NBA commissioner Stern reflects on tenure, talks future

PHOENIX -- Looking back over his 25 years as NBA commissioner, David Stern isn't swept up in nostalgia. The memories do start flooding back each year at this time -- Stern took the league's top post during All-Star weekend in 1984 -- but the focus remains on the task at hand.

No matter the time or place, Stern is forever dealing with new sets of challenges. He began with the NBA fulltime in the 1970s and has played a critical part in the league reinventing itself. Under his watch, he's helped pioneer a drug-testing program and salary cap, guided the league to the forefront of sports marketing, sparked international growth and took a hard-line approach on player-image problems.

And he's hardly immune to the myriad of hot-button issues outside of the NBA. Stern admits to cringing at the situation engulfing Alex Rodriguez and Major League Baseball.

"It could be any one of us," Stern said Thursday. "You just don't know. If you get cocky, you're undoubtedly going to be brought down. We worry every day, even though we think our players, by in large, are playing the game without performance enhancing drugs."

The NBA is hardly immune to the current economic crisis, and Stern realizes some difficult decisions will face the league and its teams in the years to come. Through the uncertainty, his optimism for a better day remains intact. He's proud of the league's impact globally and the increased social awareness of its players.

Stern, 66, isn't quite ready to put a period on his sentence as The Commish. There's still too much work to do ... and much fun to be had. Stern sat down with NBA.com to discuss his career, the state of the league and his future as a potential literature student. The following is an excerpt from the conversation.

Your run as commissioner began 25 years ago at All-Star weekend. Do you reminisce at this time of year, especially at a nice, round number like 25?
I've been going to NBA All-Star Games since 1976, so I was thinking about it last night. I think this is my 34th All-Star Game, and so I reminisce about the league and the great players that we've had over the years and how much fun All-Star weekend is.

Do you have a favorite All-Star memory?
Obviously when Magic Johnson came back [in 1992] and won the MVP. That was a huge rush for everybody.

There were plenty of unknowns back in 1984 when the All-Star Game became an All-Star weekend. Did the success of that weekend set the tone for your early years as commissioner?
We came to understand very early as a group that events help define you, and you had to put your best foot forward. All-Star weekend is one of those events where we decided we had to turn it into a place to invite the entire family -- the legends, the sponsors, the TV broadcast, the licensing, all of the teams -- and put on a first-class party.

Looking at these 25 years, do you break it down into eras? Do you see it as the Magic-Bird Era, Jordan Era, Shaq on down to LeBron and Kobe?
To me it's a continuum because they all do sort of morph into one another. Dr. J wins the championship in '83, morphs into Lakers-Celtics, morphs into Bulls, San Antonio-Knicks, Houston had a couple good years. I always look at the players that were winning, whether it was [Hakeem] Olajuwon or David Robinson or [Tim] Duncan. There are great players in every era. I think that we had come so fast in the late '80s and early '90s with such a great group of players that people tend to focus on that. But I tend to focus on broader things, which include the richness of our game from our international players.

Can you boil down how your job has evolved in those 25 years?
My job started out as getting through the day, one crisis after another. Difficult team, financial situations, difficult structural issues, difficult issues with players, drugs, not always a real issue, but certainly a perception issue. I had to deal with all of that. But as our business has grown, I think of myself much more as a CEO of an entertainment/sports company.

Has the league really begun to feel the economic crunch that the country is dealing with?
There's no question that some of our teams are seeing it now. Our seat renewals, I haven't gotten the reports back, but it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't lag in renewals, lag in suite renewals, lag in club seat renewals, feel some pressure in sponsorship renewals. That's just the way it is. We haven't quite seen it yet, but we know that it's out there lurking. The economy is in terrible shape and we are not going to be unscathed by that.

Mavs owner Mark Cuban and Commissioner David Stern celebrate the announcement of Dallas as the host for the 2010 NBA All-Star Game. Tim Hetiman/NBAE via Getty Images

With the serious financial issues facing many owners and teams, can you foresee a scenario where the league may have to consider measures as drastic as contraction?
We watch our teams and, as best that we can tell, we've spent a fair amount of time on this, our ownership structure is in good shape. Our owners, as best as we can tell, are financially strong and able to fund any shortfalls from the operations of their teams.

