Is it time for a new NBA commissioner?

The only problem I see with the NBA and David Stern is that there is no visible debate regarding referees and their calls. David Stern says, "Our referees do a great job and we review them privately."

Who is to say that they don't sweep the obviously bad calls under the rug? The only thing that the league really needs, that it is lacking right now, is some sort of visible review/interaction between referees and the league. So that the public doesn't think the referees can just call games in any manner they wish and not be disciplined or have to worry about any type of critique.

I can't fathom how David Stern doesn't see the immense positive in doing something in this fashion. Perhaps I don't see what negativity this could bring? Maybe, the Referee's Assocation would boycott? I wonder what I could possibly be missing.

 

Stern is a good Commisioner. He may have to much power and may be too controlling, but that is the fault of the NBAPA because they allowed him that ability. Saying that, I do believe the NBA has the best Collective Bargaining Agreement in the three major sports. Right now, I feel he is the best commisioner in the three major U. S. sports.

 

Bring in Peter Ueberroth!!

 

Stern continues to be the best in the business by far.

 

who will replace him? Stu Jackson? NO THANKS!

 

He's by far the best commish in sports, followed by Goodell. I would walk away from the sport if he were replaced by someone like Selig or (god help us) Bettman.

It's not his fault that some of his stars are complete psychos, or that a ref got coerced by the mob.

Unlike in baseball, where major problems got swept under a rug and ignored until Congress got in on the action, you can rest assured that Stern will very certainly take action on this and make serious corrections. If anything, this should lead to reduced homecooking, star treatment, and increased transparency - similar to when MLB brought in the strike zone cameras to tighten up how umps were calling the game.

Evan

 

Of course, under Stern the officiating has become absurd, superstars get all the calls and anyone who dares question anything is fined absurd amounts of money. Not to mention, people are watching nearly every other major sport more than they are the NBA. Remember those awesome ratings for the NBA Finals?

It's time for some new blood in the NBA and it needs to start at the top.

 

Stern has done a fantastic job over the last 20+ years of growing league revenues and marketing the NBA overseas. But he is past his prime and should have stepped down a couple of years ago, at the latest. I give him credit for what he's done but the guy is past his prime. He needs to hand it off to someone younger and more in tune with today.

 

the NBA needs flesh blood or people will continue to doubt it.

 

The problem is that people aren't going to be satisfied. Some of the criticism of refs is justified, but much of it is just bias. Unlike baseball, where there's a technical strikezone and you can analyze whether a call is "right" or "wrong", virtually every call in the NBA is a judgment call. There's contact on every play - its up to refs to determine at what point that contact is a foul - but there's no standard definition. So putting out stats on refs or whatever just puts them in an even uglier position. People who want to believe the worst will take the data and interpret it the way they want.

Football also standardized calls. You either false start or don't. You either commit a facemask or don't. There's some judgment involved, but far less so than in basketball, which involves many more fouls and many more judgment-based fouls. I think having public reviews, while fun for us, would be a disaster for the league.

 

Those people are idiots.

David Stern is supposed to know more about someone than the FBI -- who get to wiretap phones and have access to things Stern can't get to?

 

Stern has done a fine job. He's easily the best compared to the other big 2 (MLB and NFL). Can you imagine those guys having an open question press conference for 1 hr+? Selig has been dodging the simple question of attending Bonds' hr game until today!

Both the MLB and NFL don't address their problems until it becomes such a tarnish on their image. There's been well known, wide use of steroids that the MLB has ignored until the Feds stepped in. The rate of criminal activity in the NFL has been so frequent in the news that we're used to it. It's become a joke. Only this summer has the NFL actually addressed it. In both these situations the problems have festered until it actually became an image problem in the general media and ultimately affected their wallets. And these problems have long been accepted not just by the leagues but by the fans too.

Stern, however overbearing he may seem, has immediately addressed problems. The truth is there will always be people who will always criticize someone because they're 'The Man' or an authority figure. Turnabout is fair play. No one talks about commissioners until something bad happens. I haven't been in a job where I didn't have something go wrong. How you deal w/ them is another thing. There's still many details that we don't know, in this case I think Stern may have had to much faith in trying to stand behind the product.

 

It's time for a black commissioner.

