ORLANDO, Fla. -- NBA commissioner David Stern has always insisted that business was upbeat, even when his owners were claiming losses of more than $1 billion in the three-year march toward the recent lockout. But this time the news really was good. As Stern reported Saturday night during All-Star weekend, NBA ratings and attendance have gone up in spite of the lockout and inconsistency of play enforced by the condensed schedule.
Did you hear the news? Every team in the NBA just traded for Hornets star Chris Paul, only to have the trades voided, because they were not in the best interests of the Hornets, who are owned by every team in the NBA. Confused? Shut up and renew your season tickets.
The dark cloud started to form weeks ago, settling near the Manhattan intersection of 51st and 5th and rising rapidly up toward the NBA's offices in Olympic Tower. What if we have to do it? What if, as owner of the New Orleans Hornets, we have to approve a trade for Chris Paul?
NEW YORK -- After an exhausting, 149-day work stoppage that threatened to wipe out the first full season in NBA history, the league's owners and players agreed to a tentative new collective bargaining agreement, commissioner David Stern and union executive director Billy Hunter announced early Saturday.
Here is the last, best hope for the NBA.
The National Basketball Players' Association will meet with its 30 player representatives Monday morning in New York to discuss the owners' latest proposal, multiple sources confirmed to SI.com.
At long last, the NBA looks forward to a day of promise. For the first time since Dirk Nowitzki's Mavericks finished off LeBron James' Heat in the NBA Finals four months ago, the league is within reach of rescuing itself from ruin.
Adam Silver tried. Give him that much.
NEW YORK (AP) -- After another long day of negotiations, NBA players and owners left with nothing more than plans for another meeting.
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- The gunslinging was over.
NEW YORK -- Just past 9 p.m. on Monday, minutes after a seven-hour collective-bargaining session between the NBA and the players' association had wrapped, a solemn David Stern emerged and delivered the bad news: The first two weeks of the regular season had been canceled. Later, as deputy commissioner Adam Silver, union president Derek Fisher, executive director Billy Hunter and outside counsel Jeffrey Kessler addressed the media, there was a palpable sense that these would not be the last cancellations, either.
NEW YORK -- Late Tuesday afternoon, following more than three hours of mostly fruitless collective bargaining negotiations, NBA commissioner David Stern, deputy commissioner Adam Silver and San Antonio Spurs owner Peter Holt approached the union representatives with an informal offer. According to the NBA, that offer -- made to union attorney Jeffrey Kessler, president Derek Fisher and players Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett -- was for a straight 50-50 split of all basketball-related income, under the current definition of BRI.
NEW YORK -- The threatened "enormous consequences'' have yet to appear, but they will be revealed soon enough. Two days of extended negotiations concluded Saturday with little optimism that the NBA owners and players can end their lockout in time to rescue the full 82-game schedule.
NEW YORK -- No deal is imminent, and ending the lockout may not be possible in time to save a full 82-game season. So went the sobering message that was delivered between the lines Friday, at the end of the first day of a long weekend of NBA lockout negotiations.
It seems hopeless. It's not. I absolutely believe there will be an NBA season. Not a whole season. Maybe not even two-thirds of a season. But there will be games leading to the playoffs, culminating in a championship for somebody, because one man needs that to happen. His name is David Stern.
NEW YORK -- "It's good that we're meeting."
It took 10 minutes, six questions and a run through a surprisingly large contingent of Sacramento media for NBA commissioner David Stern and deputy commissioner Adam Silver to address the league's ongoing labor situation on Friday.
LOS ANGELES -- The paradox was laid out by commissioner David Stern, who opened his annual state-of-the-NBA news conference Saturday by declaring: "The game is in great shape. It's never been better.'' And then he spent the ensuing hour explaining why his league may not play a single game next season.
Now that commissioner David Stern essentially owns the Hornets after the NBA purchased the team Monday from majority stakeholder George Shinn, what is the likelihood the team will remain in New Orleans? Small odds they stay put, I say.
Are "foreclosure mills" giving homeowners a raw deal? CNN's Drew Griffin reports.
I am not here to rip David Stern. In fact, if I start a major professional sports league tomorrow, which seems unlikely, I would ask Stern to be the commissioner. He has a grasp on every aspect of his job and his sport, he taps into new revenue streams, he admits mistakes, he encourages his players and coaches to show their personalities, and most important, he seems to genuinely care about fans.
He didn't raise his voice or slam his fist. He didn't resort to theatrics during a 30-minute press briefing on Monday. NBA commissioner David Stern didn't once look annoyed. But his message to the players' union on Monday couldn't have been clearer: Get ready to makes some concessions, because what's going on now simply isn't going to go on much longer.
NBA Players Association executive director Billy Hunter said on Thursday that the union is in the process of engineering a proposal for a new collective bargaining agreement and will submit it to the league before the end of June.
DALLAS -- NBA labor negotiations have turned even more contentious earlier than perhaps anybody, including the union, anticipated.
David Stern's smile was meant to take the edge off his knifing statement."This year,'' the NBA commissioner told reporters in Dallas on Saturday, "we are projecting a league-wide loss of about $400 million."
