is a matter of personal taste, but better showcases for stars and more points on the board seemed to agree with audiences.
The NBA’s television rights deals rose steadily throughout Stern’s tenure, topping the $1 billion mark with NBC before blowing that out of the water in 2002 with a multiyear, multinetwork deal that totaled $4.6 billion. As the years went by, the numbers just kept going up and up; the revenues the league raked in from TV rights fees “increased 40-fold during Stern’s tenure.” Months after Stern stepped aside in 2014, the NBA inked a new nine-year, $24 billion broadcast rights deal, a senses-shattering infusion of cash that led to the unprecedented salary cap spike of 2016, which in turn led to Kevin Durant’s joining a 73-win Warriors team, a watershed moment in basketball history. All told, the average worth of an NBA franchise when Stern retired in 2014 was $634 million—nearly 32 times the $20 million average of the early 1980s, just before he took the reins.
Sometimes, though, Stern’s choices seemed to have less to do with the good of the game than maximizing that profit motive, no matter the cost. With Stern as the tip of the spear, the NBA locked out its players in 1995, leading to the institution of the rookie pay scale, which limited salaries for first-round draft picks. It did it again in 1996, though that row over the division of profits from television contracts lasted only a few hours.
The league went to the mattresses for a third time under Stern in 1998, ostensibly in a spasmodic response to Kevin Garnett’s landmark six-year, $126 million contract—a contract, by the way, that Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor would later say was “worth every penny.” That wound up costing all parties involved the entire preseason, more than a third of the regular season, and the All-Star Game … all in service of instituting limits on maximum salaries, annual raises, and contract lengths, forcing players to pay for owners’ inability to save themselves from themselves.
After many years of labor peace, Stern (flanked by Silver) led ownership into battle again in 2011, in another brute reaction to an expression of player power: this time, LeBron James’s Decision and the choice by James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh to take less than their full market value to team up in Miami. The owners held the season hostage in an effort to slash the players’ slice of the pie from a 57 percent share of all basketball-related income down to 47 percent, to implement a hard salary cap, and to put in place much more painful penalties for teams that went over the luxury tax line.
Following a 161-day standoff that erased 16 games from the schedule, the players took a deal that guaranteed them between 49 percent and 51 percent of BRI, depending on revenue growth—a concession that effectively transferred $3 billion from labor to ownership over the course of the 10-year deal. Stern last year called the labor stoppages he presided over “terrible,” but only after saying, “I did what I had to do.”
Sometimes, Stern threw his weight around appropriately, and in response to an incident that required a swift and serious response: Latrell Sprewell’s choking of P.J. Carlesimo, or the Malice at the Palace, or—in a very different context—Magic Johnson’s HIV diagnosis and need for support in his public announcement. Sometimes, though, his edicts elicited sharp rebukes. One example is the 2005 decision to implement a dress code that required NBA players, the lion’s share of whom were black, to wear business attire rather than street clothes—a rule viewed by many as curious at best and racist at worst.
The subject of race is unavoidable in the story of a white man running a mostly black league. Under Stern, the NBA established itself as an industry leader in its commitment to diversity in hiring, routinely outpacing the other major U.S. sports in the annual Racial and Gender Report Cards handed out by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, though representation in the coaching and executive ranks still lagged behind the majority that African Americans held in the player population. The stories of how the NBA responded to Craig Hodges and Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, black athletes whose social or political views could pose significant problems for the league, remain points of contention decades later. As Stern noted in a September interview with Marc J. Spears of The Undefeated, “At every collective bargaining negotiation, I was accused of having a plantation mentality.” He also earned praise, however, as an executive who “respects the men who play in his league and the community from which they come,” and an operator who helped make it possible for black legends like Magic and Jordan to enter ownership themselves.
“You do what you have to do, and it’s always, behind the scenes, a little bit different than it appears in front of the cameras,” Stern told Spears. “We did what we had to do to make sure the sport was going to grow.”
Along the way, there were some missteps. Stern presided over the disastrous and short-lived choice to, seemingly out of nowhere, introduce a new microfiber-covered basketball that players hated, partly because it kept cutting their fingers. And the historic move to veto a 2011 trade that would have sent Chris Paul from the Hornets—a franchise operating under league control, as Stern sought a local buyer who would take the team off Shinn’s hands and keep it in New Orleans—to the Lakers for “basketball reasons,” which Stern has blamed on both Mitch Kupchak and Dell Demps in recent years.
There were other blemishes, many in the final third of Stern’s tenure: officiating controversies, most notably the Tim Donaghy gambling scandal; the institution and adherence to the “one-and-done” rule, effectively barring 18-year-old prospects from having the freedom to turn professional (until some started to get creative); the events of 2007 All-Star Weekend in Las Vegas. But Stern said that, save for the lockouts, he has no regrets.
”Each step along the way there are things you have to do, things maybe you wish you hadn’t done,” Stern told reporters in a 2012 conference call after announcing he’d be stepping away. “But I don’t keep that list.”
Views on Stern’s record and legacy differ wildly. What’s indisputable, though, is that the NBA grew exponentially during his tenure, rising to join the NFL, MLB, and English Premier League among the richest and most widely consumed sports leagues in the world. It’s also indisputable that his tenure benefited from the presence of many of the greatest players in the history of the sport.
Maybe, as a result of all that talent coupled with the onset of cable and satellite TV and broadband internet, the league would’ve exploded into a global phenomenon no matter who was at the helm. But maybe not.
”I don’t buy that argument about his being in the right place at the right time,” Alan Cohen, then part owner and vice chairman of the Celtics, told SI in 1991. “Timing is important, but with the same sequence of events, with the wrong guy in the pilot’s seat, none of this happens.”
Right or wrong, for 30 years, David Stern was the guy in the pilot’s seat, and the NBA soared. He wasn’t the guy who nailed the peach basket to the wall. He just helped knock the wall down, giving the game the chance to spread farther and wider than anybody could have dreamed
Stern, one of the most influential commissioners in the history of U.S. sports, died on Wednesday. While his tenure was often complicated, the league reached astronomical heights during his 30 years.
By Dan Devine Jan 1, 2020, 4:57pm EST
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The game is the thing. It always has been, ever since nail first met peach basket over the track at the YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts, 128 years ago last month. It’s why people lined up to watch the Black Fives, Rens, SPHAs, and Globetrotters barnstorm at the start of the last century. It’s why the greats—the ones who turn a ball and a hoop into fine art and high drama—have always become iconic figures, easily distinguishable by single names: Mikan, Russell, Wilt, Kareem, Magic, Larry, Michael, Shaq, LeBron. The game is the thing, and the players make the game; without them, there’s nothing to watch, no product to sell.
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David Stern Made the NBA Larger Than Life, but Kept It Small Enough to Touch
You can’t fully separate the selling from the game, though. The selling turned a modest regional attraction into a global behemoth that became one of the largest entertainment entities on the planet. The selling turned those single-name stars into crossover celebrities and eventually into capital-letter Brands, some of whom rank among the most recognizable public figures in the world, with spheres of influence that stretch far beyond the boundaries of the court. The selling fueled groundbreaking growth in just about any metric you can identify; the selling is part of the story too.
You can’t tell that story without David Stern, who reigned as the NBA’s commissioner from 1984 through 2014, a three-decade span in which the league reached new stratospheres of success, relevance, and international sporting primacy. Stern died on Wednesday, following a three-week hospitalization after suffering a sudden brain hemorrhage at a New York restaurant on December 12. He was 77 years old.
