David Stern

[TBrown]

The death of defensive basketball. Small market teams. Seattle. Hand checks. Flopping. Chris Paul/Hornets. Tim Donaghy. The condensed season. Draft age requirement. Olympics. Just to name the glaring examples.

The NBA has grown while Stern's been in charge, but the guy's a massive doosh. The NBA was better by orders of magnitude 15+ years ago, and its decline is just about 100% Stern's fault.

tl;dr: **** Stern

Yes.

 

[TOP]

I guess if it brings in more fans. The root of the issue is in stereotypes, IMO. If it's hockey guys fighting they are loveable goons. If it's NBA players then they are thugs and we can't have our kids see that. I think the thuggish image is a result of perception moreso than it is reality.

That's kind of like comparing apples to oranges though. You wouldn't call mma fighters thugs because the sport allows it. You would call them thugs if they went around beating up people in the streets though because it's not allowed. Kind of the same thing with hockey and basketball... hockey basically endorses it and it's part of the sport. They'll watch two guys slug it out and then put em in the box for a few minutes. In basketball, they don't allow it. They'll immediately break it up, toss you out of the game and possibly suspend you for multiple games.

Maybe I just view it differently than you but there is a difference between fighting when rules allow it and fighting when rules don't allow it. Fighting may be fighting but when you're told not to do so and can't control yourself, that's kind of thuggish, right? If you're told you can fight and everybody is on board, meh. It's why I love watching UFC but hate when people fight in society. I'm all for organized fighting and there is an aspect of NHL that falls under that category. The NBA is totally against it though and therein lies the problem.

Unfair or not, it also doesn't help that a lot of basketball players are covered in tattoos and talk like idiots. That doesn't help the image and just last night you had Jordan Crawford say to Carmelo Anthony, "Dat motherf'er f'd your wife" as a fight proceeded to break out.

You've also got guys like Paul Pierce who got stabbed multiple times in a club fight and some people believe he flashed the Bloods gang sign during a game.

Kobe Bryant was accused of rape, paid the woman off and bought his wife a ring because at the very least, he cheated on her. A lot of people cheat so it's not a huge deal but everything mentioned above comes off looking bad.

Michael Jordan also cheated on his wife and had an illegitimate child.

Do you recall the Jarvis Crittenton and Gilbert Arenas gambling debt? Arenas brought guns into the locker room and told Crittenton to pick one. That resulted in Crittenton pulling out his own gun. Crittenton is now involved with murder and in the Crips gang after having attended Georgia Tech of all places.

Ron Artest ran into the crowd to beat up the wrong fans after having a soda hurled at him. Stephen Jackson followed him into the crowd to help and Jermaine O'neal laid a fan out that ran onto the court.

Lance Stephenson threw his pregnant girlfriend down a staircase and then proceed to walk down the stairs, grab her by the head and smack her face against the staircase again.

Birdman was banned from the NBA for 2 years because of drugs.

You've got JR Smith asking a high school girl on twitter if she wants to hit the pipe(suck him off).

And the list goes on...


I'm not saying having tattoos and talking stupid makes you a thug but some of them are. Maybe the NBA gets a bad rap but it's not all just perception. You have gang members and guys bringing guns into locker rooms. That's reality because it happened.

 

[Vercingetorix]

The death of defensive basketball. Small market teams. Seattle. Hand checks. Flopping. Chris Paul/Hornets. Tim Donaghy. The condensed season. Draft age requirement. Olympics. Just to name the glaring examples.

The NBA has grown while Stern's been in charge, but the guy's a massive doosh. The NBA was better by orders of magnitude 15+ years ago, and its decline is just about 100% Stern's fault.

tl;dr: **** Stern

All that is true. But I'm not sure how well younger guys really understand how moribund and generally irrelevant the NBA was before David Stern's tenure started. It was almost as regional a sport then as, say, MLS is now.

I'm not really defending Stern. I don't like him; I agree he's an ass; almost everything that he's done in his imperial dotage (ie, the second half of his tenure) has been dead ass wrong. But to say that the NBA has grown under his rule is an enormous understatement, and even if it's the only item on the positive side of the ledger, it's a huge one.

 

[TOP]

And for the record, I think David Stern is a shady slime ball.

I believe he's rigged playoff series and wouldn't be surprised if he has rigged drafts. Lakers/Kings, Lakers/Blazers, Heat/Mavs(2006), Knicks/Ewing, Bulls/Rose and Hornets getting the #1 pick(Anthony Davis) when the NBA controlled the Hornets. He also blocked CP3 going to the Lakers when the NBA controlled the Hornets. Pretty shady stuff in my book.

