DAVID STERN
NBA Commissioner

RUSS GRANIK
Deputy Commissioner

BILLY HUNTER
Executive Director, National Basketball Players Association

Commissioner Stern: Billy Hunter asked me to tell you, he'll be a little bit late. We just went running out of a meeting that broke up, and when he gets here he will join us. It gives us time to put a seven-second delay on his microphone, so we'll be working on that at the same time. (Laughter).

I want to say first that it's good to have Russ here. He missed last year's All-Star Game, but he's back and making life difficult for me, which is fun, and it's great to be in Los Angeles.

We have had, for us, a terrific All-Star Week thus far. I think together with our Players Association and our players, there has been more community activity going on than I can remember. The participation has been terrific, and it's not just the NBA and it's players; it's the entire NBA family. We've had events with our referees, involving the coaches, the retired players, the moms, the wives association, you name it, the entire NBA family has pitched in to demonstrate what can be done with the power of sport, and that's pretty important to us.

On that note, I would just say that before I get to my normal mantra of how good things are, I want to say that this is continuing something that we have been obviously much involved with, but this summer, as many of you know, we've had players and executives who went to Iraq to visit the troops, who went to South Africa, for what we call Africa 100. We had kids from 21 African nations come into Johannesburg to deal with AIDS, basketball. Our Eastern European players traveled, again to, Treviso on Basketball Without Borders, and we're busy planning other visits this coming year. We will be going back to South Africa with our players to reprise in maybe a larger way because of various community organizations within South Africa and throughout Africa. We'll be taking our Basketball Without Borders programs to other places, particularly South America, and on a more commercial vein. I guess, I had the pleasure of addressing a very well-attended press conference with several hundred people in attendance, an enormous amount of media from the Chinese community in America and from China, where we announced that we would be opening the season -- I'm sorry. We'll be doing preseason games next year in Beijing and Shanghai, to be played between the Houston Rockets and the Sacramento Kings, supported by a group of NBA marketing partners that begins with Disney, to be shown on ESPN and includes our long-time partners Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch, Reebok and Kodak.

I must tell you that as the eternal optimist, the interest in that press conference, was something that exceeded even our outsized expectations. It is going to be an extraordinary event and we are very much looking forward to it.

Coming back home, we, as you know, we come to the All-Star Break, with increased ratings for the bulk of our programming on TNT and ESPN. We are up over 20 percent on TNT, up 15 percent on ESPN. And because of the addition of more programs on ABC, seven to this point as opposed to three at this time last year, the number of sort of gross rating points that we have been able to accumulate, people that are watching us in circulation, are watch watching us are up by about 70 percent. We have seen enhanced viewing across the board of the NBA. Attendance is up, gate is up, merchandise sales are up, and all of the minutiae that we seem to focus on from a business perspective and from a couple of grizzled veterans of the NBA wars, interest in our sport, sometimes occasioned by turnovers in coaches, sometimes occasioned by rookies, sometimes occasioned by new, sort of old faces in new places, sometimes occasioned by the continued influx of extraordinary naturally gifted international players. We think the pendulum is moving in a very nice direction. Our job is going to be to continue to move it.

Russ, you want to talk about the game? Russ was at the Competition Committee yesterday while I was hosting a Tech Summitt, which is our annual coming together to discuss technology and the like. So since he's the man, he'll have a word on that.

Granik: We did spend the afternoon with the Competition Committee yesterday. There is not really a lot to report. The overall sense of the committee I think was that they are comfortable with our rules right now. Scoring is down like a little over a point a game, but I think the consensus is that that's normal when you put in new rules that the defense is going to be ahead of the offense, and that at that level, a point here or there is not something that anybody considered or was particularly an issue. I think people are much more comfortable in our league with the way the game is being played. There is much less emphasis on isolation play and much more on passing and shooting and skills of that nature.

The sense was, the game is pretty good. Believe it or not, we probably spent the greatest amount of time in the afternoon talking about traveling.

Commissioner Stern: Not on airplanes.