Under Stern’s leadership, the NBA expanded from 23 teams to 30, introducing new franchises that have stitched themselves into the fabric of a league that has evolved into a multibillion-dollar international enterprise and pop-cultural touchstone. With Stern, the NBA established and committed to the sustained viability of a legitimate women’s professional basketball league, began building a bona fide official minor league system, and helped find local ownership willing to keep beleaguered franchises in New Orleans and Sacramento.
Stern also let six franchises relocate, leaving several fan bases out in the cold. Businessmen were allowed to steal the SuperSonics from Seattle and abandon Vancouver, while metastasized ciphers like George Shinn and Donald Sterling got away with far too much for far too long. Under Stern’s leadership, the league’s owners locked players out four times in 16 years, with two of those forced stoppages wiping out months of games, all in favor of goosing owners’ profit margins and establishing beyond doubt who controlled the NBA.
It’s a complicated legacy, one that marks Stern—a renowned perfectionist with an iron-fisted style—as one of the most influential commissioners in the history of U.S. sports. It also presents a compelling case for him as arguably the most consequential off-court figure—for better, and in some cases for worse—the NBA has ever seen.
After graduating from Rutgers University and then Columbia Law School in 1966, Stern joined Proskauer, Rose, Goetz & Mendelsohn, the prestigious law firm that represented the NBA. He began acting as outside counsel for the league and represented it in Robertson v. National Basketball Association, a federal antitrust lawsuit filed in 1970 by superstar and National Basketball Players Association president Oscar Robertson aiming to end the “option clause” that kept players tied to a single team in perpetuity. Six years after Robertson filed suit, Stern was involved in crafting an out-of-court settlement that eliminated the option clause, established free agency for NBA players, and paved the way for a merger that would add four ABA franchises—the Nets, Spurs, Nuggets, and Pacers—to the NBA.
Stern then joined the league as its general counsel in 1978 and quickly rose through the ranks. Two years later, then-commissioner Larry O’Brien made Stern his second-in-command, naming him the NBA’s first executive vice president for business and legal affairs, which effectively put Stern in charge of marketing, television, and public relations for the league.
The NBA’s owners tapped Stern to take over for O’Brien when he stepped aside in 1984, making the son of a Manhattan deli owner just the fourth commissioner in league history. When his time came, just before the start of the 2012-13 season, Stern did the same for Adam Silver, the son of one of his former law firm colleagues, someone who’d spent more than two decades rising through the NBA’s ranks to sit at Stern’s right hand as deputy commissioner. (All three previous commissioners have a major NBA award named after them: Maurice Podoloff got the MVP trophy, J. Walter Kennedy got the Citizenship Award, and O’Brien got the NBA championship trophy. You wonder how the league will commemorate Stern’s contributions. One guess: If and when Silver manages to reorganize the NBA calendar to include an in-season tournament, maybe the winner will wind up hoisting the Stern Cup.)
Stern took over a league on unsteady footing, as detailed by Sports Illustrated’s E.M. Smith in a 1991 feature: “In the 1980-81 season, 16 of the NBA’s 23 teams lost money. Total attendance was down almost a million from the year before, and teams were playing to an average of only 10,021 fans per game, about 58 percent of the capacity of their arenas.” Public perception of the NBA had been harmed by multiple reports about widespread cocaine use. Citing “estimates by people in the game,” an August 1980 story in the Los Angeles Times suggested that between 40 percent and 75 percent of the NBA’s players were on coke. Interest lagged, even for the biggest games of the year; in the late 1970s and early ’80s, CBS famously broadcast NBA Finals games on tape delay at 11:30 p.m. ET, well after prime time on either coast.
While Stern did face challenges as he started the new gig, he also inherited the start of a solution. Some of that came from the work of his predecessor, O’Brien, and Larry Fleisher, then-head of the players association, in setting the table for several changes needed to help move the league in the right direction. A lot of it, though, came from two guys named Magic and Larry.
The 1984 Finals, the first of Stern’s tenure, pitted Johnson’s Lakers against Bird’s Celtics—two historic blue-blood franchises led by in-their-prime superstars who had battled for an NCAA championship and already each won an NBA title. It was a seven-game war won by the Celtics, with Bird winning Finals MVP. The series rekindled a rivalry that had defined the NBA throughout the 1960s, cemented Bird and Magic as opposing irresistible forces, and underscored the value of selling the NBA by highlighting its stars—a template that Stern and Co. would use for Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, and scores of other future Hall of Famers in the decades to come.
Stern also set about addressing the NBA’s off-court perception problems and systemic issues. Before he took over in 1983, he led the league’s negotiations with the players union on a trailblazing collective bargaining agreement that established an artificial limit on how much teams could spend on their rosters—a “salary cap,” as it would come to be called. The new deal also included several exceptions allowing teams to go over that cap to help keep their cores intact and established a revolutionary split of finances that would see players take home 53 percent of gross revenues generated by gate receipts and television fees, while team owners got the remaining 47 percent. (That split would become an ongoing point of contention under Stern.)
He played a key role in the introduction of an antidrug policy that spoke softly (players could avoid punishment and receive help if they came forth voluntarily) but carried a big stick (those who tested positive would be banned from the NBA and eligible for reinstatement after two years). Stern wound up swinging that stick in 1986; after Micheal Ray Richardson, a four-time All-Star, tested positive for cocaine for a third time, Stern banned him from the league. “It was a shock that I had this guy’s life in my hands,” Stern said years later. “It was horrible. We agonized over it.” Richardson never played in the NBA again, finishing his career in Europe, but later credited Stern with saving his life through the ban.
Stern took aim at rejuvenating an All-Star Game that had long since lost its luster. He raided the ABA, introducing the slam dunk contest and 3-point shootout as marquee events, and turned an expanded All-Star Weekend into a sensory-overloading experience for fans of all ages and interests. When others looked at the NBA, they saw a second-tier league peddling a niche sport populated by players unlikely to ever break through into the national consciousness. Stern, on the other hand, saw Disney.
“They have theme parks,’’ he said. “And we have theme parks. Only we call them arenas. They have characters: Mickey Mouse, Goofy. Our characters are named Magic and Michael [Jordan]. Disney sells apparel; we sell apparel. They make home videos; we make home videos.”
And, like Disney, Stern’s NBA was also aimed at kids. He marketed the league’s stars as larger-than-life heroes capable of superhuman feats of athleticism—especially Jordan, whose artistry and excellence helped turn him into a ubiquitous multinational corporation, which in turn helped raise the league’s profile. He facilitated the slotting of those stars alongside the likes of the Looney Tunes on screens small and large. He paired highlight-package-heavy productions—it’s not a coincidence that NBA Inside Stuff ran after Saturday-morning cartoons; Stern specifically negotiated that time slot in the NBA’s broadcast contract with NBC—with a suite of on-the-ground community-based initiatives through the NBA Cares program. It all added up to help embed the league in the lives of generations of young people.
In 1985, Stern revolutionized the annual draft by instituting a lottery to determine which of the league’s worst teams would receive the no. 1 pick, an effort aimed at killing two birds with one stone. At that time, only two teams had a chance to land the top pick—the last-place finishers in each conference, who would take part in a coin flip to determine the first and second selections. Introducing a system that gave the five other teams who’d missed the playoffs a shot, too, with the winner selected by drawing an envelope out of a giant transparent orb, aimed to deter teams from doing their damnedest to sink to the bottom of the standings late in the season.