 

Quite the opposite! Its because of David Stern that the NBA is in such good shape. He rules the organizarion with a firm hand and keeps everyone acting in a civil manner. He can't be blamed for a Ref going and stepping out of line. Just watch and you will see him and his committee bring in new restrictions to protect the honesty level of NBA Refs. The Commissioner is quick to act and is so professional and acts with dignity. He is the sort of face that the NBA needs as its representative and leader. He is well spoken and all groups, understand him when he speaks.Just look at where the NBA was when he was appointed and where it is now!

 

Very true. However, my point is that since the league/Stern will not change how the league is officiated, then there has to be some sort of connect to the public in showing how calls are made.

During the playoffs when the largest amount of the public is following the NBA, there were highly, and I mean highly, questionable calls made throughout the post-season. Here in Houston, people who are considered mainstream fans (family, friends, classmates in college, etc) and have no vested interest in who may win, commonly tell me, "Wow, did you see that call at the end of the game. That really looked like a bad call." You hear that some, that's fine. When you hear throughout the playoffs, it becomes a problem. I'm not saying that the NBA should be looking at getting the fairweather fans' thumbs up in terms of it's officiating. But, I tend to believe more than half of devoted NBA fans believe the officiating is somewhat poor also. There has to be something there.

The officiating is never going to satisfy every NBA fan. But, to at least give the fans an insight into how officiating works or some sort of visible explanation of how officials call games.

At the very least, could officiating be looked at in any worse a light than it already is today? (completely ignoring the scandal, of course)

 

This is actually a very interesting issue. IF Stern were the CEO of a public company (which he's not, I don't actually know what his technical position is or what the corporate structure of NBA Inc. is - obviously it is a private company/close corporation or an LLC - anyway, not that important unless you are a corporate form geek)

If he were the CEO of a public (or even a private) company, SOP when you hear of potentially illegal activities by an employee is to launch an internal investigation, usually conducted by a big hyper-expensive outside law firm, in which armies of pissed off sleep deprived associates digest every single document and interviews every potential witness, and which will retain forensic accountants, PI's or experts whatever else is necessary. Then when you get done you put together a really big expensive report, and if something bad happens, you run to the SEC or the State AG or the DOJ or whoever is investigating you and say what you found and what you plan to do about it.

Much harder to envision Stern doing something like this because there's not as much reason to. (though I don't doubt that hte league and outside consultants have been feverishly researchgn their own records for at least a month since the FBI first notified them). Apparently their guy was already in the hole and there seems to be some sort of ongoing sting aspect here to roll up whoever this guy was working with that he can'r really interfere with. ALso, there's not as much reward here because there's very little risk of the league itself being penalized by the government, or of its share price taking a dive.

I am surprised that he did not have a more pro-active PR offensive ready to go when the news finally broke (as it inevitably would and did), though perhaps they were keeping quiet for the FBI? Unsure.

Bottom line though, Stern is still the best commish of the big 3 (sorry hockey, you don't count anymore ) . Goodell presides over a golden goose that ****s money no matter how many strippers or dogfights or murders the NFL gets wrapped up in. A monkey could run that league succesfully. Selig is Selig, which places hm distincly behind Zelig.

 

Yeah, NFL has a lot of standardized calls, but I would say the calls in the trenches involve as much judgement as those in the NBA and occur with much greater frequency as contact is sustained for a greater period of time.

I think Stern should go because I'm a big proponent of term limits for these types of positions.

 

-The officiating: maybe you wouldn't agree, but I largely attribute the heavy slide in officiating not to Stern, but to the plane ticket scandal that led to the loss of a large number of senior official, and a resulting "talent" dilution that they still haven't fully recovered from. To be fair, I fully agree that Stern has been far too slow to combat horrifically blatant homecooking and star protection.

People have always watched the NFL and MLB more than the NBA. Those days of awesome ratings happened under Stern, too, so I'm not sure what you're leading at there. He's too old so ratings are going down? Sure it's not that the 90s Bulls and Shaq/Kobe Lakers were huge draws and the Spurs are ratings killers?

When I talk to friends that have given up on the NBA, reasons #1-10 have everything to do with the current generation of players being pampered brats that care more about their lifestyles than working on their games or winning.

Evan