 

[Nerd-Vol]

That's kind of like comparing apples to oranges though. You wouldn't call mma fighters thugs because the sport allows it. You would call them thugs if they went around beating up people in the streets though because it's not allowed. Kind of the same thing with hockey and basketball... hockey basically endorses it and it's part of the sport. They'll watch two guys slug it out and then put em in the box for a few minutes. In basketball, they don't allow it. They'll immediately break it up, toss you out of the game and possibly suspend you for multiple games.

Maybe I just view it differently than you but there is a difference between fighting when rules allow it and fighting when rules don't allow it. Fighting may be fighting but when you're told not to do so and can't control yourself, that's kind of thuggish, right? If you're told you can fight and everybody is on board, meh. It's why I love watching UFC but hate when people fight in society. I'm all for organized fighting and there is an aspect of NHL that falls under that category. The NBA is totally against it though and therein lies the problem.

Unfair or not, it also doesn't help that a lot of basketball players are covered in tattoos and talk like idiots. That doesn't help the image and just last night you had Jordan Crawford say to Carmelo Anthony, "Dat motherf'er f'd your wife" as a fight proceeded to break out.

You've also got guys like Paul Pierce who got stabbed multiple times in a club fight and some people believe he flashed the Bloods gang sign during a game.

Kobe Bryant was accused of rape, paid the woman off and bought his wife a ring because at the very least, he cheated on her. A lot of people cheat so it's not a huge deal but everything mentioned above comes off looking bad.

Michael Jordan also cheated on his wife and had an illegitimate child.

Do you recall the Jarvis Crittenton and Gilbert Arenas gambling debt? Arenas brought guns into the locker room and told Crittenton to pick one. That resulted in Crittenton pulling out his own gun. Crittenton is now involved with murder and in the Crips gang after having attended Georgia Tech of all places.

Ron Artest ran into the crowd to beat up the wrong fans after having a soda hurled at him. Stephen Jackson followed him into the crowd to help and Jermaine O'neal laid a fan out that ran onto the court.

Lance Stephenson threw his pregnant girlfriend down a staircase and then proceed to walk down the stairs, grab her by the head and smack her face against the staircase again.

Birdman was banned from the NBA for 2 years because of drugs.

You've got JR Smith asking a high school girl on twitter if she wants to hit the pipe(suck him off).

And the list goes on...


I'm not saying having tattoos and talking stupid makes you a thug but some of them are. Maybe the NBA gets a bad rap but it's not all just perception. You have gang members and guys bringing guns into locker rooms. That's reality because it happened.

Ooh! Do one for the nfl. How is their thug image compared to the nba.

 

[Vercingetorix]

Maybe I just view it differently than you but there is a difference between fighting when rules allow it and fighting when rules don't allow it. Fighting may be fighting but when you're told not to do so and can't control yourself, that's kind of thuggish, right? If you're told you can fight and everybody is on board, meh. It's why I love watching UFC but hate when people fight in society. I'm all for organized fighting and there is an aspect of NHL that falls under that category. The NBA is totally against it though and therein lies the problem.

I don't disagree with this. But the biggest reason Stern took a completely hard line against any sort of fighting is that he was selling a predominantly black league to a white America that's already itching to label young black men as thugs at the drop of a hat. The NBA was vastly more physical in the 70s and 80s, and occasionally it spilled over into blows. And back then it wasn't that big a deal.

 

[milohimself]

All that is true. But I'm not sure how well younger guys really understand how moribund and generally irrelevant the NBA was before David Stern's tenure started. It was almost as regional a sport then as, say, MLS is now.

I'm not really defending Stern. I don't like him; I agree he's an ass; almost everything that he's done in his imperial dotage (ie, the second half of his tenure) has been dead ass wrong. But to say that the NBA has grown under his rule is an enormous understatement, and even if it's the only item on the positive side of the ledger, it's a huge one.

Okay, the NBA has made enormous strides under his tenure. Honestly, though, I attribute that growth mostly to the proliferation of the sports highlight/SportsCenter and how the game lends itself to that, and to Michael Jordan. I don't see much of what Stern has done other than simply be there while those things happened.

Much of the growth overseas seems to have occurred organically; many of the major basketball teams in Europe were outgrowths of already established athletics clubs like Barcelona, Real Madrid and Fenerbahçe.