Second, and perhaps even more importantly: It created a made-for-TV event, just in time for the arrival of Georgetown’s Patrick Ewing, arguably the most dominant big man prospect in college basketball since Lew Alcindor. Before too long, the annual draft lottery became a signature event all its own, a spring staple that gave embattled fan bases reason to hope for better days even when their team was out of the postseason.
The Knicks won the ’85 lottery, which gave them the right to draft Ewing. It also gave the basketball world one of the truly great conspiracy theories of the last 35 years: that Stern and the league office rigged the draft to favor New York by freezing the Knicks’ envelope (and perhaps bending one corner) to ensure that it was selected for the no. 1 pick and would deliver college basketball’s biggest star to the NBA’s biggest market, thus resuscitating what had been one of the league’s marquee franchises in the early 1970s, but had sputtered since.
The envelope affair also underscored Stern’s penchant for showmanship and his combative nature. In the moment, he dismissed the idea that the league would fix the lottery: “If people want to say that, fine. As long as they spell our name right. That means they’re interested in us. That’s terrific.” As the years wore on, though, his answers on the matter began to differ in kind and tone, from joking (“We have the loot from the Brink’s robbery and the Great Train Robbery, as well”) to disdainful (“It’s crazy, ridiculous”) to venomous (like when he told Jim Rome, between games 1 and 2 of the 2012 NBA Finals, “Shame on you for asking” about whether the lottery was rigged, and followed it up with the lawyer’s rhetorical gambit, “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?”). Press him on the prospect that his lottery wasn’t always on the up-and-up, and Stern would parry or thrust, as needed or as he saw fit—and, seemingly always, in a manner that would keep us talking about the league’s machinations and melodramas.
One major source of drama and intrigue during Stern’s tenure: his efforts to steer the NBA into international waters. What began with exhibition competitions like the McDonald’s Open helped lead to the inclusion of NBA players on the U.S. men’s Olympic basketball team for the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, a blinding flashpoint in the globalization of the game.
Stern had reservations about the NBA’s brightest stars performing on the Olympic stage. “David and I thought global basketball came with as many burdens as benefits,” longtime deputy commissioner Russ Granik told Jack McCallum. But the Dream Team spread the gospel of NBA basketball to the world in a revolutionary fashion that’s still reverberating today.
The NBA now operates more than a dozen offices around the world, staging games outside of the U.S. and Canada every year. NBA games, once unable to get broadcast stateside in real time, now go out live in 215 countries and territories and in 50 languages. NBA rosters featured 108 foreign-born players hailing from 38 different countries and territories at the start of the 2019-20 season—a season that thus far has been defined in part by a 25-year-old Greek of Nigerian descent and a 20-year-old Slovenian, the latter of whom came of age in a world where NBA players always participated in international competition.
The start of this season was defined by the NBA’s involvement in an international incident that cast a glaring spotlight on the league’s extremely fraught business relationships in China and the challenge of maintaining the league’s purported progressive principles when working in nations where “human rights defenders continue to endure arbitrary detention, imprisonment, and enforced disappearance.” Stern saw the potential for such a conflagration from miles (and years) away. He proceeded with his full-steam-ahead push into China anyway, though, because “at the end of the day, I have a responsibility to my owners to make money.”
It was a responsibility he took seriously. Almost a half-decade after Stern stepped away from the league, Sports Illustrated’s Chris Ballard noted that the ex-commissioner still referred “to the NBA as ‘an asset’ and [that] his goal was to ‘make the asset more valuable.’”
Sometimes, the pursuit of that goal led to good-of-the-game tweaks, like eliminating illegal defense guidelines, introducing defensive-three-second violations, and cracking down on hand-checking, with an eye toward allowing offensive players to move and attack more freely, shifting the game toward talent and skill rather than strength and brute force. Whether you find the wide-open style more pleasing to watch is a matter of personal taste, but better showcases for stars and more points on the board seemed to agree with audiences.
The NBA’s television rights deals rose steadily throughout Stern’s tenure, topping the $1 billion mark with NBC before blowing that out of the water in 2002 with a multiyear, multinetwork deal that totaled $4.6 billion. As the years went by, the numbers just kept going up and up; the revenues the league raked in from TV rights fees “increased 40-fold during Stern’s tenure.” Months after Stern stepped aside in 2014, the NBA inked a new nine-year, $24 billion broadcast rights deal, a senses-shattering infusion of cash that led to the unprecedented salary cap spike of 2016, which in turn led to Kevin Durant’s joining a 73-win Warriors team, a watershed moment in basketball history. All told, the average worth of an NBA franchise when Stern retired in 2014 was $634 million—nearly 32 times the $20 million average of the early 1980s, just before he took the reins.
Sometimes, though, Stern’s choices seemed to have less to do with the good of the game than maximizing that profit motive, no matter the cost. With Stern as the tip of the spear, the NBA locked out its players in 1995, leading to the institution of the rookie pay scale, which limited salaries for first-round draft picks. It did it again in 1996, though that row over the division of profits from television contracts lasted only a few hours.
The league went to the mattresses for a third time under Stern in 1998, ostensibly in a spasmodic response to Kevin Garnett’s landmark six-year, $126 million contract—a contract, by the way, that Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor would later say was “worth every penny.” That wound up costing all parties involved the entire preseason, more than a third of the regular season, and the All-Star Game … all in service of instituting limits on maximum salaries, annual raises, and contract lengths, forcing players to pay for owners’ inability to save themselves from themselves.
After many years of labor peace, Stern (flanked by Silver) led ownership into battle again in 2011, in another brute reaction to an expression of player power: this time, LeBron James’s Decision and the choice by James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh to take less than their full market value to team up in Miami. The owners held the season hostage in an effort to slash the players’ slice of the pie from a 57 percent share of all basketball-related income down to 47 percent, to implement a hard salary cap, and to put in place much more painful penalties for teams that went over the luxury tax line.
Following a 161-day standoff that erased 16 games from the schedule, the players took a deal that guaranteed them between 49 percent and 51 percent of BRI, depending on revenue growth—a concession that effectively transferred $3 billion from labor to ownership over the course of the 10-year deal. Stern last year called the labor stoppages he presided over “terrible,” but only after saying, “I did what I had to do.”
Sometimes, Stern threw his weight around appropriately, and in response to an incident that required a swift and serious response: Latrell Sprewell’s choking of P.J. Carlesimo, or the Malice at the Palace, or—in a very different context—Magic Johnson’s HIV diagnosis and need for support in his public announcement. Sometimes, though, his edicts elicited sharp rebukes. One example is the 2005 decision to implement a dress code that required NBA players, the lion’s share of whom were black, to wear business attire rather than street clothes—a rule viewed by many as curious at best and racist at worst.
The subject of race is unavoidable in the story of a white man running a mostly black league. Under Stern, the NBA established itself as an industry leader in its commitment to diversity in hiring, routinely outpacing the other major U.S. sports in the annual Racial and Gender Report Cards handed out by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, though representation in the coaching and executive ranks still lagged behind the majority that African Americans held in the player population. The stories of how the NBA responded to Craig Hodges and Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, black athletes whose social or political views could pose significant problems for the league, remain points of contention decades later. As Stern noted in a September interview with Marc J. Spears of The Undefeated, “At every collective bargaining negotiation, I was accused of having a plantation mentality.” He also earned praise, however, as an executive who “respects the men who play in his league and the community from which they come,” and an operator who helped make it possible for black legends like Magic and Jordan to enter ownership themselves.
