Commissioner David Stern: Thank you for coming.
First, let me say that Russ Granik (NBA Deputy Commissioner) sends his regards and apologies for not being here with me. His son is graduating this weekend, and I don't know what it says that both of us were working for Larry O'Brien when he was born. So I remember it 20-some-odd years ago.
I'd just like to say that before I open it up to questions, that we've had, for us, we think, a terrific year and a great playoffs. The young players that you all have been writing about have, I'd say, come across the stage and are being appreciated for the talents that they've gone into. The not-so-young players have demonstrated that they, too, are amongst the greatest athletes in the world and not ready to relinquish the stage to just the youngest players. Our international players are clearly increasing in number and making their mark. We've had an extraordinary number of individual and team performances that have been chronicled during these playoffs on TNT and NBC.
So for us, we're looking forward to a great Finals here, where we've got the team with the best record in the East against the team with the same record but the home-court advantage and the second-best record in the West.
There's a lot going on in our sport aside from this. The WNBA had its opening game here in Staples Center last night. I got in too late to see it, but I understand that 11,000 fans enjoyed the confines here and were treated to a very good game.
Our Developmental League launches in November, an eight-team minor league with an entry of 20. As I sit here, I can tell you basketball is the team sport that is the most played sport amongst the youngsters in this country and increasingly around the world.
With that, I'm happy to open it up to any questions that you might have.
Q: Commissioner, what is the maturation of Kobe Bryant and Allen Iverson in particular meant to the league this year?
Stern: Obviously, each of them has led their teams, not single-handedly, but each of them have literally matured before the eyes of our sports-loving nation.
I think I said to somebody earlier today sports is the original reality-based programing. The reality is that Kobe and
Shaq decided that they wanted to be on the island together. Allen decided he just wanted to be on the island. And what we saw have soap opera, but really just real-life maturation and development.
Here they are. Shaq and Kobe on the one side, Allen and Kobe and
Dikembe and a cast of others on the other. We've seen them work at it. We've seen some of their growth, some of their heartache. That's why sports is so special. Obviously, we have a matchup of two great teams, and I think two extraordinary young players in Allen and in Kobe, but I don't want to leave out either Shaq or Dikembe, both of whom are much larger than I am.
Q: First of all, thanks for cutting the moratorium period down to the 18th of July. What's the thinking of that? Would you consider cutting it down by another week or so?
Stern: It's not signed yet, but we're trying hard to have it done by that time. I believe that the thinking behind it is it's an excruciating month for all of us, but we do need a period of time to compute the salary cap and the economic realities that would allow teams to sign players, and I think the middle of July is the fastest that we can reasonably get it done.
I would have a better, more refined answer for you if Russ were here. But I believe that's the reason.
Q: Could you comment on the arena vote in Charlotte yesterday and where that situation will go from here?
Stern: Well, I'd like to say that I think the Hornets are going to be busy preparing for this year. They had an extraordinary playoff run that sort of reminded them and the City of Charlotte how much they mean to each other.
I think that it's unfortunate that the referendum, which had had a relatively light turnout, turned it down, but I would like to think that all the parties concerned will find a way to get the people of Charlotte a first-class facility, one that would be necessary for the Hornets or any other entertainment or sports, indoor sports, to inhabit.
Other than that, I think I'd like to just sort of wait a while to see how it shakes out.
Q: Can you give us an update on the situation with the Grizzlies and what would happen to that franchise if the vote in Shelby County was turned down?
Stern: I don't want to be too much of a prognosticator, but next week there is a vote in Shelby County. The various votes that are necessary at the City Council and if the Shelby County vote goes as I think it's expected to go, then I think the committee would recommend to the board the approval of the move.
If the committee doesn't approve the move or recommend to the board that the move be approved, and the board doesn't approve it, then I think we're not going to have the Grizzlies moving to Memphis. It's that simple.
Q: Do you have any concerns about taking the example of Scott Williams being suspended for Game 7 of the last series? Do you have any concerns that relatively routine disciplinary matters have are having a relatively disproportionate effect on the series?