 

[Vercingetorix]

Okay, the NBA has made enormous strides under his tenure. Honestly, though, I attribute that growth mostly to the proliferation of the sports highlight/SportsCenter and how the game lends itself to that, and to Michael Jordan. I don't see much of what Stern has done other than simply be there while those things happened.

Much of the growth overseas seems to have occurred organically; many of the major basketball teams in Europe were outgrowths of already established athletics clubs like Barcelona, Real Madrid and Fenerbahçe.

I guess I see it differently because I watched it as it happened; everything looks inevitable in hindsight. There were great players in the 70s and early 80s and the NBA did nothing to capitalize on them. Sportscenter culture didn't really take off until the 90s. The NBA took off way before that.

Meanwhile Stern stabilized the TV situation. Stern's NBA was able to market Magic/Bird in a way that the NBA had never been able to do with its stars. Stern sanitized the game to some degree and made it palatable to a predominantly white audience that, especially 30 years ago, wasn't eager to embrace its players. Stern navigated his way through four or five labor stoppages without any of them turning disastrous (at least for the league), like baseball and hockey's labor problems did. Other sports have turned in circles and, if anything declined -- despite Sportscenter, despite great players of their own. Stern has run his league in an almost constant upward trajectory for three decades without even really having one serious crisis. I regard that as pretty astonishing.

I completely agree that he's an autocratic ass, swollen with hubris, and at some point he stopped being a benevolent dictator and turned into more of a tyrant. For a young man like yourself, he's been that way for probably every bit of your sports-aware life. (And to an extent, he's probably always been that way -- I am completely open to the possibility that he shamelessly rigged the Patrick Ewing lottery, for example.) But society has changed so much since he took over, and sports has changed so much, and the media we use to consume it all has changed so much, that I think the way Stern has sailed through all that so relatively serenely for thirty years is sort of amazing.

 

[YankeeVol]

I hate that they banned the hand-check. I hate that players like Kevin Durant have moves specifically designed to draw fouls, and if you are going to allow that crap why not give the D a break and allow a hand check? I hate that they allow flopping.

Maybe the biggest factor of all is the way suspensions are assessed for fighting. Something that would get you tossed for 5 games in baseball will get you tossed for 15 games in NBA (and baseball season is twice as long). If you are going to undercut my teammate on a fast break, I might just punch you in the face. Next time you'll think twice about it. Basketball makes a much bigger deal out of this type of activity than any other sport because they are worried about a "thuggish" image. I think the players should be given a little more leniency in "enforcing" a code of conduct on the court.

I mean, look at Mark Jackson...he used to be a tough dude, and he was calling the Nuggets "hitmen". That's how wimpy the league is. He needs to back and watch Bulls/Knicks early 90s.

Race has a part in that unfortunately. According to racial equality activist Richard Lapchick, the NBA in 2011 was composed of 83 percent non-white players, including 78 percent black.

I've heard the NBA called the N***** Basketball Association on many occasions. It amazes me how ignorant people can be.

 

[865dude]

He's a crook! "My dream finals match up is LA vs. LA!" David stern

 

[TennesseeFan07]

He rejected the Chris Paul trade. That, alone, pisses me off. However, compared to the idiot running the NFL, Stern doesn't seem too terrible.

 

[Scotty's Flat Top]

Are you and Vol In Nati the same person? Maybe you can help me figure out WTF your collective point is.

Still tryna decide if this is an insult or not

 

[VOLinthaNATI]

Still tryna decide if this is an insult or not

Don't flatter yourself.

You ain't on my level.

 

[VOLinthaNATI]

Yeah. I don't know if you've seen a basketball game, but the refs miss calls sometimes.

There is hand checking on every single possession. Do they miss all those?

 

[Scotty's Flat Top]

Don't flatter yourself.

You ain't on my level.

Guess that settles it. Open and shut case, Johnson.

 

[n_huffhines]

There is hand checking on every single possession. Do they miss all those?

Even if the rule goes unenforced frequently the rule has changed how the game is played to some degree. I actually see this as support for the case that defensive ability is better than ever right now in the NBA. It seems* like scoring % was higher in the 80s and 90s when hand checking was more pervasive.

*Maybe I think that because I mostly look at stats of players from the 80s that were good.

 

[Scotty's Flat Top]

Even if the rule goes unenforced frequently the rule has changed how the game is played to some degree. I actually see this as support for the case that defensive ability is better than ever right now in the NBA. It seems* like scoring % was higher in the 80s and 90s when hand checking was more pervasive.