“You do what you have to do, and it’s always, behind the scenes, a little bit different than it appears in front of the cameras,” Stern told Spears. “We did what we had to do to make sure the sport was going to grow.”
Along the way, there were some missteps. Stern presided over the disastrous and short-lived choice to, seemingly out of nowhere, introduce a new microfiber-covered basketball that players hated, partly because it kept cutting their fingers. And the historic move to veto a 2011 trade that would have sent Chris Paul from the Hornets—a franchise operating under league control, as Stern sought a local buyer who would take the team off Shinn’s hands and keep it in New Orleans—to the Lakers for “basketball reasons,” which Stern has blamed on both Mitch Kupchak and Dell Demps in recent years.
There were other blemishes, many in the final third of Stern’s tenure: officiating controversies, most notably the Tim Donaghy gambling scandal; the institution and adherence to the “one-and-done” rule, effectively barring 18-year-old prospects from having the freedom to turn professional (until some started to get creative); the events of 2007 All-Star Weekend in Las Vegas. But Stern said that, save for the lockouts, he has no regrets.
”Each step along the way there are things you have to do, things maybe you wish you hadn’t done,” Stern told reporters in a 2012 conference call after announcing he’d be stepping away. “But I don’t keep that list.”
Views on Stern’s record and legacy differ wildly. What’s indisputable, though, is that the NBA grew exponentially during his tenure, rising to join the NFL, MLB, and English Premier League among the richest and most widely consumed sports leagues in the world. It’s also indisputable that his tenure benefited from the presence of many of the greatest players in the history of the sport.
Maybe, as a result of all that talent coupled with the onset of cable and satellite TV and broadband internet, the league would’ve exploded into a global phenomenon no matter who was at the helm. But maybe not.
”I don’t buy that argument about his being in the right place at the right time,” Alan Cohen, then part owner and vice chairman of the Celtics, told SI in 1991. “Timing is important, but with the same sequence of events, with the wrong guy in the pilot’s seat, none of this happens.”
Right or wrong, for 30 years, David Stern was the guy in the pilot’s seat, and the NBA soared. He wasn’t the guy who nailed the peach basket to the wall. He just helped knock the wall down, giving the game the chance to spread farther and wider than anybody could have dreamed
NBA commissioner David Stern towered over the league he built
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Stern was in the mood on this particular day because something had gone wrong. Though he could be a compassionate and generous ruler, Stern often embraced a zero-tolerance policy for subordinates who allowed things to go wrong.
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"We've got 26 lawyers," he shouted, "and I've got to do everything. You guys can't do s---. I've got to write everything for you. I've got to do it all!"
Stern did it all in his three decades as commissioner, if only because he felt he had no other choice. I met with him in his Olympic Tower office in the summer of 1998, when Stern was fretting over the labor stoppage to come, a lockout that would reduce the next season to 50 games. He recalled a time when the biggest postseason games were broadcast on tape delay, after the late-night news, and when the NBA was, he said, "written off as too black, too drug infested." The son of a deli owner, Stern was earning a $9 million wage after turning this barely relevant league into a global juggernaut defined by megastars with crossover appeal.
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Two years later, Stern was touring China when a guide told him she adored Michael Jordan and his "Red Oxen," or Chicago Bulls. The commissioner was already searching for a Yao Ming back then. He would create the Dream Team for the 1992 Olympics to enhance the worldwide hunt for talent and, more importantly, for untapped markets that would produce boys and girls who would, in Stern's words, "start dribbling the ball rather than kicking it."
Even though he became more recognizable than the majority of his players, Stern understood something that his former executive VP of basketball operations, Rod Thorn, said his longtime boss didn't get enough credit for. "David was smart enough to realize it had to be about the players," Thorn said Wednesday evening, a couple of hours after news broke of Stern's death at age 77. "He really cared about the players, and they went from nowhere to the most recognized athletes in the world, other than some soccer stars. David knew that people needed to like our players if we were going to be successful."
Stern needed Jordan and Magic Johnson and Larry Bird to be liked; he didn't need to be liked himself. Respected? Yes. Admired? You bet. Feared? Absolutely. But liked was always optional.
In the public view, moving from his office to games to labor negotiations, Stern projected an avuncular vibe that earned him the "Easy Dave" nickname. Behind closed doors, the visionary berated a long line of owners, executives, staffers, lawyers, coaches and players when he felt they weren't aligned with his, well, vision.
"People who do great things are people who get others to go along with what they feel," said Thorn, the former Bulls and New Jersey Nets executive and a senior Stern lieutenant in the league office for two stints and a combined 16-plus years. "David was amazing at getting people to do what he felt should be done."
Thorn had drafted Jordan for the Bulls in 1984, yet was fired the following spring. When he interviewed with Stern to become the NBA's chief disciplinarian, the commissioner told him, "People say that you're too nice of a guy. In this job, you can't be too nice of a guy."
Thorn cherished his time in the league office. He saw Stern as an incomparable leader who was tough, yet fair-minded.
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"There was nothing soft about him," Thorn said. "He expected you to do the job he hired you to do, and if you didn't do it, he certainly would let you know about it. I was on the receiving end of it from time to time, some of the strong language, and in reality, the vast majority of time he was right.
"David had this habit of asking you questions he already knew the answers to. One day I was walking down the hall, and he was walking the other way, and he asked me some innocuous question, and I was hemming and hawing about it. He just said, 'What the hell did I hire you for? You don't know this?' ... David didn't hold a grudge. It wasn't something that lasted for weeks with him, or days, even. He just said what he had to say, and you didn't make that mistake again."
Stern fought so many battles on so many fronts, it was hard to keep count. I was covering the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens when I received a call from a familiar voice -- Stern's. I told him I was watching gymnastics; he told me he wanted to talk basketball. Stern wanted to tell me he agreed with my written criticisms of Team USA's coach, Larry Brown, added some profane observations of his own (he ripped Brown for not giving more minutes to a 19-year-old LeBron James), and told me he was heading to the gym to say some of these very things in a news conference. I assumed he wouldn't actually go through with it, but sure enough, Stern called a stunning halftime presser during Team USA's semifinal loss to Argentina (the Americans' third loss of the tournament) to reprimand Brown for blaming his team's showing on the player selection committee.
"This was a team that was put together by everyone, including the coaching staff," Stern said that day. "And this is a great team, so I don't buy the, 'Well, I'd like to have this, I'd like to have that.' ... It's not about who didn't come. I'll tell you what, we're all in sports. You take your team to the gym and you play what you've got and then you either win or you lose. And this whining and carping is not fair to the young men ... who are representing their country admirably and well."
On further review, I was struck by two thoughts. One, Stern was protecting the players the way Thorn said he always wanted to protect them. Two, as much as he appreciated the sport's growth, Stern hated the fact that NBA players -- his players -- had failed to win Olympic gold for the first time. The commissioner hated to lose to the very global monster he created.
No, David Stern didn't like to lose to anyone, at anything. Most devoted basketball fans have heard the stories of how Jordan tormented Bulls teammates in practice when they crossed him, or didn't meet his standards of greatness. Stern had a lot of Jordan in him, minus the hang time.