Stern: No. As I recall, there's nothing as routine as telling players that you can't come off the bench. And as I recall, enforcing that relatively routine rule had a ...
Q: He was on the floor.
Stern: I understand that. I'm saying your question was do I think that enforcing relatively routine rules, am I concerned it has a disproportionate effect. All I can say is you enforce the rules and whatever effect it has, it has. That's just the way it has always been.
In that case, upon further review, it was deemed to be flagrant foul two.
Q: Yesterday a Seattle area high school junior was taken 26th in the MLB Draft. Three-part question. Were you aware of this development? Has the NBA had any sort of preemptive conversations to prevent any high school juniors from making themselves eligible for the NBA draft? And if you haven't, what would your stance be if a high school junior did take that route?
Stern: That's easy for us. We have a Collective Bargaining Agreement that, although I can't cite the specific words sitting here, provides that players can be drafted if, in fact, their high school classes have graduated. That is our rule.
That's the rule that we're enforcing. I wasn't aware of the Seattle situation, but we have a rule in place that's been collectively bargained with the players, and that is the rule, period. And football, the NFL, has a junior year in college rule, but we have no plans right now to change that rule unilaterally.
Go ahead, you want to follow up?
Q: Yeah, to clarify, this junior actually dropped out of high school and got his GED so he could declare himself eligible.
Stern: No, I don't -- well, I don't know the specific facts, but I don't know that that's good enough. It has to be your entering high school class has to have graduated.
It sort of harkens back, boy, to the way Larry Bird was drafted as a junior, because he had dropped out of school for a year. As a result, he was eligible to be drafted because his entering class had graduated.
That's the rule that we have, and that's the rule that we are enforcing. We're very comfortable with that rule.
Q: Do you think this Laker team could beat the Bulls of the '90s?
Stern: You know, this is a pretty great Laker team. But I, as they say in the commercial, "It's all good." I don't know who would win, and the way I've seen the Lakers play in some of the earlier games, at that game, at that time, I don't think there was a team that could beat the Lakers at that moment.
But the beauty of our game is those moments aren't always continuous, and that's why we're going to have the Finals and see. But this Laker team is an awfully good team.
Q: Getting back to the relocation of the Grizzlies, one of the reasons they bypassed Anaheim was they said that would be the seventh pro team in the area. Is that a large concern of the league? If ever a team came in, they would be that number?
Stern: There is a serious issue that is not easily settled by saying a metropolitan area is large and, therefore, it's going to be successful no matter how many teams you have in it.
I believe that there's increasingly, as we've learned in places like Portland and San Antonio and Utah, that there's an increasing sort of statistic that gets chosen or analyzed as to how many professional sports teams there are to compete and how many major corporations there are per team.
I think that's very important in our analysis of Memphis. And, frankly, being the seventh team into a market that is saturated means that difficulties ... I don't think not so much with getting attendance at times, but television, which is increasingly important. You wind up with the second or third team in the market really struggling to collect an audience. I think that's a valid consideration in all leagues, in all sports.
Q: In the wake of all this optimism going on in the playoffs right now, are you concerned at all about the ramifications of the rule changes and what's going to happen in the fall and the scores sort of inevitably dropping?
Stern: No. I think it's sports. We'll see what life under the new rules will be.
I think from my perspective, the best thing about the new rules is the elimination of the illegal defensive guidelines. No one has to fake understanding them anymore; and, number two, I think a lot of people that we've spoken to, even people who coach isolation, believe that they can go through a 12-step program now to not coach offense where one player stands on one side and four stand in the parking lot yelling, "Illegal."
We're a resilient league. We'll understand through the summer what's going on and through the season, we had good meetings in Chicago yesterday with both the coaches and the competition committee. There will be a subcommittee of those two groups helping us both evaluate and analyze and the like and how to see what the best way to implement these rules are and what sort of minor changes might be necessary.
But we're not the least bit concerned about it.