*Maybe I think that because I mostly look at stats of players from the 80s that were good.

Ding, ding, ding! Look at you actually acknowledging independent variables with your statistics for a change. Proud of you Hines. Thats a big step in the relentless pursuit of your continual development as reputable VN poster.

 

[n_huffhines]

Ding, ding, ding! Look at you actually acknowledging independent variables with your statistics for a change. Proud of you Hines. Thats a big step in the relentless pursuit of your continual development as reputable VN poster.

That would be a sampling bias issue. I know what I'm doing.

 

[bleedorange0037]

I guess if it brings in more fans. The root of the issue is in stereotypes, IMO. If it's hockey guys fighting they are loveable goons. If it's NBA players then they are thugs and we can't have our kids see that. I think the thuggish image is a result of perception moreso than it is reality.

It certainly didn't help the NBA when about 10 years ago an on-court fight got so out of hand that you had fans pelting players with beer and players running into the stands to engage the fans in the fighting. I think they were are so terrified of something like that ever happening again that they've gone so far the other way and are now giving technicals and suspending players for simple hard fouls in some cases.

 

[milohimself]

I guess I see it differently because I watched it as it happened; everything looks inevitable in hindsight. There were great players in the 70s and early 80s and the NBA did nothing to capitalize on them. Sportscenter culture didn't really take off until the 90s. The NBA took off way before that.

It did, but the Jordan era is far and away the NBA's high water mark.

Meanwhile Stern stabilized the TV situation. Stern's NBA was able to market Magic/Bird in a way that the NBA had never been able to do with its stars. Stern sanitized the game to some degree and made it palatable to a predominantly white audience that, especially 30 years ago, wasn't eager to embrace its players.

Honestly, I think that has to do more with Bird being white than anything else. And I think Bird was predominately responsible for the first surge of TV ratings. Magic and Kareem were great, but I don't think the increase in popularity would have been anywhere near what it was had there not been an elite white player at the same time.

Stern navigated his way through four or five labor stoppages without any of them turning disastrous (at least for the league), like baseball and hockey's labor problems did. Other sports have turned in circles and, if anything declined -- despite Sportscenter, despite great players of their own. Stern has run his league in an almost constant upward trajectory for three decades without even really having one serious crisis. I regard that as pretty astonishing.

That's not what the ratings say. It's hard to say exactly what caused it, because the worst of the lockouts coincided with Jordan's second retirement, but TV ratings in the 00's through today are about two thirds (at best) of what they were during the Jordan era.

The TV ratings for the 97 finals were nearly three times higher than they were for the 07 finals.

Sure, the NBA has avoided a lockout as catastrophic as the MLB's, or multiple as bad as the NHL's, but it certainly didn't come out unscathed and the NBA has not been on an upward trajectory the entire time.

I completely agree that he's an autocratic ass, swollen with hubris, and at some point he stopped being a benevolent dictator and turned into more of a tyrant. For a young man like yourself, he's been that way for probably every bit of your sports-aware life. (And to an extent, he's probably always been that way -- I am completely open to the possibility that he shamelessly rigged the Patrick Ewing lottery, for example.) But society has changed so much since he took over, and sports has changed so much, and the media we use to consume it all has changed so much, that I think the way Stern has sailed through all that so relatively serenely for thirty years is sort of amazing.

I don't see things as all that different. Apples to oranges, but I don't think the NBA has a great deal more prominence now than it did prior to Stern's arrival; that's not to say it didn't soar while he has been running things, but I still think that's due in large part to factors not of his doing.

Most prominently, I still think race plays a huge part in the popularity of the NBA. I already mentioned Bird. Steve Nash winning two MVP's and being undeservedly marketed as an all-time great exemplifies that the NBA is looking for a white superstar.

LeBron may still bring NBA ratings back up if he begins to string championships together.

Overall though, I still think Stern hasn't fundamentally transformed anything about the NBA; before his arrival and now, the league has regional following in the US and abroad, has the potential for massive ratings if the right characters are winning and still largely doesn't connect with a broad swath of white people.

I still find Stern as 1) not having cocked things up to a Bettman-esque degree and 2) having rode a tidal wave consisting of probably the best white player to have ever played the modern game of basketball and unquestionably the best and most charismatic player of all-time.

The NBA's prominence rose with Bird/Magic, carried on with Jordan and has since settled a great deal.