He went hard after those who disappointed him. Fordham's dean of law, John Feerick, for sharply reducing the penalties Stern imposed on Latrell Sprewell for choking his Golden State Warriors coach, P.J. Carlesimo. The New York Times, for publishing an article about a study concluding that referees' calls are influenced by the players' skin color. Bryant Gumbel, for accusing the commissioner of acting as a "modern plantation overseer" in governing his largely African American workforce. James Dolan, for playing the fool in the Anucha Browne Sanders sexual harassment case against Madison Square Garden and former Knicks president Isiah Thomas.
Stern didn't create the modern phenomenon that is the NBA by declining to punch back. Only once did I ever personally see Stern look ashen-faced and unable to launch an effective counter: at his 2007 news conference to address the gambling allegations against referee Tim Donaghy. "I can tell you," the commissioner said then, "that this is the most serious situation and worst situation that I have ever experienced either as a fan of the NBA, a lawyer for the NBA or a commissioner of the NBA." For a man who had shepherded the league through Magic Johnson and HIV, the Sprewell attack and the Malice at the Palace, that was saying a mouthful.
But in the final months of his life, Stern stood tall over every staggering thing he had accomplished. Thorn and his wife, Peggy, joined Stern and his wife, Dianne, for dinner a few weeks before the commissioner suffered his December brain hemorrhage at a Manhattan restaurant.
"He seemed in such good spirits and health," Thorn said. "He just had a great look about him. David was always so proud of the league, and of what [his successor] Adam Silver had done. Some of these guys that leave big jobs have a hard time staying away, but I think David did a good job of not trying to take away from what Adam was doing.
"I loved the guy, and I have so many fond memories of him. He cared so much about the players and the fans, and he did everything he possibly could to make the game better."
David Stern built a dynasty almost nobody thought could be built by leading with his chin, fists flying. That's how a man who stood 5-9 became a towering figure in a big man's game.
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- Ian O'ConnorESPN Senior Writer
Stern was in the mood on this particular day because something had gone wrong. Though he could be a compassionate and generous ruler, Stern often embraced a zero-tolerance policy for subordinates who allowed things to go wrong.
ADVERTISEMENT
"We've got 26 lawyers," he shouted, "and I've got to do everything. You guys can't do s---. I've got to write everything for you. I've got to do it all!"
Stern did it all in his three decades as commissioner, if only because he felt he had no other choice. I met with him in his Olympic Tower office in the summer of 1998, when Stern was fretting over the labor stoppage to come, a lockout that would reduce the next season to 50 games. He recalled a time when the biggest postseason games were broadcast on tape delay, after the late-night news, and when the NBA was, he said, "written off as too black, too drug infested." The son of a deli owner, Stern was earning a $9 million wage after turning this barely relevant league into a global juggernaut defined by megastars with crossover appeal.
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Two years later, Stern was touring China when a guide told him she adored Michael Jordan and his "Red Oxen," or Chicago Bulls. The commissioner was already searching for a Yao Ming back then. He would create the Dream Team for the 1992 Olympics to enhance the worldwide hunt for talent and, more importantly, for untapped markets that would produce boys and girls who would, in Stern's words, "start dribbling the ball rather than kicking it."
Even though he became more recognizable than the majority of his players, Stern understood something that his former executive VP of basketball operations, Rod Thorn, said his longtime boss didn't get enough credit for. "David was smart enough to realize it had to be about the players," Thorn said Wednesday evening, a couple of hours after news broke of Stern's death at age 77. "He really cared about the players, and they went from nowhere to the most recognized athletes in the world, other than some soccer stars. David knew that people needed to like our players if we were going to be successful."
Stern needed Jordan and Magic Johnson and Larry Bird to be liked; he didn't need to be liked himself. Respected? Yes. Admired? You bet. Feared? Absolutely. But liked was always optional.
In the public view, moving from his office to games to labor negotiations, Stern projected an avuncular vibe that earned him the "Easy Dave" nickname. Behind closed doors, the visionary berated a long line of owners, executives, staffers, lawyers, coaches and players when he felt they weren't aligned with his, well, vision.
"People who do great things are people who get others to go along with what they feel," said Thorn, the former Bulls and New Jersey Nets executive and a senior Stern lieutenant in the league office for two stints and a combined 16-plus years. "David was amazing at getting people to do what he felt should be done."
Thorn had drafted Jordan for the Bulls in 1984, yet was fired the following spring. When he interviewed with Stern to become the NBA's chief disciplinarian, the commissioner told him, "People say that you're too nice of a guy. In this job, you can't be too nice of a guy."
Thorn cherished his time in the league office. He saw Stern as an incomparable leader who was tough, yet fair-minded.
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"There was nothing soft about him," Thorn said. "He expected you to do the job he hired you to do, and if you didn't do it, he certainly would let you know about it. I was on the receiving end of it from time to time, some of the strong language, and in reality, the vast majority of time he was right.
"David had this habit of asking you questions he already knew the answers to. One day I was walking down the hall, and he was walking the other way, and he asked me some innocuous question, and I was hemming and hawing about it. He just said, 'What the hell did I hire you for? You don't know this?' ... David didn't hold a grudge. It wasn't something that lasted for weeks with him, or days, even. He just said what he had to say, and you didn't make that mistake again."
Stern fought so many battles on so many fronts, it was hard to keep count. I was covering the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens when I received a call from a familiar voice -- Stern's. I told him I was watching gymnastics; he told me he wanted to talk basketball. Stern wanted to tell me he agreed with my written criticisms of Team USA's coach, Larry Brown, added some profane observations of his own (he ripped Brown for not giving more minutes to a 19-year-old LeBron James), and told me he was heading to the gym to say some of these very things in a news conference. I assumed he wouldn't actually go through with it, but sure enough, Stern called a stunning halftime presser during Team USA's semifinal loss to Argentina (the Americans' third loss of the tournament) to reprimand Brown for blaming his team's showing on the player selection committee.
"This was a team that was put together by everyone, including the coaching staff," Stern said that day. "And this is a great team, so I don't buy the, 'Well, I'd like to have this, I'd like to have that.' ... It's not about who didn't come. I'll tell you what, we're all in sports. You take your team to the gym and you play what you've got and then you either win or you lose. And this whining and carping is not fair to the young men ... who are representing their country admirably and well."
On further review, I was struck by two thoughts. One, Stern was protecting the players the way Thorn said he always wanted to protect them. Two, as much as he appreciated the sport's growth, Stern hated the fact that NBA players -- his players -- had failed to win Olympic gold for the first time. The commissioner hated to lose to the very global monster he created.
No, David Stern didn't like to lose to anyone, at anything. Most devoted basketball fans have heard the stories of how Jordan tormented Bulls teammates in practice when they crossed him, or didn't meet his standards of greatness. Stern had a lot of Jordan in him, minus the hang time.
He went hard after those who disappointed him. Fordham's dean of law, John Feerick, for sharply reducing the penalties Stern imposed on Latrell Sprewell for choking his Golden State Warriors coach, P.J. Carlesimo. The New York Times, for publishing an article about a study concluding that referees' calls are influenced by the players' skin color. Bryant Gumbel, for accusing the commissioner of acting as a "modern plantation overseer" in governing his largely African American workforce. James Dolan, for playing the fool in the Anucha Browne Sanders sexual harassment case against Madison Square Garden and former Knicks president Isiah Thomas.
Stern didn't create the modern phenomenon that is the NBA by declining to punch back. Only once did I ever personally see Stern look ashen-faced and unable to launch an effective counter: at his 2007 news conference to address the gambling allegations against referee Tim Donaghy. "I can tell you," the commissioner said then, "that this is the most serious situation and worst situation that I have ever experienced either as a fan of the NBA, a lawyer for the NBA or a commissioner of the NBA." For a man who had shepherded the league through Magic Johnson and HIV, the Sprewell attack and the Malice at the Palace, that was saying a mouthful.
