NBA lockout will determine Stern’s legacy
David Stern officially joined the NBA in 1978, and in 1984 became the league’s fourth commissioner. In his quarter century tenure, Stern presided over an NBA that has evolved into a global force exceedingly more powerful than it was when he started — and by extension, worth many more billions. A lawyer by trade, he has built a huge reputation as a world-class negotiator with a business and marketing savvy unmatched by any of his rivals.
Scratch that. He has no rivals. As I’ve said before and will say again, David Stern is the Michael Jordan of professional sports commissioners.
Through force of reputation and a genuine sense of personality paired with a sense of purpose, Stern demands a certain respect that his commissioner contemporaries (MLB’s Bud Selig, NFL’s Roger Goodell and NHL’s Gary Bettman) do not and will not ever possess. While nearly three decades is going to put its stamp on nearly any professional sports league, the changes Stern and co. has shepherded the NBA through have been staggering; and frankly, quite ballsy.
In what should be of substantial interest to anyone following the NBA lockout, Grantland.com Editor-in-Chief Bill Simmons nabbed an hour long conversation with the NBA commissioner. In it, Stern is surprisingly candid about a variety of topics: the financial impossibility of the current CBA for owners, the benefits of players going overseas, the NFL, revenue sharing, and even on the possibility of team contrition. To his credit, Simmons stoked the fire perfectly, asking the questions NBA fans are both waiting and dreading to hear, and asking them provocatively.
Yet to Stern’s credit, Simmons is also the perfect mouthpiece to relay the NBA’s argument. Simply put, the Commish played the currently-moustachioe’d scribe like a fiddle. Stern doesn’t talk to just anyone and let them put an unedited recording of their free-flowing conversation on the web hours later, but he and Simmons have a collegial rapport and have had one for a while. Stern knew full well that Simmons would have a hard time defending the logic of Billy Hunter and the NBAPA, and at the point we could pounce.
Stern’s major problem with the current CBA is the impossibility of keeping the 57 percent split that that the NBAPA receives off the top of NBA revenues. Additionally, Stern insists teams need shorter contracts to prevent busted contracts that financially cripple teams with underperforming players. In conversation, he is allowed to explain the wishes of the owners, but putting the onus on the players to get in line.
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“This is all about making teams more competitive, hardening the cap, and aligning pay with performance. And yes, the players are being asked to take an eight percent pay cut.”
To Simmons’ B.S. Report audience that measures well into six figures, Stern could plead the case of the NBA owners with little rebuttal from the other side. What was Bill Simmons going to do, turn down a dream interview that no basketball writer could possibly imagine turning down?
When David Stern talks, you listen. The interview is striking due to the combination of Stern’s confidence and his absolute lack of machismo. By extension, his ability to command any conversation illustrates the amount of power that the man yields. Yet, Stern does not own a stake in any NBA team and is a representative of the owners (albeit a very influential and well-connected one). Having served the Association longer than most of the owners themselves and easily longer than any player, he has molded the NBA in a way he sees fit.
There couldn’t have been a more monumental time for Stern to replace Larry O’Brien at the helm of the NBA. In 1983, the NBA’s first salary cap (of $3.2 million!) would come into effect that year. The 1984-85 season was Michael Jordan’s first, as it was for Hakeem Olajuwon, John Stockton and Charles Barkley. In 1985, Stern would tip-toe through conspiracy theories of a supposedly rigged ’85 Draft in the Knicks favor, coming out clean.
Yielding the star power of the ’90s superstars, from Bird and Magic to Jordan to Shaq and Penny, he saw the economic success of the NBA skyrocket and the league’s popularity continue to climb. Under his watch, the Heat, Magic and Timberwolves would enter by 1989-90. Years later the Raptors, Grizzlies and Bobcats would round out the NBA to 30 teams.
In 1995, at the height of a basketball culture war between — let’s not sugar coat it — intolerant white tradition against the aesthetics of African-American basketball culture, Stern imposed a dress code, being the first major pro sports league to do. This happened after the ‘Malice in the Palace’ incident and other smaller brawls and tussles that threatened the positive image of the league Stern had been instrumental in creating.
Of course, this came not without derision from NBA players. Allen Iverson was most notably vocal about the new rule, claiming superficial racism. Debate was quickly quelled and the dress code is now entrenched in the NBA, and considered a non-issue.
In 2005, Stern and co. would re-negotiate the CBA that was in place previous to the 2005-06 season. The biggest change that would take effect would be an imposed age limit of players, a move which created the current “one and done” environment of NCAA basketball. High school talents now have to wait until the age of 19 to enter the league, and most choose to drift for a year in college. Equally controversial, the issue struck similar nerves to the dress code debate in terms of an indirect bias towards African-American players. The issue arguably remains Stern’s most controversial to date.
Since Stern is the Jordan of commissioneering, his legacy will be determined in a similar manner. Both careers will be remembered as having had a number of small triumphs (and minor missteps), but their major victories define them. Central to Jordan’s myth is the double three-peat, less so than the one-off games and dunks. Not only did he do it once, he did it again. Stern is going to have to do something similar. If Malone and Stockton had toppled the ’96 Bulls, our enduring image of Jordan might be him as a weathered Wizard, instead of a fallen Byron Scott at his knees. Just as Stern steered the NBA through the 1998 Lockout, he’ll have to do it again.
In his discussion with Simmons, Stern says that these labor negotiations with likely be his last. If a season is half-assed or missed entirely, none of his triumphs will matter. Regardless of how much the game has grown globally in recent years, Stern’s legacy hinges on how he ushers the NBA through this current storm. It’s the moment for the most influential man in the history of the NBA to hold court.
In basketball, no one is more powerful than David Stern. If the NBA has become an empire, Stern is its Caesar, its Napoleon and its Fidel Castro. In some ways, he runs an autocratic regime of which he is Emperor, though he is elected by the rich owners of NBA teams. In nearly three decades, he has learned to get what he wants. If David Stern wants pigs in a blanket, he gets pigs in a blanket.
The NBA right now is at a breaking point. The situation seems just as dire as in 1998, yet the financial stakes are a lot higher because of the amazing growth in the last two decades. If David Stern wants the legacy he righteously deserves, he needs to get Billy Hunter and the NBAPA to cut down the rhetoric and make the necessary sacrifices to make the NBA financially viable.
Responding to Billy Hunter’s accusations that Stern doesn’t have the sway he once had, Stern was humble but direct: “I smiled at [the accusations]… I think that, if anything, without making it about me, our owners are united. There are no cracks in our ownership… If there is something [the NBA needs], I can deliver it.”
Mr. Stern, please deliver us a 2011-12 NBA season.
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