The 10 Biggest Storylines Of The NBA Season: David Stern & The End Of An Era

With the NBA season only a day away from officially starting, you’ve probably noticed we’ve been pumping out enough preview content to bury even Hasheem Thabeet. Over the past week, we’ve been taking a look at the 10 biggest storylines of the 2013-14 season. Today, we’re talking about David Stern and the end of an era…

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On February 1, 2014, David Stern will step down as NBA commissioner, closing the book on what has been a remarkable, and at times controversial, 30-year career. His tenure makes him the longest-running commissioner in professional sports.

Stern will hand over the reins to deputy commissioner and heir apparent Adam Silver, the man he’s been grooming for the job for the past six years. Silver has worked for the NBA in some capacity since 1992 â€“ including stints as chief of staff, chief operating officer, and special assistant to the commissioner â€“ so it came as no surprise back in October of 2012 when the NBA Board of Governors unanimously approved him as Stern’s successor.

Silver â€“ a lawyer, like Stern â€“ stepped into the spotlight during the 2011 lockout as the lead negotiator for the new collective bargaining agreement. He shares Stern’s unique vision for the league and has been the mastermind behind numerous initiatives designed to develop the NBA as a global brand. Basketball is one of the fastest growing sports in the world, thanks in no small part to the savvy way in which both Stern and Silver have been able to leverage entertainment media for the purposes of expanding the league’s global popularity. Thanks to the massive cable and network television contracts they’ve negotiated, the league transformed from a scarcely watched, third-tier sport into one of the highest-rated sports in the world.

In terms of legacy, Stern is widely considered one of the most successful and influential commissioners in the history of professional sports. As the NBA’s CEO, he’s developed the blueprint for how to ensure the long-term growth and financial viability for a major professional sport.

According to Forbes, the collective worth of the NBA’s 23 teams when Stern took over in 1984 was about $400 million. Today, that number is closer to $12 billion. Stern inherited a league that, while floundering financially, had captivated fans thanks to Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and a precocious young rookie named Michael Jordan. He was able to capitalize on that popularity and transform the NBA into the global cultural and economic empire that it is today.

But despite his many successes, Stern has been a polarizing figure among fans, players, owners and sports journalists alike.

In 2005, in light of ongoing public image problems, Stern implemented one of his most controversial initiatives â€“ a league-wide dress code that required players to wear business casual attire at all NBA-related events, a policy that many at the time saw as nothing more than a thinly-veiled attempt to tackle the growing perception that the NBA was becoming too “urban,” too “street” or too “hip hop,” and other such racially-charged euphemisms. (Although the dress code ultimately served its purpose, it might also be worth lamenting as the main culprit behind the league’s current sartorial catastrophe.)

In 2011, while the league had assumed temporary ownership of the New Orleans Hornets franchise, it was Stern who inexplicably vetoed the Chris Paul trade to the Los Angeles Lakers. He didn’t help matters much when he couldn’t (or rather stubbornly refused) offer a clear explanation as to why the Paul trade was nullified other than what he referred to cagily at the time as “basketball reasons.” While that should’ve been just another example of his iron-fisted rule, the Hornets conveniently won the draft lottery the following summer, which spawned more conspiracy theories than the Kennedy assassination and 9/11 combined.

Speaking of conspiracies, it was in 2007 that Stern and the NBA absorbed some of their hardest hits yet, when the Tim Donaghy referee scandal and subsequent FBI investigation threatened to undermine 25 years of progress by briefly resurrecting the time-honored fear that the NBA might indeed be “rigged.” And there have been plenty of other bumps along the road: He’s presided over two high-profile lockouts; he instituted a divisive age restriction that prevented players from entering the league straight out of high school; and he even once forced players to use a highly-unpopular new type of basketball that drew so much ire from players that he eventually caved and switched back to the old one.

Though Stern has been instrumental in the expansion and growth of smaller markets, critics still point to the unequal balance of power, the top-heaviness of the league’s elite teams and legitimate title contenders. As the architect of our modern, superstar-driven league, he’s conceded more and more power to primetime players who now enjoy greater control over their destinies, the byproducts of which haven’t always been pretty. The “Decision,” Carmelo Anthony‘s unglamorous exit from Denver, and the “Dwightmare” are just a few examples.

Still, for all the turmoil, it seems Stern’s legacy will come out relatively unscathed. When Bryant Gumbel called him a “plantation overseer” during the highly-contentious labor negotiations in 2011, it was quickly pointed out that Stern has helped facilitate black ownership in the NBA on a number of occasions and has been exceedingly-progressive in terms of hiring and appointing minorities to high-profile positions around the league offices. As Stern himself has said, the only color he cares about is green. Under Stern’s watch, the NBA is also the first of the four major sports to openly embrace the LGBT community.

What he’ll ultimately be remembered as is a shrewd businessman and a ruthless negotiator, and his tenure as NBA commissioner will be studied by future generations as a master-level course in both brand awareness and product development.

What do you think of David Stern?

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