But in the final months of his life, Stern stood tall over every staggering thing he had accomplished. Thorn and his wife, Peggy, joined Stern and his wife, Dianne, for dinner a few weeks before the commissioner suffered his December brain hemorrhage at a Manhattan restaurant.
"He seemed in such good spirits and health," Thorn said. "He just had a great look about him. David was always so proud of the league, and of what [his successor] Adam Silver had done. Some of these guys that leave big jobs have a hard time staying away, but I think David did a good job of not trying to take away from what Adam was doing.
"I loved the guy, and I have so many fond memories of him. He cared so much about the players and the fans, and he did everything he possibly could to make the game better."
David Stern built a dynasty almost nobody thought could be built by leading with his chin, fists flying. That's how a man who stood 5-9 became a towering figure in a big man's game.
NBA commissioner David Stern was a complete force of nature
play
0:08
/
4:22
Jan 1, 2020
"The Pacific Northwest and the god-damn Deep South," Stern snarled in a hushed voice. "Give me a big market!"
These were words that should've never come out of a commissioner's mouth, but those sitting closest could hear them tumble out in a curdling cadence.
ADVERTISEMENT
Unapologetic in his obsession to swell the league with stars in prime television markets, Stern was relentless in his pursuit of big, bigger and biggest for the NBA. This was Stern's NBA, and Stern did almost anything he wanted for those 30 years on the job as commissioner. He was a visionary and a dealmaker and a tyrant and a revolutionist.
People cried of conspiracies and collusions, frozen envelopes and preferred referee whistles to close out Game 7s. Stern barked and bellowed, debated and cajoled, and moved onto the next scrap. He was relentless. He took on everyone, and almost never lost; not to owners or general managers, or coaches or players, or referees or reporters, or player agents or TV partners.
EDITOR'S PICKS
If the evolving league demographic of hedge fund and techie owners and superstar players eventually transferred power to the States in the Adam Silver era, power had been largely centralized in the Washington, D.C., of Stern's tenure: Olympic Tower in Manhattan.
Stern marketed Magic Johnson and Larry Bird to explode the league stateside in the 1980s, and leveraged Michael Jordan and the Olympic Dream Team to globalize the game in the 1990s.
Stern screamed and cursed and pounded boardroom tables, treating the commissioner's seat like an emperor's throne. It's hard to imagine Stern at rest, but he has died at 77. The former commissioner suffered a brain hemorrhage on Dec. 12 and was in critical condition until his death on New Year's Day. For most of his life, Stern kept coming and coming and coming.
Privately, owners talked tough about how Stern worked for them. In his presence, many of them cowered. At once, owners, management and players were grateful to Stern for franchise valuations and salaries growing exponentially -- and fearful that failing to submit to his will could result in legitimate retribution, including unfavorable referee assignments in the playoffs.
When the owners and players were fighting for a new collective bargaining agreement, Stern walked into the locker room with the Eastern and Western All-Stars gathered at the 2011 All-Star Weekend in Los Angeles --- and essentially threatened the players to fall into line before a July 1 lockout date:
"I know where the bodies are buried in the NBA, because I put some of them there," Stern blurted.
When I asked Derrick Rose, the 2011 MVP, about it several days later before it had become public, he seemed more impressed than irritated. "It was shocking. I was taking off my gear. ... I just stopped and thought, 'Whoa ... I couldn't believe that he said it.'"
Whether Stern truly meted out retribution to those who crossed him is probably more folklore than fact. Yet Stern did traffic in the threat of retaliation. He survived Tim Donaghy, Donald Sterling, Jordan's gambling, the Malice at the Palace and killing the Lakers trade for Chris Paul. He instituted salary caps, max contracts and dress codes. He negotiated Yao Ming's passage to the NBA, opening up billions of dollars in Chinese basketball revenue. His job was to deliver revenue to his owners, but he lamented how that Chinese partnership promised to bring an eventual ethical reckoning to the NBA, too.
For all the volatility and blunt force, there was an incredibly progressive, generous and compassionate side to Stern. Noam Galai/Getty Images
Stern had a penchant to lord over the NBA as though it were a mom-and-pop shop in his native Teaneck, New Jersey. In the late 1990s, Jennifer Keene was riding down to the lobby of Olympic Tower. The elevator stopped, the doors opened and there appeared Stern. Just the commissioner and a 24-year-old licensing assistant in the old consumer products group. Her responsibilities included the Spalding ball account.
"At the time, there were big problems with the original orange and oatmeal WNBA game ball, and he wanted them off the shelves ASAP," Keene said. She knew part of his thinking from her superiors but never imagined Stern had even a remote awareness of her existence.
Get the best of ESPN sent to your inboxThe ESPN Daily delivers the biggest sports news and moments every weekday.
Sign me up!
Privacy PolicyRead the Latest
Without so much as a hello, the NBA commissioner turned to a young Keene and blurted: "How many balls are left on the shelves? Modells? Sports Authority?"
In every elevator shaft, every room, Stern was a force of nature. For all the volatility and blunt force, there was an incredibly progressive, generous and compassionate side to Stern. The NBA played a leading role in HIV and AIDS awareness. Stern refused to let the league become overrun with irrational fears in the wake of Magic Johnson's diagnosis in 1991. Minorities and women were elevated into prominent positions in larger numbers and greater frequency than in other professional leagues.
There are stories of NBA employees with family crises that credit Stern with remarkable acts of kindness and generosity. In his pre-NBA days as an attorney, Stern took on and won a massive housing discrimination case for African Americans in Northern New Jersey, and did so pro bono.
Stern was a Jersey kid with a Rutgers degree and Manhattan law firm ambitions. In the NBA, he found the mechanism to expand his world far beyond the George Washington Bridge and Lincoln Tunnel. As commissioner, transcendent NBA stars became global icons -- and inspired the imagination of young players everywhere.
In 1984, his first year as commissioner, Stern welcomed a South American basketball and soccer analyst named Adrian Paenza into his Manhattan office and offered his Argentina Channel 9 the rights to air weekly NBA highlights. The price: $2,000 a year. So every Sunday at midnight, there was Magic and Michael and Bird arriving in a faraway land where children had mostly dreamed of soccer stardom.
Manu Ginobili watched those highlights every week, rushing outside the next day to try those moves for himself. "When I was a kid, I didn't even dream of playing in the NBA," Ginobili once told me. "Nobody ever from Argentina played in the NBA when I was 10. I was watching MJ's [highlights] and thinking he was from another planet, that he was unreachable, untouchable -- the same as Magic and Larry.
"And then I find myself, years later, raising the same trophy as they did."
On his way to conquering the world, Stern spared no one in his path. In the twilight of his tenure, he became too cantankerous, stayed too long on the job. When the next generation of owners and players had little interest in bowing to a throne, Stern's standing as emperor eroded. He walked out a beleaguered, tired man at 72 years old in 2014. Stern wasn't the only NBA superstar to stay too long.
Through it all, most will remember an American sporting life for the ages. Big ideas, big markets, big stars, big world: David Joel Stern conquered it all.
play
0:08
/
4:22
Jan 1, 2020
- Adrian WojnarowskiSenior NBA Insider
"The Pacific Northwest and the god-damn Deep South," Stern snarled in a hushed voice. "Give me a big market!"