Granik: I know that is often an area where people say the NBA doesn't call traveling. Now in the digital video area, we are able to present to the committee just one after another, Stu Jackson and his group, of plays where you would not believe the kind of disagreement that you can get even among people who have been in this game for their life, what is or isn't traveling, as the athletes have just become so much better, so much quicker and able to get so much further with that single jump step than perhaps in the past. But it's something that we are continuing to look at because we know that does become an issue with coaches and with fans to try and standardize what is or isn't traveling, as best as possible.

But the overall sense on the game was very positive.

Q: Talk about the progress of the Charlotte franchise that you've seen before they play, and you mentioned last year about them getting an All-Star Game, is that still the case and where are we with that?

Granik: I think that they are making terrific progress. I think obviously from all of the reports we have, the arena is going ahead on time and so far on budget. We are convinced it's going to be a great facility that we are going to have available as scheduled. I think they have done a lot of things in the community. Their sales are going very well, both in premium seating and suites and season tickets. We are feeling very good about it.

Bob Johnson is here for the weekend. We spent a little time with him yesterday and this morning. I think it's a positive story.

Commissioner Stern: He asked us whether any of the players that we saw in the Rookie-Sophomore game last night, whether we thought would be available the in the dispersal draft but Jerry Colangelo, Chairman of the Board, had to deliver the bad news to him that it was unlikely.

Q: What about the All-Star Game?

Commissioner Stern: We'll have to see. He has to make an application. It will certainly be in the rotation without question. We like to go to new buildings and cities that have the appropriate hotel stock.

Granik: You've normally said you have to have the building pretty much up before you commit to it.

Commissioner Stern: We want to make sure that it's definitely going to be there.

Q: There's been a turnover of vast proportions among Eastern Conference coaches, is that something to be concerned about? What kind of message do you think this sends to the market, this kind of coaching instability?

Commissioner Stern: I guess I have to do this.

Granik: He has a way of putting things, though.

Commissioner Stern: God bless you. (Laughter).

I would say that to look at it, I've said this before, I think that our general managers and owners are looking at rosters of theirs that they think are better than they have been in the past and that are underperforming. And since owners and general managers rarely fire themselves, what they have done in this case, they fire the coaches and they swap it out.

And by the way, with 75 international players, with an influx of rookies who have an impact on the game, they are right. On paper their rosters are much better than they have been and they continue to improve. But we all know this little secret that the owners will be certain of at the end of this year, that if everyone replaces their coach, the same number of wins and losses gets divided up, and maybe not a lot is going to change, except for maybe one or two teams.

I've never seen anything like it in all of my years associated with the sport, and I would find it hard to believe sitting here that I'll ever see anything like it again. It's that extraordinary, a sort of combination of events. But we'll have to see. I think that everyone wanted to give it a shot, to improve themselves, and I think that it will settle back to the normal range of replacements in the coming years.

Q: With regards to the Nets ownership situation, Bruce Ratner has been declared the winning bidder. Curious what thoughts or opinions you plan on sharing with the advisory finance committee when his application comes up.

Commissioner Stern: Do you have any thoughts you're planning to share?

Granik: We have met with Mr. Ratner. There's a lot that still has to be done in terms of the process of their application.

From everything we have heard and have begun to learn, he's certainly well-suited to NBA ownership, along with the rest of his group. I think we are going to be telling the committee that at this point, all that they are focusing on is whether or not the Ratner group should be approved as owners of the now New Jersey Nets. Everybody obviously understands what their game plan is, but until such time as that's really ready to happen, which even by their best estimate is a year and a half or two years away, we are not going to get into the subject of their relocation at this time.

Commissioner Stern: We are anxious to have the sale approved because of certain cloud or malaise, I don't know exactly what the right word is, settles over a franchise that's in a state of flux, and we think that it's a good thing, because we have seen some of the plans for marketing, communications program, etc. in New Jersey, and we think that's going to be good for the franchise.

Q: You have got a coach and an owner who disagree over the role now of NBA players in international competition. I'm wondering which side you come down on.

Commissioner Stern: Well, this is a subject for discussion by the Board of Governors because it is ultimately their decision.

