David Sterns’s Tumor

After tonight, I’m sure it’s in there somewhere…

As NBA commissioner, David Stern has made sure that the kids understand how vital it is to have a pair of his player’s sneakers. He’s promoted the game for years now as if every single fan out there is a kid who wants to be like Mike. Diluting the value of a franchise’s players, while risking serious injury, he has made it a point to ensure that a tired batch of meal tickets get embarrassed annually in some international tournament that nobody in this country even gives a shit about anyway. And then to compensate for the fact that his product consists of a couple hundred young millionaires, many of whom grew up on some very mean streets, he has introduced “mandatory minimums” and kept them in place year after year, in spite of the arbitrary way they have helped to ruin entire seasons.

The Phoenix Suns, their fans and also fans like me, who deserved better this year, can all attest to this. I was sitting in a hotel room in Venice, CA in 1997, when Stern’s brainchild turned an assault of a point guard by a power forward into the worst miscarriage of justice his leadership had yet to produce. PJ Brown chucked a much smaller Charlie Ward into the stands behind one of the baselines, and somehow the Knicks ended up being the team with 4 players suspended. Rules and discipline had nothing to do with the decisions that were handed down, but rather the general mindset of this man and how the natural physicality and raw emotion of this great sport of basketball offends him so much, that whenever anything bad happens, all you can hear is “Shakedown!” as prison warden Stern puts the organization on high alert, with guards swapping out rubber bullets for the real deal should any of the inmates happen to step one foot over one of those painted lines on the floor.

That’s who he is and that is what his influence has created here. So 10 years later another power forward decides to take out his aggression on a point guard, and again the natural instinct of a couple of players to stand up for their teammate caused them to take a single step onto the court from the bench area. Neither Diaw nor Stoudamire got close enough to the action to even spit on anyone involved, and both moved back onto the sidelines. There was absolutely no malicious intent on the part of a single player on that court, besides of course the one that initiated the violence in the first place. Nonetheless, mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines are not something that can be overruled by a lower court, and in a situation where David Stern must choose between the game of basketball or a Napoleon-moment for himself, he always chooses wrong.

Indeed, the arbitrary authoritarianism Stern embodies is the essence of how the NBA treats both its players and its fans these days. They are big young guys full of adrenaline, and we are all young, impressionable and bound to learn our most valuable life lessons from a sport we watch on TV. The players are necessary to have a sport in the first place, but in Stern’s mind if you don’t keep them on a short leash, one of these nights they’ll end up somehow causing an entire arena to collapse. What will America think of the sport then? 25,000 fans died because the commissioner wasn’t willing to institute gag orders and mandatory minimums…’they’d tear me apart in the papers’! So the fines are handed out for anyone that even thinks something negative towards the league or its proud ruler, and the lines on the floor of this bloc are there for a reason.

Same goes for draft picks! Unlike every other professional sport on the planet, the NBA doesn’t grant the worst teams with the opportunity to draft the best players coming out of college that year. The draft order is decided by a lottery. This year that lottery managed to give the three teams with the worst records the 4th, 5th and 6th picks respectively. Somehow this nonsense adds value to the sport in Stern’s mind, as do the mandatory minimums and filling up the USA teams with stars who need the off season to rest. And so, the fans of a city like Boston, Milwaukee or Memphis end up lingering in the ether a year or two longer, or perhaps forever if the FUCKING PING-PONG BALLS DECIDE that’s the way it should be. Like there isn’t enough injustice in this world already.