These were words that should've never come out of a commissioner's mouth, but those sitting closest could hear them tumble out in a curdling cadence.
ADVERTISEMENT
Unapologetic in his obsession to swell the league with stars in prime television markets, Stern was relentless in his pursuit of big, bigger and biggest for the NBA. This was Stern's NBA, and Stern did almost anything he wanted for those 30 years on the job as commissioner. He was a visionary and a dealmaker and a tyrant and a revolutionist.
People cried of conspiracies and collusions, frozen envelopes and preferred referee whistles to close out Game 7s. Stern barked and bellowed, debated and cajoled, and moved onto the next scrap. He was relentless. He took on everyone, and almost never lost; not to owners or general managers, or coaches or players, or referees or reporters, or player agents or TV partners.
EDITOR'S PICKS
If the evolving league demographic of hedge fund and techie owners and superstar players eventually transferred power to the States in the Adam Silver era, power had been largely centralized in the Washington, D.C., of Stern's tenure: Olympic Tower in Manhattan.
Stern marketed Magic Johnson and Larry Bird to explode the league stateside in the 1980s, and leveraged Michael Jordan and the Olympic Dream Team to globalize the game in the 1990s.
Stern screamed and cursed and pounded boardroom tables, treating the commissioner's seat like an emperor's throne. It's hard to imagine Stern at rest, but he has died at 77. The former commissioner suffered a brain hemorrhage on Dec. 12 and was in critical condition until his death on New Year's Day. For most of his life, Stern kept coming and coming and coming.
Privately, owners talked tough about how Stern worked for them. In his presence, many of them cowered. At once, owners, management and players were grateful to Stern for franchise valuations and salaries growing exponentially -- and fearful that failing to submit to his will could result in legitimate retribution, including unfavorable referee assignments in the playoffs.
When the owners and players were fighting for a new collective bargaining agreement, Stern walked into the locker room with the Eastern and Western All-Stars gathered at the 2011 All-Star Weekend in Los Angeles --- and essentially threatened the players to fall into line before a July 1 lockout date:
"I know where the bodies are buried in the NBA, because I put some of them there," Stern blurted.
When I asked Derrick Rose, the 2011 MVP, about it several days later before it had become public, he seemed more impressed than irritated. "It was shocking. I was taking off my gear. ... I just stopped and thought, 'Whoa ... I couldn't believe that he said it.'"
Whether Stern truly meted out retribution to those who crossed him is probably more folklore than fact. Yet Stern did traffic in the threat of retaliation. He survived Tim Donaghy, Donald Sterling, Jordan's gambling, the Malice at the Palace and killing the Lakers trade for Chris Paul. He instituted salary caps, max contracts and dress codes. He negotiated Yao Ming's passage to the NBA, opening up billions of dollars in Chinese basketball revenue. His job was to deliver revenue to his owners, but he lamented how that Chinese partnership promised to bring an eventual ethical reckoning to the NBA, too.
For all the volatility and blunt force, there was an incredibly progressive, generous and compassionate side to Stern. Noam Galai/Getty Images
Stern had a penchant to lord over the NBA as though it were a mom-and-pop shop in his native Teaneck, New Jersey. In the late 1990s, Jennifer Keene was riding down to the lobby of Olympic Tower. The elevator stopped, the doors opened and there appeared Stern. Just the commissioner and a 24-year-old licensing assistant in the old consumer products group. Her responsibilities included the Spalding ball account.
"At the time, there were big problems with the original orange and oatmeal WNBA game ball, and he wanted them off the shelves ASAP," Keene said. She knew part of his thinking from her superiors but never imagined Stern had even a remote awareness of her existence.
Get the best of ESPN sent to your inboxThe ESPN Daily delivers the biggest sports news and moments every weekday.
Sign me up!
Privacy PolicyRead the Latest
Without so much as a hello, the NBA commissioner turned to a young Keene and blurted: "How many balls are left on the shelves? Modells? Sports Authority?"
In every elevator shaft, every room, Stern was a force of nature. For all the volatility and blunt force, there was an incredibly progressive, generous and compassionate side to Stern. The NBA played a leading role in HIV and AIDS awareness. Stern refused to let the league become overrun with irrational fears in the wake of Magic Johnson's diagnosis in 1991. Minorities and women were elevated into prominent positions in larger numbers and greater frequency than in other professional leagues.
There are stories of NBA employees with family crises that credit Stern with remarkable acts of kindness and generosity. In his pre-NBA days as an attorney, Stern took on and won a massive housing discrimination case for African Americans in Northern New Jersey, and did so pro bono.
Stern was a Jersey kid with a Rutgers degree and Manhattan law firm ambitions. In the NBA, he found the mechanism to expand his world far beyond the George Washington Bridge and Lincoln Tunnel. As commissioner, transcendent NBA stars became global icons -- and inspired the imagination of young players everywhere.
In 1984, his first year as commissioner, Stern welcomed a South American basketball and soccer analyst named Adrian Paenza into his Manhattan office and offered his Argentina Channel 9 the rights to air weekly NBA highlights. The price: $2,000 a year. So every Sunday at midnight, there was Magic and Michael and Bird arriving in a faraway land where children had mostly dreamed of soccer stardom.
Manu Ginobili watched those highlights every week, rushing outside the next day to try those moves for himself. "When I was a kid, I didn't even dream of playing in the NBA," Ginobili once told me. "Nobody ever from Argentina played in the NBA when I was 10. I was watching MJ's [highlights] and thinking he was from another planet, that he was unreachable, untouchable -- the same as Magic and Larry.
"And then I find myself, years later, raising the same trophy as they did."
On his way to conquering the world, Stern spared no one in his path. In the twilight of his tenure, he became too cantankerous, stayed too long on the job. When the next generation of owners and players had little interest in bowing to a throne, Stern's standing as emperor eroded. He walked out a beleaguered, tired man at 72 years old in 2014. Stern wasn't the only NBA superstar to stay too long.
Through it all, most will remember an American sporting life for the ages. Big ideas, big markets, big stars, big world: David Joel Stern conquered it all.
How David Stern Impacted Footwear and Fashion in the NBA
By Peter Verry
PETER VERRY
MORE STORIES BY
Former NBA commissioner David Stern.
CREDIT: AP
Former NBA commissioner David Stern, who died at 77 on Wednesday, led the league during a period of exponential growth over the course of 30 years, before stepping down in 2014. During his tenure, he was at the forefront of several milestones and accomplishments. Among them — perhaps an unintended one — Stern helped usher in fashion to the league.
In 2005, the then-commissioner instituted a dress code for players, requiring them to wear business-casual clothing during team and league events. Although there was backlash at the time, much of today’s crop of ballers are now fashion-focused and use those moments to showcase their style.
Retired NBA star Dwyane Wade — one of the most style-conscious athletes the league had ever seen — told FN in June 2017 that players have not only embraced fashion, they want to out-dress one another. (Wade even gave Stern some credit for the league’s current fashion obsession.)
Related
Sneakers Were the 'It' Purchase for Holiday Shoppers This Year, Says Afterpay
These Are the Sneakers That Will Dominate 2020
7 Shoes That Nearly Broke the Internet in 2019
“As athletes, what we did was make it competitive among each other. Everybody wanted the walk into the arena to be their runway because they were talking about our outfits on TV,” Wade told FN in 2017. “It became a different kind of competition before the game.”