But in my view, we have gone from, as I've said before, we went from an eight-team Eastern league to first a national and now an international cultural phenomena. We have all along the way, we have tried to learn whatever we could from the rest of the world. People forget, we borrowed our clock, we are going to tenths of seconds, from FIBA. We were at an international event, we thought it was a good idea, let's go do it. We don't think there's anything that we can't learn about.

We also have focused on the phenomena of the most popular sport in the world, which is soccer, and how the notion of the greatest stars, the Renaldos and the Peles, you name it, over time, they play in the league and then they go back and they represent their national teams in international and continental competition. That's great for the sport and it's very great for the individuals who want the opportunity to represent their countries.

It's a much longer story than that because Russ and I have negotiated this whole subject with FIBA and the USA Olympic Committee and USA Basketball over the years, and gradually, as we came into this, it was the world basketball saying to us, please make our game better by allowing our players to play against yours.

And so when we went to the Olympics in 1992, it was really, you know, because the vote to let pros in over the objections of USA, the apparatus, and the Soviet Union at the time. Russ and I said, it's okay, you don't have to let us in. We just want to support basketball. But Boris Stankovic, the then general secretary of FIBA said, we want to make it one world of basketball. It doesn't make sense. We had we had a pretty good idea of what we were getting ourselves into. We understood that this was a sport that had real global aspirations; that we would be the beneficiaries. In the long run by attracting those people who came to play the game and who started as kids by bouncing the ball, rather than kicking it, and we jumped whole-hog into it as early as 1987.

We had a tournament in Milwaukee, the first McDonald's Open, where the Soviet National team, Tracer of Milan and the Milwaukee Bucks had this crazy, what are you guys doing, they said. From that, we opened the season and the Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz opened the season in Tokyo in 1990, and we have been opening the season every year since then in Japan. Last year we played exhibitions in Barcelona, Paris, Mexico City, and San Juan and we also opened the season in Tokyo.

We think it's great. We are delighted to be part of the international basketball community. Our players have the option or not of participating, and invariably, when they travel for the most part, the results have been very positive. We have been the beneficiaries of that. We have gotten 70-plus elite international basketball players who paid the ultimate compliment to our game. Yao Ming grew up watching Hakeem Olajuwon and now kids are going to grow up watching Yao Ming, and we think it's terrific.

We also think our players should have the option. We think that they play basketball all year round. Our players come to camp in shape in a terrific way, and if you don't believe me, ask Jerry West. I want to go to the expert. They come into camp in shape. Because why? They work out in Houston. They play basketball. They work at UCLA if they are in L.A. They go up to Purchase, New York. Our players play year round.

And they play exhibition games as well. We have ten to 12 a summer and players travel for each other and do that. So the notion of playing for their country, those number of games that happen in the Olympics, we don't think is that big of a deal -- I don't think, if you make it personal. And I don't think that Mark's view represents the majority here at all. I don't know they that he would get a second. He has a point with respect to insurance and cost, and we have tried to deal with that on an ongoing basis, so that one team doesn't get hit more than others.

But we had a very difficult series of issues, and I don't want to go on too long, because initially the question was, do we release other country's players, and keep the U.S. players home, and therefore, decree college players will do it when we know that they will lose for sure, and then we'll get blamed? Just as many of you blamed us in '92 for allowing our players to participate in response to FIBA. It was a dilemma and we decided we were going to embrace it and let it go where it goes and become a participating member in the international basketball community.

We think it's great for our sport. We think it makes it more interesting. We think it makes it more interesting to our fans who learn more about the world through the international players than they ever thought they were going to learn. And then, of course, it is interesting for our business because we get to go to Barcelona with a Pau Gasol, we get to go to Paris with Tony Parker, we get to go to Mexico City with Eduardo Najera and now we get to go to Shanghai and Beijing with Yao Ming. If this isn't the best that sports has to offer, I can't imagine what's even better.

We travel well. We come in complete friendship. We represent a great way to exchange, not just the U.S., it's everybody participating. I think it's the best, and you can imagine how I might describe it to the board if behind closed doors they ever wanted to discuss it with us.

Do you have any historical tidbit?

Granik: I think you've covered it. (Laughter).

Commissioner Stern: Am I being too subtle?

Q: So are you in favor of it then?

Commissioner Stern: Let me tell you something, Mark, like everything else, it's an interesting issue that we have wrestled with over the years.