Q: Now that you've got a minimum age in the developmental league, where do you stand on your attempt to get a minimum age for your league?
Stern: I think that I accept the fact that, a, there are very good arguments on both sides of the discussion. In fact, I used to make the arguments on the other side of the discussion.
Number two, the Players Association has indicated that it's not a subject that it's prepared to agree to. Since we're not prepared to unilaterally implement it, it's on the back burner for now. I don't think it's constructive for us. I don't feel enhanced by having 70 NBA team personnel at the McDonald's High School All-American game. I don't think it's good for us. I don't hold teams accountable for sending someone there, if a general manager is going to get judged and judged harshly for missing the next Kobe, then he's going to have to be there. In fact, he'd get fired if he weren't and missed a player.
I don't think in balance at this point, in our development and the development of our sport and all the things surrounding it, that our current rule would be as good as something which strongly discouraged players or kept them from coming out of high school.
I say that fully aware that we're liable to have five high school players taken in the first round. And let me say that we're actively and aggressively working on our rookie transition program, which was the first in major league sports, and has been improved and made more sophisticated every year. We have a special sub-grouping of that for high school players. We will be dealing with our teams, both during the summer and next year with respect to a variety of issues that are presented by sort of nurturing and helping kids who might not be as sophisticated or worldly or along in the development as some older players would be.
We'll do fine, up to a point. It just wouldn't be our first choice.
Q: What is the relationship between your new development league and the NCAA? How does that work, that relationship?
Stern: Actually, it doesn't have a formal relationship. We have targeted the 20-year-old age entry requirement so that this would not be viewed as an alternative to college. We didn't want to be in the business of attracting players to forgo college, who would otherwise go, and we settled on 20.
Actually, there was some talk from college presidents that we should lower our age limit to 18, and I just had a sense that that turned things on its head, at least. And the only person that we would let in who would be under 20 would be somebody who actually was drafted by an NBA team because of our requirements of allowing high school graduates to come in and not made it. I think our sort of compassion would say, "Let's deal with that issue."
But other than that, we have a 20-year rule, and we're trying to operate, in effect, away from the college ball and, hopefully, do nothing that would do anything but help it to thrive. That's what we would like it to do.
Q: This summer a player is going to be called to testify in a federal case in Atlanta that has ties to the mob. I'm just wondering, what worries you about this, and what plans the NBA has in place to kind of let people know, players know about the possible pitfalls?
Stern: Wouldn't you rather talk about declining ratings and attendance being off? (Laughter.)
Let me say that we have, I think what we have to do at the league level and at the security level, do a better job of identifying places like this and warning our players against it.
There is a line that you traditionally try to walk along, a very thin one, from saying based upon every innuendo or what vowel somebody's name ends with as to whether you should go to a place or not, and we're not going to be party to that.
We have a pretty good information-gathering apparatus, and perhaps on this one we just didn't see or understand what was going on behind the scenes there, if, in fact, it does prove to be true after a criminal prosecution that someone was found guilty of doing something.
The notion of telling adults what kind of establishments they should drink at or whatever or socialize at is a little bit ... we're somewhat passed that. I think the Yankees tried that with Babe Ruth.
But that's not to make light of the fact that we have to do a better job of gathering information so that we can say at a particular time that we now have adequate information to fairly warn you. Although that has its own risks and threats of litigation and the like, so it's a very sensitive subject, and there are times when people are sort of admonished generally, without specifics, and they choose not to do it.
But it's a fair point and one that we just have to continue to step up our efforts on.
Q: If you could just fill in a few of the blanks with regard to the Charlotte situation. First of all, how realistic is it to expect another referendum to be any different? Do you expect a local group to step in at this time and save the day? And what do you say to the perception that they're going to be out of there within two years?
Stern: Well, I guess I would say that the only experience I have that might be relevant happened in Houston, where they lost a referendum and then they won a referendum. San Antonio won a referendum, and Dallas won a referendum. I guess this one has been described as nonbinding.