One of the league’s brightest young stars, Kyle Kuzma of the Los Angeles Lakers, told FN in November that looking sharp in the tunnel ahead of the game is a must nowadays.
“The NBA is a place where they allow us to do so many different things to express ourselves. The tunnel runway took a whole 180. A couple of years ago, you didn’t hear too much about the tunnel, but now [showing off outfits there is] just as important as the game,” Kuzma told FN.
Fashion has also become a business venture for several athletes in the NBA, including Wade, who has launched collections with Amazon Fashion featuring more than 100 apparel pieces and accessories. Additionally, ballers such as Carmelo Anthony and Russell Westbrook have also developed lines to showcase personal style.
Models outfitted in Carmelo Anthony’s “Melo Made 2” collection at NYFW.
CREDIT: PETER VERRY
Stern’s enforcement of league footwear rules is also largely credited for the rise of one of the most beloved sneakers of all time.
In 1984, the league sent a letter to Nike stating the “black and red Nike basketball shoes” that hoops icon Michael Jordan wore “on or around October 18, 1984” violated league rules. Although many have questioned which shoe style was actually worn by Jordan — whether it was the Air Jordan 1 or the Air Ship — the Swoosh used the moment to promote its signature sneaker for the baller.
“On September 15, Nike created a revolutionary new basketball shoe. On October 18, the NBA threw them out of the game. Fortunately, the NBA can’t stop you from wearing them,” said the narrator during a 30-second commercial for the Air Jordan 1 released more than 30 years ago.
Today, the “Banned” Air Jordan 1 High remains one of the most sought-after sneakers by collectors and hoops fans alike.
After Stern’s retirement announcement in 2014, Jordan Brand president Larry Miller told Complex that Stern deserves credit for helping build the community of sneaker fanatics.
“Some controversies have actually helped to build the sneaker culture,” Miller told Complex in 2014. “David has been a great part of that. What he was doing at the NBA directly impacted us in terms of making sneakers cool.”
Miller continued, “I’m a big fan of David Stern. I think he’s done a great job with the NBA and working with Nike and the other shoe companies of the world, he’s really helped build the culture that exists around sneakers today.”
It’s also worth noting Miller’s mentioning of shoe companies of the world.
Among his other career accomplishments, Stern helped develop the Dream Team, the lineup of NBA stars who competed in the 1992 Olympics. The team won the gold medal, but that was a smaller victory compared to the long-term impact of those games: The NBA gained worldwide recognition, and basketball’s popularity grew exponentially on a global scale. Today, the league is inundated with stars from abroad, and some of the best to ever hit an NBA court weren’t born in the U.S. (including German-born Dirk Nowitzki and China’s Yao Ming, among many others).
And over the years, not only have international athletes become involved in the sport, but global footwear brands have increasingly inked sponsorship deals with NBA players. Today, some of the biggest stars in the league are backed by labels from abroad: Gordon Hayward and Klay Thompson, for example, are both signed to China-based Anta, and others have created their own brands with foreign companies, such as Wade’s Way of Wade venture with China’s Li-Ning.
By Peter Verry
PETER VERRY
MORE STORIES BY
- How David Stern Impacted Footwear and Fashion in the NBA
- NBA Star Jimmy Butler and Jordan Brand End Partnership Early, According to Reports
- How to Tell If Your Yeezy Sneakers Are Fake
Former NBA commissioner David Stern.
CREDIT: AP
Former NBA commissioner David Stern, who died at 77 on Wednesday, led the league during a period of exponential growth over the course of 30 years, before stepping down in 2014. During his tenure, he was at the forefront of several milestones and accomplishments. Among them — perhaps an unintended one — Stern helped usher in fashion to the league.
In 2005, the then-commissioner instituted a dress code for players, requiring them to wear business-casual clothing during team and league events. Although there was backlash at the time, much of today’s crop of ballers are now fashion-focused and use those moments to showcase their style.
Retired NBA star Dwyane Wade — one of the most style-conscious athletes the league had ever seen — told FN in June 2017 that players have not only embraced fashion, they want to out-dress one another. (Wade even gave Stern some credit for the league’s current fashion obsession.)
Related
Sneakers Were the 'It' Purchase for Holiday Shoppers This Year, Says Afterpay
These Are the Sneakers That Will Dominate 2020
7 Shoes That Nearly Broke the Internet in 2019
“As athletes, what we did was make it competitive among each other. Everybody wanted the walk into the arena to be their runway because they were talking about our outfits on TV,” Wade told FN in 2017. “It became a different kind of competition before the game.”
One of the league’s brightest young stars, Kyle Kuzma of the Los Angeles Lakers, told FN in November that looking sharp in the tunnel ahead of the game is a must nowadays.
“The NBA is a place where they allow us to do so many different things to express ourselves. The tunnel runway took a whole 180. A couple of years ago, you didn’t hear too much about the tunnel, but now [showing off outfits there is] just as important as the game,” Kuzma told FN.
Fashion has also become a business venture for several athletes in the NBA, including Wade, who has launched collections with Amazon Fashion featuring more than 100 apparel pieces and accessories. Additionally, ballers such as Carmelo Anthony and Russell Westbrook have also developed lines to showcase personal style.
Models outfitted in Carmelo Anthony’s “Melo Made 2” collection at NYFW.
CREDIT: PETER VERRY
Stern’s enforcement of league footwear rules is also largely credited for the rise of one of the most beloved sneakers of all time.
In 1984, the league sent a letter to Nike stating the “black and red Nike basketball shoes” that hoops icon Michael Jordan wore “on or around October 18, 1984” violated league rules. Although many have questioned which shoe style was actually worn by Jordan — whether it was the Air Jordan 1 or the Air Ship — the Swoosh used the moment to promote its signature sneaker for the baller.
“On September 15, Nike created a revolutionary new basketball shoe. On October 18, the NBA threw them out of the game. Fortunately, the NBA can’t stop you from wearing them,” said the narrator during a 30-second commercial for the Air Jordan 1 released more than 30 years ago.
Today, the “Banned” Air Jordan 1 High remains one of the most sought-after sneakers by collectors and hoops fans alike.
After Stern’s retirement announcement in 2014, Jordan Brand president Larry Miller told Complex that Stern deserves credit for helping build the community of sneaker fanatics.
“Some controversies have actually helped to build the sneaker culture,” Miller told Complex in 2014. “David has been a great part of that. What he was doing at the NBA directly impacted us in terms of making sneakers cool.”
Miller continued, “I’m a big fan of David Stern. I think he’s done a great job with the NBA and working with Nike and the other shoe companies of the world, he’s really helped build the culture that exists around sneakers today.”
It’s also worth noting Miller’s mentioning of shoe companies of the world.
Among his other career accomplishments, Stern helped develop the Dream Team, the lineup of NBA stars who competed in the 1992 Olympics. The team won the gold medal, but that was a smaller victory compared to the long-term impact of those games: The NBA gained worldwide recognition, and basketball’s popularity grew exponentially on a global scale. Today, the league is inundated with stars from abroad, and some of the best to ever hit an NBA court weren’t born in the U.S. (including German-born Dirk Nowitzki and China’s Yao Ming, among many others).
And over the years, not only have international athletes become involved in the sport, but global footwear brands have increasingly inked sponsorship deals with NBA players. Today, some of the biggest stars in the league are backed by labels from abroad: Gordon Hayward and Klay Thompson, for example, are both signed to China-based Anta, and others have created their own brands with foreign companies, such as Wade’s Way of Wade venture with China’s Li-Ning.
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