We understand, what Mark's points are.

Granik: We took some steps last year with respect to one of Mark's points. It gets complicated about having to do with the luxury tax and if you have an injured player, and what happens if you have to replace him with the tax situation. The Board of Governors took a step of doing something to eliminate the problem there so that if you do have the misfortune of a player getting seriously hurt, it doesn't cost you double in the form of a tax.

So it was an effort to be accommodating there on that issue.

Commissioner Stern: I would try to help out with disability insurance in case it does happen. But we are in this. We have jumped into the pool. We'll see where it takes us.

Q: Obviously you have been in discussion with Billy Hunter today. If you could talk a little bit about the progress of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, and along with that, evidently, there had somebody to discussion about the Vin Baker situation in which there was an addendum deal done with the Celtics that now he can have his contract terminated. Could you talk about where you are with that, with Billy and the ongoing circumstances there?

Commissioner Stern: I'll tell you what, let's hold that as the last question, because I'd like to have Billy. He's sort of I think stuck in traffic so, I don't want to answer without him hearing the answer, then have him join in as well, because that's a point that we would like to have. And if he doesn't make it, we'll respond to that.

Q: Has the NBA had time to review the Maurice Clarett case, and can you also talk about why you are considering a minimum age requirement, at the same time the NBA seems to be promoting Carmelo Anthony and LeBron James?

Commissioner Stern: The Clarett decision was wrongly decided, as a matter of law, and will likely be reversed on appeal.

It's a very long story that I don't want to bore you with it. Afterwards I'll go through the intersection of the labor and anti-trust laws and the sort of uniform history on cases like this in the Second Circuit, where that case was decided and the United States Supreme Court, and we think the judge's decision will be reversed.

We think there's a fair discussion to be had about the policy underlying it, about whether you should have it or shouldn't have it. I don't think it's illegal.

On the policy itself, I want to say that my views about having an age limitation don't go to whether I think players can make it or contribute in this league. Of course, we have enough of a history here with respect to Kobe, Tracy, Rashard, Jermaine, you name it, without these couple of very talented young men who we saw on display last night. There's no question we could put an All-Star type team together, if you could have a third team of people who didn't complete more than a year or just came out of high school.

My view is that the influence that that's going to have prospectively on youngsters on what they do with their lives and what they aim for is going to be profound because of the relevance that NBA players have in the community at large, and that it would be a good thing to somehow use ourselves to focus attention on the fact that a youngster who thinks he's coming to the NBA is, I think, as Arthur Ashe pointed out, much more likely to be a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon than an NBA player.

Nothing personal with respect to either of the qualities. Obviously we have a long history of demonstrating that you don't have to be 19 or 20 to act in an immature fashion. (Laughter) You could cover all of us, and particularly a couple of incidents that have drawn attention over the years by some pretty interesting and beloved characters, who have had a slip or two in judgment.

So I don't mean to cast any aspersions on either the maturity or the basketball capacity of 19-year-olds. I just think it would be a good idea as a league if we were not associated with the prospect of pulling kids who are now 10 years old, bouncing the ball and telling their parents they are going to be the next LeBron James, because everyone in this room knows they are not, and then they will be left with virtually nothing.

Granik: In response to your point, as long as the rule is what it is, we are going to treat players as full-fledged NBA players. They are going to get -- we don't single them out for promotion necessarily. Certainly in LeBron James' case, he's come in with as much promotion as anybody we've ever seen unrelated to us, but we are going to treat them as welcomed NBA players and to whatever promotion they would normally get as part of the league. And certainly, we don't fault them for making the choice. The rule is the way it is now and they certainly have the opportunity to make a choice and make the choice that they consider that's best for them and their families. And so there's no way that they are going to be treated in a second-class fashion once they are in the league.

Commissioner Stern: This relates to our launching and our continued support of the National Basketball Development League as well. The D League as we call. It is a place where we would like youngsters who can't make it or haven't made it, to get the opportunity to reset their basketball clocks in a setting where they are well-coached, where they have appropriate additional life skills that can be taught to them through online or other situations where they can be involved with their communities and get a sense of personal growth.