Is the NBA well equipped to handle some of these financial challenges going forward?
To the extent that there might be issues behind the scenes, we're being very prudent in what we learn and what we understand about our teams and what we understand about our owners, and even in our efforts in what we can deliver to our teams from our own league office as we cut down on staff a little bit, as we cut down on capital expenditures, as we even eliminate some programs that we stress test to see whether they're ones worthy of being continued in this environment.

We're determined to work our way through this difficult situation and come out the other side where our international operations will carry us in a very good way, our domestic operations will be fine and our digital operations will continue to grow. That's our blueprint.

Has the economy altered any plans internationally?
We are looking at every event, every game we play, every business initiative and although international will still provide growth opportunity, it will not be as robust as it was a year ago, so we've had to cut back on some of our plans for games in different places.

When you see what's going on with A-Rod and the integrity issues baseball is dealing with, are you satisfied with the steps the NBA has taken to improve the image of the league and its players?
Yes. You can always be surprised with performance-enhancing drugs, but we had the first employee-assistance program, shall we say, of this type 25 years ago in 1983 when we began testing for drugs. We now test four times a year random for drugs, including marijuana, and the results are -- by agreement with the players -- confidential. But when you see a player get suspended, you can pretty much guess what's going on. We think we've done a good job on that and we continue to improve. We work with the union to add substances, we work with the medical community to make sure we're doing the right thing and it evolves. But I think we're glad as to where we are and continue to work together.

How much do you worry about the continued loss of traditional media, like newspapers, being able to tell the stories that bring the game to fans?
That's a story yet to be told in its finality. I'm talking to you and this is going on NBA.com. Ten years ago that wasn't available. Something like this can be covered on ESPN.com, YahooSports.com, on FoxSports.com, on CBSSports.com or one of the myriad of blogs that are out there. So our experience, I can't quantify it sitting here, is the NBA is a much-blogged and commented-upon sport and subject on the Internet. I think we're going to see that in the intervening years. ... We're sort of adjusting to where the outlets are to make sure our stories get told.

What are you most optimistic about with the league going forward?
I'm most optimistic about the state of the game. The appreciation that the players are getting from the effort they're making for having got to this level in their careers. And I'm most optimistic in the ability to use their personas to focus on NBA Cares, to demonstrate that sports and social responsibility are not discordant. They can work and should work together, and that everyone in sports should work on being socially responsible.

Has there been a fundamental change in players with how they've taken ownership in the league and their image?
I think we now see our young players come into the Rookie Transition Program, which we work on really hard for three or four days of intense training, and they say, 'How can I help? What can I do? What can I do in my neighborhood? What can I do in my community? What can I do in my country?'

What's left for you to do as commissioner?
I'm still having fun. The international is a huge opportunity that is nothing I could have dreamed about 25 years ago. It's huge and it's an opportunity for our game to be on a different stage, as it was in Beijing. We just met with somebody from the London organizing committee of the Olympic Games 2012. It's going to be big again. And this whole digital world remains to be figured out, because video on the Web seems to be a killer application. Our fans are downloading everything we do in record numbers each month.

It doesn't strike me as you have a finish line.
I always consider myself getting halfway to the finish line, and if you're getting halfway there, you can never get there. That's what's great about this sport. There's a lot to do.

Have you thought about what you want to do after the NBA?
Maybe go to a college campus and study Shakespeare. My wife tells me that's unlikely. But I don't have any specific plans. I've had a huge opportunity to travel in this job and other ways, and I haven't begun thinking about after this, although it's not going to go on forever. As long as I have fun each day, that's the way I approach life.

Do you look forward to the day when you can watch a game just as a fan?
I actually do. That's going to be fun. Try to do that now, but I don't do such a good job. I don't look at it wistfully because I recognize I have the best job in the world. I'm not looking to run from it quite so fast.