Stern's last days: So long and thanks for all the conspiracy theories.

[fairweatherfan]

As most of you know, Saturday is David Stern's last day as NBA commissioner after 30 years.  He's obviously a controversial figure but the league has unquestionably shown massive growth during his tenure.  Personally I'll miss the guy, especially since it's not like the conspiracy talk will leave with him.  But it's gonna take awhile for draft crowds to really warm up to booing Adam Silver.

[PhoSita]

Stern did a great job, but I'm looking forward to Silver's tenure, if only because I've heard that he's open to considering significant changes to the current systems in place to make the league more balanced and competitive (the lottery system, for example, as well as the way the playoffs are seeded).

[Lucky17]

I fully expect Silver to receive some courtesy boos the first time he steps to the podium during this year's draft.

[fairweatherfan]

I fully expect Silver to receive some courtesy boos the first time he steps to the podium during this year's draft.

I loved the boos Silver got last year immediately after Stern's final pick announcement.  Nice to see a crowd be so savvy.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjihRukbTzc

[D.o.s.]

I thought Bethlehem Shoals' GQ piece was excellent:

As commissioner, you could never have lasted this long on credentials or brute force alone. You've always needed a full-on charm offensive and you've never once disappointed. The zingers, the back-handed banter, the larger-than-life Borscht Belt posturing—while it hasn't always made your decisions go down easy, it's certainly served as ample distraction. You never really had to go on the defensive because, as shtick, you always sort of were. Even at your worst—think the dress code, or the relocation of the Sonics, or the 2010 labor talks--the entertainer was still only a wink away.

Your successor, Adam Silver, is basically David Stern without the personality, the wolf not bothering to slather on some wool. He's you, but instrumental, engineered. That's the thing about you: You've always been a character, in the great American sense. Commissioner is a bureaucratic function. You found a way to make it way more complicated by being too much of a human being, in the best and worst ways possible.

Did you really have a vision or a master plan? You certainly had key points to fight for, like the lawyer you were. But a dream? I honestly don't think so. There were fights to win, jokes to make, and that world-historical standing to affirm, for both you and the league.

Sometimes I think I've elevated you in order to justify liking you as much as I do. Your successor will never be a folk hero, nor inspire the same kind of intense dislike. He'll be judged on results, subjected to the same short leash as everyone else in sports. With you, it was always personal.

The whole thing is here:

http://www.gq.com/blogs/the-feed/2014/01/goodbye-david-stern-commissioner-nba-open-letter.html

[ACF]

T-minus!

[ACF]

You people should be happy. Go ahead and download the pic I attached in my last post. Buh-bye now, Herr Stern!



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[ACF]

[ACF]

Going, going...

[D.o.s.]

A solid Simmons/Stern interview from 2004(?)

BS: In '99 [with the lockout], you grew a beard, you dug in your heels, you were ready to cancel the season … it was almost like poker. You were hoping they would fold, you knew these guys had their money spread all these different ways, right? What was the mind-set heading into the lockout?

DS: We didn't have a business model that worked. And if we didn't make a change then, we would never make a change. The players couldn't afford it, but quite frankly, many of the owners couldn't afford it. Right now we have a system that has a cap, an individual player's cap, a rookie cap, an escrow, and a tax. And by the way, I always believed that the hard cap works for the NFL, but it doesn't work for a league with smaller rosters. [Imagine in the '80s, if teams were saying], when their contracts expired, "All right, who we gonna get rid of, Parish, McHale or Bird?" or, "Who we gonna get rid of, Kareem, Magic or Worthy?" It just didn't make sense. We always wanted a softer cap that allowed teams to retain their own free agents, but we needed to come up with a system that said, "Yes, but you can only pay them a certain amount by the years of service."

BS: I still can't believe the agents agreed to that.

DS: You know, they're smart, they're smart. This was a system that was going to pay the players more … it was about the system. The salary cap keeps going up, the average salary keeps going up. It's really about distribution, to the extent that one player doesn't take out a disproportionate amount so it remains there for the other players.

Now that's a fun one to read with hindsight.



http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/stern/060216

[ACF]

http://touch.dailymotion.com/video/x1k8sw_steam-na-na-hey-hey-kiss-him-goodby_music

 

[D.o.s.]

Another good one, from Charles Pierce:

So, handed a remarkable turn of fortune that he helped engineer, what did David Stern do? Well, he grew the brand, as the marketing people say, and he grew it astonishingly well. The value of the franchises has increased tenfold. There are four television networks broadcasting NBA games worldwide. He has managed to stay ahead of the curve technologically, moving the league into the digital age more smoothly than was the case with many other American industries. The players make gobs of money. David Stern’s work here is done.

However, it has come at a price. By marrying the NBA to its “corporate partners,” and by doing it so thoroughly and so well, Stern has cost the league much of its soul, in the fullest meaning of the word. Both the 1998 and the 2011 lockouts were stupid and unnecessary and seemed more than a little like they were more about control and the authority of Stern’s office than they were about money or anything else. (In 2011, Stern gave preposterous interviews in which, channeling his inner Bud Selig, he maintained that 22 NBA teams were losing money, which, I guarantee you, was not something he was telling his corporate partners, or his good friends over in China. This wasn’t Larry O’Brien and Larry Fleisher operating in rare good faith.) He presided over — and indeed, celebrated — the unconscionable hijacking of a franchise from one of the NBA’s most loyal fan bases in Seattle because the city wouldn’t give in to ensemble blackmail and build the team a new arena. The specter of the days when the NBA was thought to be “too black” never has been far from his decision to knuckle Allen Iverson about rap music and to create and enforce a silly dress code that was applauded by great swaths of the nation’s boring people, and to make a buck off the softer side of hip-hop culture while remaining terrified of its tougher precincts.

There is an essential cowardice in all authoritarians, which becomes more obvious as they tighten their grip. In the long view, it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that the more the NBA prospered, and the more tightly it bound itself to the corporate money that swarmed on that success like bugs on honey, the more nervous it got about how wealthy it had become. The more luxurious the palace, the deeper the moat. And David Stern’s primary job over the past two decades has been to dig the moat. He has been the vehicle of the deep insecurity that has come with the NBA’s headlong success.

He has made the league gleam, but he has sanded off its edges, and let that be his legacy. He made a product that people will buy.

http://grantland.com/features/a-commissioners-legacy/

[Q_FBE]

Now Adam Silver can get his commissioner career off to a great start by granting two expansion franchises to Seattle and Kansas City and then re-aligning the divisions and conferences geographically.

They want to expand overseas? How about giving Seattle a franchise first!!!!

[Eja117]

Stern can go to heck and he can take Joey Crawford with him. Silver has a ways to go to convince me he's not another dictator figuring that WWE story lines won't make them all more money.

[D.o.s.]

Now Adam Silver can get his commissioner career off to a great start by granting two expansion franchises to Seattle and Kansas City and then re-aligning the divisions and conferences geographically.

They want to expand overseas? How about giving Seattle a franchise first!!!!

Why Kansas City?