And so, that's where we have been spending a fair amount of time and money. This season we have six young men have been called up. One in particular because it's sort of -- I call him a local guy, Omar Cook, who maybe shouldn't have come out of St. John's exactly when he did, was most recently signed by Portland to a ten-day contract. We think that having the ability -- it's our obligation to have a place where we can try to help youngsters who following the siren song have maybe made a step towards basketball a little bit too early.

So we think that's consistent and we love to see players get called up. Actually I'll be watching Chris Andersen in the Slam Dunk Contest, or when we watch the Indiana team with Anthony Johnson participating or the Bulls bringing up a Dupree and he signs to a full year, that's exciting for us. We know there is a need there and we are trying to get it just right. And I think it's something that the Players Association thinks is a good idea, as well.

Q: Just want to know if either one of you could comment on the Atlanta LLC, the prospective ownership group for the Hawks?

Granik: We are pretty much from the NBA standpoint, the deal is pretty much done. I know that between the buyer and the seller, the deal is concluded and they have -- we have agreement on the various documents that have to be done with the NBA. I would expect that within the next week or so that we would be sending something out to the NBA Board of Governors by e-mail, because we can do this electronically to approve the ownership transfer.

Now, they also need to be approved by the NHL as well. I think that's a little bit behind. They just had their All-Star Week last week. They would have to tell you. But I think that may delay another week or two until the whole thing gets closed because they are got going to take ownership of one without the other.

But we feel pretty comfortable that this deal is going to close very shortly.

Q: You recently said the development and future of the NBA are going to go through Europe, and you also picture an NBA franchise in Paris by the next three or four years. Could you please talk about it?

Commissioner Stern: Well, I didn't quite say that. What I said was that we are going to study the issue and we have launched a study of whether it was possible for the NBA to have teams in Europe by the end of the decade. That would require new buildings, ownership groups, certain amount of fan increase and their interest in us and the ability to pay the kind of prices that are necessary to support a franchise.

So, we are doing that. We have undertaken the study and we should know in a reasonable amount of time whether it's something that we should continue to focus on or whether we might go in a different direction.

I think we'll have a pretty good interim idea in the next six to nine months whether it is something that we should move full speed ahead on.

Q: As enlightened free speech advocates, do you ever find it hard when you have to fine somebody for criticizing the league or the refs, and has the line moved? Is it a hard decision usually, or is it an easy decision or has the line moved in the last 15 years?

Commissioner Stern: No. It's an easy decision and the line hasn't moved. Really.

Q: What is it?

Commissioner Stern: Well, it's not about free speech. I thought you were going to ask me about Janet Jackson. (Laughter).

It's not about free speech. It's about being part of an organization. There are sort of rules of engagement and employment and one of those is what you can and can't say. Sometimes people go a little further. I don't know what particular incident you're referring to.

Q: I just wondered in general.

Commissioner Stern: You know, a coach comes out and says, you know, after a game, he had a tough game, blasts the officials he knows, it sort of shows his team he's standing up, he has a check he has to send to the League and it's our job to fine him and then move on. That's the way it's always been, forever.

Granik: The way we look at it, I think in any industry as part of your employment, it's generally assumed that what's goes with that is that you are not going to attack the product that you're selling. That's the way we view it. When you are criticizing the game, the integrity of the game, the way it's run, you are criticizing the organization that you work for and what it's trying to sell.

Commissioner Stern: If you were going to start talking about the fact that some of the ads or some of the issues that your magazine gets involved with on some of the covers, you get called in and say "cut it out," you can't be an employee if you are going to do that. That's the way we see it with respect to us.

Q: You and Russ touched on it a little bit earlier on, LeBron James. Can you just talk about from a marketing performance and temperament standpoint what you've seen in him his first year, compared to some of the other great players that have come through?

Commissioner Stern: I would just say that the hype that this young man was subjected to and was done for him is greater than anything that I've ever seen, and yet he never played a college game and we never participated in that hype.

What he seems to have done is lived up to that. That's extraordinary. He's very talented. He's got a great temperament and he seems to have a physical skill that's justified when people say about him.