Without knowing exactly what the vote was and what the tallies were, I don't want to wax poetic on it, but everybody knows what's at stake. I'd like to, without issuing any threats or ultimatums or talking about the certainty, I would like to hope that because these two enterprises, Charlotte and the Hornets, do mean a certain amount to each other, that there will be a way to find a way to do what has to be done down there, and that's to build a new building.
Q: Going back to the first round, is there any talk, or what would it entail in terms of going to a best-of-seven so we don't have a game every four or five days? Also, the idea of what they do in hockey, re-seeding after the first round, rather than having a set format, is there anything that could be done with that?
Stern: I guess if I were anxious to go to four-out-of-seven, you could say we did a good thing by occasioning that question, which is now that we have a wait, we should just move and go to four-out-of-seven.
Historically, I have been against that because I thought that you, with a one-to-eight, one playing eight, that you're liable to encourage lots of sitting at the end of that.
I think that if you ask me, I would be more likely to, perhaps in the next television deal, to go back to a more condensed format than we had, number one.
Number two, re-seeding means that you can never move on the way we do. You always have to have everyone wait until it's all settled. That's not anything that works for us. We like the way the system works now. In some ways you're entitled to pick up the seed if you knock off somebody higher; that's okay with us.
Q: Does it have to go through the Players Association to change that?
Stern: Does it have to go through the Players Association to change that? I don't think so, but it's something we would seek their input on.
I don't think we have to go to the Players Association on it, but I don't think we would do it without going to the Players Association on it.
Q: Your league seems to be more the subject of conspiracy theories than just about any other.
Stern: Thank you for noticing. (Laughter.)
Q: I wonder, a, to what extent is that a problem in terms of public perception? And, b, players and a coach were disciplined over the weekend for sort of buying into that theory. To what does that even border on First Amendment issues?
Stern: There's no First Amendment issue here, at all, in the context of employment relationship.
You may be able to say a certain number of things, but as it relates to your employer, you may not if that's your contract, and we have such a contract. The terms and conditions of employment authorized penalties.
I would say that if anything, maybe I'm the one that's guilty of letting it go too long. It goes back, it has wonderfully -- it has great antecedents. I remember back in the Bulls versus Knicks days, Phil Jackson would say that the league wants the Knicks, Pat Riley would say NBC wants the Bulls. I don't know, then I would do talk shows, both in Chicago and New York, where it suddenly went from whatever to absolutely gospel.
Everybody in the league knows that that's what happens during the tense times of playoffs. People lose their objectivity and in the throws of the heat of battle, they say things.
Frankly, given in the years the amount of coverage that we get and the amount that people can begin to take those issues seriously, I think we have to step up and be more vigilant. Our referees are the most talented at what they do. Their every call is analyzed. Their statistics are diced and spliced and merged and purged. Their every game is watched, and they're worked on to improve. The number of referees in successive rounds goes down during the Finals. And at bottom, what these finds were grounded on was the notion that you just can't simply with either as a joke or half-serious, impugn the integrity of the league by alleging that the league is engaging in criminal activity. It just doesn't go down that well, and it won't be tolerated.
But you understand when somebody comes after a game, a coach blows off steam, in the past we do the technical or the fine and move on because the coaches have the most difficult jobs. And our coaches know the difference between being ticked off at a bad call or maybe a missed call and doing something serious in our view, as suggesting that behind closed doors there's a criminal conspiracy going on. It doesn't happen.
So that's why we decided to level the fines and announce them that way. It's really not fair to the officials, as well, who I think do an extraordinary job.
One of the reasons that it's easy for people to sort of suspend belief is that if you've listened to games as I have, from both the visiting feed and the home feed, you would have thought you were listening to two different games. I urge all of you to do the test because it is traditional for announcers to, not in a bad way, just to ref games. It happens; replays get viewed. And it's shocking.
I remember getting calls one day from the winning team and the losing team, both that complained about the same call. It's extraordinary.
And after a while, that's what's going on, people say, "Okay, you hear it a certain way."
