David Stern Just Does Not Get It

Stern is all about power and being called out for his misuse of power is long overdue. Every action he takes seems calculated to gain himself more power. Every new franchise ownership change seems to have David Stern front and center in the action, helping to insure that new owners are indebted to David Stern.

couldn’t have said it better.

I really don’t like David Stern at all and would love nothing more than to see him go.

Just let this league be about Basketball. Pure Basketball. Even if the team you love loses, as long as you know, you really know, the better team just beat you.

for all of our sake that this gets taken care of fast. I LOVE PRO BASKETBALL so much, I don’t know what I would do without it.

One of your most important posts.

I share the sentiment. David Stern’s latest response was bizarre. Though Ben’s refereences to Mao rang true, I was reminded more of Baghdad Bob, the delusional PR man for Saddam Hussein… I have been skeptical of the conspiracy allegations, but the way Stern has reacted to the entire affair is making me wonder. He’s talking about it like some one who is guilty.

Henry Abott has a nice little post with a similiar perspective:

http://myespn.go.com/blogs/truehoop/0-32-312/Justin-Wolfers-on-the-Quality-of-an-NBA-Denial.html

My question is what can fans do to get the league to respond in an appropriate manner? Ultimately, the NBA is a business and it’s product will suffer if Stern continues to fail to address the issue, so it will have an incentive to respond eventually… But, I don’t want it to suffer—not when Portland is on the verge of being an important franchise once again… I think fans need to be proactive. It’s one thing to respond to internet polls saying that we think the leauge is fixed. It’s another thing to actively send a message to the league. I’d love to see an organized letter writing /email campaign of some sort, but I’m no expert on that kind of thing.

A written message seems appropriate simply because explaining what we, the fans, want is somewhat complicated…. Maybe different people want different things, but what I want is evidence—evidence that the league does not try to influence officials to call the game a certain way. What type of evidence? I’m not sure. What’s clearer is what does not count for evidence. What’s clear is what I do not want. I do not want claims by officials or league executives or players that the games were called fairly. I do not want logical arguments about why fixing games could not have happened or why it’s not in the interest of the league to fix games. I do not know enough about the character of officials or the league to know if their lying or know what makes sense to them. I’d like to see some independent analysis of officiating. It seems like it should be easy enough to determine if playoff series tend to last longer than one should expect, based on regular season records, or if deviations in fouls occur frequently in end of series games… Obviously, that kind of analysis wouldn’t be definitive, but I want more than these lame denials.

The passion that you poured into this post was palpable. The truth of the words you wrote is inescapable. Stern is being damned by his own mishandling of this entire scandal. Even if the worst scenario is not the case, in my opinion he has already nailed his own coffin shut with the stupidity of his own arrogance.

Stern should resign at the earliest possible opportunity. He wont, but he should.

I wonder.

The best sport finals in the world is the NCAA tournament. Basically, when the refs make it so that series goes to seven; they boil down the NBA playoffs to a one and done game. I like that.

Anyone who is a fan of any team except the Lakers has had to deal with the ref fixing the game. I just learned to accept it and trust in my teams GM to build a team that can overcome the refs and the opponent.

I learned to accept the refs manipulation of the game, as a part of the game.

and what I mentioned before on this site multiple times, is that the refs need to have some oversight, accountability, ability to learn and get better and consistancy. There needs to be SOME transparency and technology that won’t slow down the pace of the game needs to be incorporated. Allow five challenges in a game or something and the coaches can decide when to use instant replay to challenge. Reduce it to three. REally, i don’t care what it is, but it needs to be something.

Sterns attitude all along is “we don’t have a problem!” I had a boss like that. I went in and informed him that there were issues that needed to be addressed and he had that same response. I ended up quitting, and my old company ended up going out of business.

The point, though, is that the attitude is a problem because there’s no acknowledgment than there’s unhappiness and there needs to be SOME kind of response that displays the appearance that he cares about the fact that there could be a problem.

Ignoring or dismissing an issue when people have legitimate concerns is NOT the way to deal with such things. It just makes me want to take sharp point objects and puncture his body in areas and then bludgeon him with a leg of ham and then pelt him with rotten eggs before finally having an elephant sit on his head and do his duty to do his doody for god and his country and for the love of the game.

Okay, got off some steam there. Really… I just want Paul Allen to Pritch-Slap the man.

Excellent post. I’ve been reading the edge for about a year now and ironically I found it and joined B-edge when the Donaghy scandal broke. I stepped on a few toes at the time crying “CONSPIRACY CONSPIRACY!!!” Much like Hobobob I was vilified at the time by some and supported by a few. I’m saddened by what appears to be at least a possible confirmation of my worst fears.

Alas, it appears that just as I was stating last summer it is all about the dissolving of the independent referee’s union which Phil Jackson alluded to. As much as I hate Phil Jackson – and believe he uses “Hatchet Men” like Rick Fox and Dennis Rodman – I still think he loves the game and that he wants it fairly reffed. I’m not sure that Stern loves the game or at least I’m not sure he loves the game as much as he loves Power, Control and MONEY.

Your post is excellent because it shows how like the mafia and politicians the league is behaving with a sort of “Bunker Mentality”. The victim is blamed, the canary (Donaghy) is character assassinated, but there is no wheeling out of the evidence Stern always claims he has to back up his assertions. He makes a similar claim of “Trust me I have all the relevant information but won’t share it” much like our current and many past political administrations. The problem is we don’t trust him…at all. Stern doesn’t get it, he is too isolated with wealth and privilege to realize that he is at a critical stage in the development of the league.

Even if there is no vast referee conspiracy I think we ALL know there is Star Treatment and make-up calls. This is a phenomena that crept in not long after Stern took over the league with Magic, Kareem and Bird getting incredible calls in their favor. But even then there still seemed to be minimal referee interference and I rarely heard people “Blame the Zebras”. However, over the past 10 to 15 years, during and after the Jordan era, we have seen a HUGE upswing in that sentiment in the fan base especially in cities that aren’t media darlings. Cynicism about the league and the refs has become almost omnipresent.

It’s funny because Portland has come up in a big way in the world and in this country since the Drexler days and you could see that this year with the way the media treated us. We would have never had an All-Star or have gotten the kind of calls we did this year were this 1994 instead of 2008. I saw many bad calls this year that went in Portland’s favor especially when we were the flavor of the week during the streak. The point is we have gotten to a point to where bad calls have gone beyond a minor annoyance to an expected part of the game. That is a sad state of affairs and something the league should address regardless of the truth of Donaghy’s allegations. It would certainly help bring some faith back to the fan base. Unfortunately, I think Stern has a “Batten down the hatches” attitude rather then opening up the hold so we can all take a peak and see he has nothing to hide but the usual junk any bureaucracy might have.