I rush to say that he's part of a rookie class that's quite extraordinary. Not just Carmelo Anthony, but a number of the players you saw last night, who really can thank LeBron for their being allowed to develop in relative anonymity despite the fact that they are making extraordinary contributions and the fact that they had to come off the bench on the rookie team when they didn't have to do on his team of origin. It speaks well for the future of the league and LeBron is leading that.

While Billy is getting set up, one group that I forgot at our Legacy event that participated fully and will be here to night and that's the WNBA. They have been in evidence all around the town. The L.A. Sparks have filled us in on some of their plans for next year and they are terrific and show great growth. We recently had an ownership change in the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury with the infusion of new partners and new capital, and so the WNBA experience continues to grow and we think we have a hit on our hands in terms of growing fans in the game of basketball. It's actually going to be just as big over time as our international experience because there's half the country who happen to be female, who have not been participating in sports the way they are going to over the next decade, and the WNBA is going to lead that effort.

I wanted to answer that in front of Billy, I don't mind taking advantage of him but that is that we met with the players today. Billy had a group of the Executive Committee in and following up on discussions. We agreed that the players were going -- the players are in the process of doing their own meetings to come up with a comprehensive outline of response to some ideas that we have earlier been throwing out, not specific proposals, but ideas by the NBA, and that they were going to come back within the next four weeks what very concrete set of sort of responses, proposals, and that we would then at that point set an intense schedule with the announced goal of seeing whether there was an agreement to be reached over the next few months. Recognizing that it seems to be part of labor lure, that you have to be under some kind of deadline to get the final deal done, but we'll give it our shot.

One issue we have been discussing, we have been discussing the issue of whether veterans should be authorized to come to camp with rookies. We have agreed that they will, and training camp will proceed as it was with conditions with respect to amount of work-out time, etc.,to be finalized between us and with a guarantee of a certain amount of time for a player at All-Star Break who is not participating in the All-Star to make sure that he gets -- how many days off?

Granik: It will end up being an extra day.

Commissioner Stern: Five days instead of four that they currently have. That we just sort of finalized an hour ago.

Did I state it right?

Hunter: You did.

Granik: We did not talk much about Vin Baker, other than that we disagree and hopefully the player and the team might work something out. If they don't, then that's what you have arbitrators for.

Commissioner Stern: And Billy can reengage in his inflammatory rhetoric. (Laughter).

Q: The point about Baker, though, it's such an enormous situation because it's a separate amendment to a contract as opposed to the basic player's agreement. Could it set a precedent?

Granik: I don't purport to know all of the details on this, but I don't think this is as much about the separate amendment that he had. This goes more to the general provisions in a player's contract, about a player being able to report in good physical condition to fulfill his contract. But again, I don't think we want to go into more detail on that. But I think that's the basis of what the dispute will be.

Hunter: I think Russ has correctly identified what the problem or issue is: We obviously differ. We feel as though there was little basis, in fact, for Boston to terminate Vin's contract and I interpret it more as an attempt to circumvent the guaranteed contract provisions of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.

But Russ is correct in the first instance when he says it has nothing to do with the separate amendment. They are going to try to terminate it. They have to do it under the terms of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Commissioner Stern: That's why they invented arbitrators.

Q: Can you talk about the fact that more and more trades seem to be based on financial issues of teams maybe trying to reduce salary cap, and is that a good image for the teams to be opening, saying that they are getting rid of talent in terms of trying to get their payroll straightened out? And what is your response to the talk about shortening the guaranteed length of contracts from six or seven years down to three or four?

Commissioner Stern: Well, I'll take the latter part. I don't know what the talk is, but that would be a subject that would be talk between the union and the NBA, and that's for collective bargaining. I don't think I'm going to negotiate here, unless Billy wants to.

Q: Billy?

Commissioner Stern: No, I don't think he does.

Hunter: (Laughing).

Commissioner Stern: Not to completely sidestep the question. The most important thing for us is to make our league competitive. The reason that we have an agreement that the players get 55 percent or this coming season, 57, and then our teams have to live within those rules. The best thing that could happen to the teams and the players is for teams to be financially secure and profitable so that they can invest in marketing and ultimately investor reinvest in players.