As part of SI.com's all-decade project highlighting the best and worst of sports in the 2000s, I asked commissioner David Stern to examine the last 10 years while also envisioning what the future may hold -- including legalized sports betting on NBA games, unadulterated zone defenses, a possible lockout and a new form of expansion to Latin America.
This will be the sports equivalent of putting a man on the moon ... and I'm not the only believer.
One by one, they'll be going through the act -- either this week during the early signing period or next spring: Pick a college. Get ready to go there for a year. Make David Stern happy. Pretend they want to do it.
NBA Commissioner David Stern ought to be tucking into a celebratory bowl of borscht right now at the Russian Tea Room, which is a few blocks from the NBA's offices in Manhattan's Olympic Tower.
It was the closest thing to banter during NBA commissioner David Stern's preseason taping for The Charlie Rose Show, a momentary step back from the relaxed questions and answers of the Emmy Award-winning interviewer's signature conversations:
As is sometimes the case, what should've been the worst moment turned out to be one of the best. I had been flying most of the night, from Rome to Moscow, on a private plane with commissioner David Stern and a few other NBA types during the league's preseason Europe Live tour in October 2006. Fog intervened and we had to divert from Sheremetyevo Airport to Domodedovo, a more remote airport, far from suburban Moscow. Our stiffened bodies alighted just after dawn, and our Soviet-style reception was chillier than the freezing weather outside. There were red-tape issues, and we sat, shivering, in a small room in what could generously be called "the terminal." A small TV was on, and on it was Vice President Dick Cheney.
One hundred years on, when most of today's famous names are gone and forgotten, David Stern will be remembered. Never mind his role in instituting a salary cap or his rash insistence on marrying his league to hip-hop -- all of that will be forgotten too. Of lasting importance will be his vision for the NBA as a global entity, and in generations to come he will be remembered around the world for exploring international possibilities that no one else saw coming.
It's a lot harder to laugh at the NBA conspiracy theorists today, isn't it?
The NBA's on-and-off approach to expansion into Europe is back on again. Commissioner David Stern is considering new plans to create five full-fledged NBA franchises in Europe over the next decade, a league source told SI.com.
Though it doesn't come out in his somber pronouncements about fines and suspensions, the free-market imperative to grow the sport, and, of course, the hellfire reserved for officials who conspire with gamblers, David Stern does possess an excellent feel for the rhythm and tempo of his game. When he watches the NBA at home or in hotel rooms, Stern confessed in a recent interview, he sometimes finds himself leaping from his seat and hollering at the TV. "How can you make that call! Are you blind?" And as a fan, not to mention a commissioner, he's well aware of the unpleasantness in the NBA ether this season. Forget the lowest TV ratings ever for the Finals last spring and the embarrassing dirty laundry aired by the Knicks in federal court before training camps opened; one calamity trumps them all. On Jan. 28, Tim Donaghy is scheduled to be sentenced in federal court for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to transmit gambling information across state lines. The sentencing
LONDON -- The NBA Europe Live 2007 tour is all about diplomacy and marketing, far less about real news or bothersome offseason headlines (in this case, quite literally).
Six weeks have passed since NBA commissioner David Stern let us all know that he was shocked -- shocked! -- to find that gambling was going on in his league, in his initial public comments about rogue referee Tim Donaghy's criminal activity.
The NBA has steered clear of major scandal for the better part of David Stern's 23-year tenure as commissioner. On a warm summer morning here Tuesday, however, Stern faced the cold reality that his league is in crisis.
On Tuesday, commissioner David Stern laid out the extensive efforts he has made to supervise his game officials. He made it sound as if there was nothing more he could have done to prevent the alleged betting scandal involving referee Tim Donaghy.
The league's commissioner is mighty sorrowful as he tries to overwhelm a betting scandal with contrition
Smug. Imperious. Self-satisfied. Prideful.
CLEVELAND -- Commissioner David Stern responded to the record-low TV ratings for the NBA Finals by saying that they were a sign of the changing media times.
LAS VEGAS -- NBA commissioner David Stern has asked Las Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman to come up with a compromise on sports betting -- the strongest signal yet of the NBA's intention to place a team in Las Vegas.
CNNMoney: Cuban's latest gambleupdated: Thu Dec 02 2004 07:28:00
Compared to Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, NBA bad boy Ron Artest might be Commissioner David Stern's best friend.
National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern said Wednesday it would be good for the league if Michael Jordan were to become a franchise owner, and he believes it will happen sooner rather than later.
Money Magazine: Quotablesupdated: Thu Apr 01 2004 00:01:00
"We're still negotiating that" --Recently divorced Jack Welch, on how he and fiancée Suzy Wetlaufer will split a reported $4 million advance for a management book
David Stern, his tie loosened and askew over a crisp white shirt, is sitting by a picture window in a conference room at the National Basketball Association's Fifth Avenue headquarters. Outside, sn...
Forget about going to Disneyland. Now that the NBA season is over, basketball's big stars are headed for more exotic locales: Shaquille O'Neal to South Korea, Karl Malone to Hong Kong, Allen Iverso...
He has just passed perhaps the most crucial test of his career, so you expect to find David Stern, the amiable, 53-year-old commissioner of the National Basketball Association, bouncing off walls--...
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