Then I remember when the coaches said to me, "We should please work hard to get the third official." I pleaded with them, I've said, "You now convinced our owners that the two you have are no good. How am I going to get the third?"
They said, "No, no, that's just us. Get the third." We got the third.
It's sort of an age-old issue for us. If truth be told, I would say our referees are more embedded in the game with the number of calls, the number of non-calls, the number of violations, the number of non-violations, it's a tough job. That's why we do need three officials. That's why I would say given their accuracy rate of 95 or 96 percent, but if you're the victim of the two or three percent, or four percent that are not demonstrably proven to have gone the way they should have went, you complain and it starts over.
I'm not sure that whoever sits here 50 years from now isn't going to be dealing with the same subject. That's just the way it is.
Q: We're coming up on the 15-year anniversary of the '86 Draft. That's Tarpley, Washburn...
Stern: Harper, Daugherty. Just a minute. My crackerjack PR department, do you want me to read down the whole draft? Are you with ESPN?
Q: I saw the show last night. Can you talk about the residual effects of that draft, how maybe it's changed the way teams approach the draft, changed some policies in the league?
Stern: I think it affects the way teams look at players. It's not just, "Listen, I don't care what they say about them. If he's 6'11" and he can move like that, let me have him, I'll tell care of the rest." That no longer happens.
Sometimes to the extreme with respect to tests and psychological tests, et cetera, certainly background checks and the like. These are huge investments that are being made where contracts are going to be in huge dollars, and teams are approaching it very, very carefully, as they should.
It really goes back to the whole issue of scouting high school seniors as well, because by sheer multiplication of the dollars that a player is going to earn over his career or the value he would have if we had cash transactions floating at market, it's a big deal. Our teams have been badly burned, and some of their histories have been seriously altered because of mistakes that individual players have made and become sort of worthless both to themselves and to the team.
Q: Are there any discussions to help the perennial year-after-year bad teams in the league.
Stern: I think that we've done it. I think that given the salary cap, the escrow, the tax, the draft, the rookie scale, it is now about management. Yes, there are some teams, because of their geographic locale or other additional earning opportunities that may be particularly attractive, but you can't have more than twelve players, and you can't have more than five starters. So that's not an issue.
With all that we have, I think that's why you're seeing the teams at the bottom having better records and the teams at the top not having as good a record as they used to. I think there will be variations over the years, but the reality is we have a set of rules where the fans of every team should be holding their management accountable to what goes on. And we've seen certain teams be able to improve themselves. Some teams seem to defy gravity, like the Lakers, I think, have more consistently perhaps. I don't know what the numbers are.
But we're seeing a number of teams, one of them is here, the 76ers, they've had a lot of very bad years. I think that the Clippers, who have had a lot of bad years, they have a roster going into next season that's going to be the envy of many teams in this league because of the draft and the rookie scale and the like.
So I think we're fundamentally seeing the changes that have been wrought by the Collective Bargaining Agreement that have brought us to a point where many teams can go into the season with their fans believing they have a shot. If that happens year after year, then management has to answer for it, period.
Q: If Michael Jordan does decide to come back, what specific steps does he have to take to divest himself from his ownership stake? Does he have to divest all of his interest in Lincoln Holdings or only the interest that pertains to the Wizards? Has the league instructed him on how to do it?
Stern: We've issued no instructions yet, but our rules, our Collective Bargaining Agreement provides that a player cannot own an interest in a team, and it was enforced with respect to a gentleman who this city is familiar with named Magic Johnson.
He has to divest himself of his basketball holdings. We wouldn't purport to speak to any other holdings. I don't know how you would sever them, but I'm sure it can be done.
And everybody sort of knows our rules and our lawyers talk to team lawyers, they talk to agents, they talk to lawyers for players, so there's no serious issue here about what the rules are or the best way to comply with them.
Q: Could he have an ownership stake in the Capitals, for example?
Stern: Sure. Absolutely. But we'll try to help him out... (Smiling.) If he needs any help on the subject, we could help him structure a transaction.
Thank you very much, everybody. Enjoy the game.