So if a team gets itself into a situation where it's -- I don't even want it -- I can't even allow it to parse my lips, where it's many tens of millions of dollars above what the limit is, and you tell me that they are trading players in order to get down within a mile of the rest of the league, that's the price that you pay if you're up there. And so we expect teams to be making economic decisions based upon the reality of the marketplace and whether they can economically support their payroll.

So I don't have a problem with that at all. And you know what? Neither do our fans. Our fans understand that part of management today is to hire the best coach, recruit the best players, put the good roster together and manage your salary cap. They do it in the NFL. They do it in the NBA, and I think our fans hold our ownership and management accountable for their ability and skill at doing that. And that's fine, because at the end of the day, there is a real possibility that teams in markets like San Antonio or Phoenix or Utah, can compete with the New Yorks and the L.A.s, and at least from the league's perspective, that's what the Collective Bargaining Agreement is designed to achieve.

Q: There's always a more immediate question, but there's always mumblings at this time of year that the general public did not get to see a game like tomorrow in person and that some season ticket holders don't get rewarded at expense of sponsors and league partners. Do you have any issue with the makeup of the live-viewing audience for tomorrow night's game, or is that issue, do you feel, overblown?

Commissioner Stern: It's a real issue. One way to do it would be for us to have the game in Paris or in a non-NBA city, because we need the tickets because this is our Super Bowl. We don't know a year in advance where our Finals are going to be. We sometimes don't know a week in advance where our Finals are going to be. So our All-Star Game has become what it's become. Our teams and their cities want the economic lift, and what happens with an All-Star Game, regardless of the difficulties that it has for tickets.

So we try hard. We have three events now. We make sure that every ticket holder gets some shot at one of the events. We bring in the Jam Session that starts now I think on Wednesday and run it all week. We are out in the community. But as a business matter, we need the tickets to conduct our business, and that's the story.

Q: David and Russ talked about their thoughts on the Maurice Clarett decision and about the decision and the age limit. I wonder what your thoughts were on both of those topics.

Hunter: Well, I don't really see where the Maurice Clarett decision seriously impacts us.

The only impediment that a kid can have coming from a league is that at least he has graduated or at least his class graduated from high school. So it's quite apparent that unless a kid is inclined to come in, who is a junior in high school, who has not graduated and feels compelled to test it, then I don't see that we have a prohibition.

My position all along is that I guess I have been opposed to an age limit. I have always promoted the fact that if a guy was physically and mentally capable of playing in the League, he should come. I think when you look at someone like LeBron James, it now makes it difficult; hard for those who would be inclined to impose an age limit to support that argument, at least if there are a lot of other LeBrons.

I think playing basketball or exercising one's right to play is like anything else. We all have ambitions and we don't always achieve them so. Clearly there will be kids who attempt to come into the league and they are not going to make it. But if that's the case, then what I think should happen, then I think the NCAA should modify its rules so if a kid attempts to come in early and can't make it, I think it's ludicrous to say because a kid exercised or attempted to enter into a draft and then he wasn't drafted, that he cannot now go to college and play college basketball. What we could do if he does it and he fails, he goes to college and has to stay there three or four years. So any guy that takes a shot and doesn't make it, he has to go to college and give a long commitment to the college.

You know, I think, when I look at the maturity and I look at the nature of LeBron James' game, I think people are hard-put to find fault, at least with someone of his caliber who is 18 years of age, because the kid really plays like an adult. He plays much older than his age, and I think that his conduct thus far in the League has been something that clearly the league has to adopt and want to promote, because I think he's going to become the poster child for how one does things right.

Commissioner Stern: There is a very good 14-year-old player in Cincinnati, and under the logic and reasoning of the decision in Clarett, he could mount litigation against us.

Hunter: Well, if a 14-year-old steps forward, I'm going to join hands with David Stern.

Commissioner Stern: I don't know why. Even if he has a body like LeBron's?

Hunter: Even if he has a body like LeBron's. I'm going public now, if a 14-year-old tries to come in, you and I are going to be joined at the hip. (Laughter).

Commissioner Stern: So we know what Billy and I are. We just don't know what the right price is in the middle. Fair enough.

Q: You've known Gary Bettman a long time and you've worked with him, you know what he's facing the next year or two down the road, what kind of advice would you have for him in this, and how do you think it would impact the NBA possibly being the only game in town for an entire year?

Commissioner Stern: Well, frankly, the likelihood that the NHL was going to shut down for at least a season, if they could not solve their problems, caused us -- there was an element in our determination to exercise the option and run the deal for another year. We didn't think the negotiation around that time of two leagues would be a good idea in light of what was coming.

I can't imagine a person of more reliability on economic mantles than Arthur Levitt (sic) who studied the report and the source of the payment to him is irrelevant because he's a man I know of such integrity. And if he says the industry makes no sense to invest in, and that it's lost close to $300 million in a best-case analysis, then the union and the owners should have a very strong incentive to make that sport economically rational. Anything that causes that would be, my advice to Gary and to his union, that they should sit down and do it, because the alternative is going to be horrendous.

Hunter: Well, I think that clearly in the event, at least from my perspective, in the event of a lockout, assume it proceeds through next season, I think the reality is it may be a windfall for the NBA because there is probably not going to be any other game in town.

I would obviously encourage them to try to make every attempt to reach an accord. The NBA has elected to exercise it's option for an additional year, but I've indicated to David and to the owners that we are going to make every effort to try to reach an agreement between now and the end of the summer, knowing that if we don't, it's pretty difficult to negotiate during the season because the players generally are unavailable. I would anticipate that in the event that we don't reach an agreement within the next year, there's a strong possibility that we might be locked out again.

We've both been down that road. It's not very comfortable. As a matter of fact, it's extremely uncomfortable. We lost a lot of money, the players did, as well as the league. And it can get ugly on occasion. And then you have got a lot of ground to try to recover once you have come back together.

So we are going to try to reach an agreement. That does not mean that things may or may not get adversarial, because they often do. Sometimes you have to fall apart before you can get back together. But we know what the ultimate aim and goal is, and that is to keep the NBA vital, to grow it, to expand it, and obviously my ambition is going to continue to see our players be some of the highest-paid professional athletes in the world. We are not going to do anything to destroy it. And having been through a seven-month lockout in the past, that's the last thing I want to experience again.

Q: You just passed a rather important milestone. Can you talk about what over the last 20 years is your proudest achievement and what one decision you'd like to have back?

Commissioner Stern: Well, I'd like to have back the act of locking out and of banning people like Micheal Ray Richardson for life from the NBA, on a personal, his personal lifespan and things like that are horrible.

And locking out is the least pleasing thing that I've ever had to do with respect to a sport that I've spent my adult life trying to build.

On the good side, I must tell you that I was asked this a lot this weekend, about my All-Star experience, at least. If there's a fan here who doesn't have a smile thinking about Magic Johnson in the 1992 All-Star Game, sinking that final three and then being the MVP and then fast forward that he's still alive, because those of us that were there did not expect him to be, it made Thursday's tribute to Magic Johnson one of the most memorable evenings for me in this league.

Aside from the basketball, we could talk about being at Boston Garden when it was 150 degrees and Rambis and McHale clothes-lining each other and all of those other things that are memorable.

I think the most memorable things that have happened have to do with our ability to impact others. Again for those of you who remember, this was a nation that was behaving in a, I would say, an ugly way, with respect to HIV prior to Magic Johnson, and he changed the debate on AIDS and HIV in this country and in the world. If you're getting the impression I think that Magic is a pretty historic figure both inside the NBA and outside the NBA, you are right.

To me that has always set the tone of work, together of what we can do with our players off the court. So when Billy was discussing with us the amount of food that our players were distributing to hungry families or the amount that they were reading to people or the visits that they were making to hospitals, to me, that's the highlight and an ongoing highlight.

I just might add that we really do have an opportunity to affect people. That's why we are traveling globally. That's why we are doing it domestically. At a time when the continent is about to be wiped out by AIDS, dealing with hunger, lack of health care and a variety of other things, the tempest in the teapot, that is, Janet Jackson, I think that leaves all of us, and I think I can speak for Billy on this one, gaping, gaping, at the way people spend their time after they say they are sorry.

Thank you very much.