INTERVIEW BY BILL SIMMONS
ESPN: THE MAGAZINE  | FEBRUARY 16, 2006

BILL SIMMONS: The people that know you say you love being the commissioner, you're always going to be the commissioner…
DAVID STERN: I think you judge that on a day-to-day basis. The job and the opportunities have so changed over the years that I find it continually challenging and stimulating…when you recognize what the untapped potential is for sports, [like] North and South Korea talking about a single team and marching under a single flag in the Beijing Olympics, where but in sports? The other part that we're doing — the section that deals with digital entertainment, the digital ecosystem, when you think about what's coming in that part of the technology world, where there are going to be 3 billion cell phones by the year 2010, and even they and their successors, which will be just called handheld devices, will be video-enabled, music-enabled, voice-enabled and Internet-enabled…that has enormous implications for everything we do, both as a society and with the NBA. It's in a vacuum, changing day by day. So we've got the technological changes occurring, we have globalization occurring, and we have enormous needs for corporate/social responsibility, so there's really a great opportunity to do well and do good at the same time.

SIMMONS: How would you compare that to 1983, when you were taking over?
STERN: Look what's happened since 1983. We've gone from three networks or maybe four … I mean, the first network deal I made for cable, which I either fortunately or unfortunately made, was in 1979 (with a network that eventually became USA) for $400,000. In the intervening 20 years or so, we went from 4 million subscribers on cable to 90 million on cable and satellite … we went from five networks to 500 networks. That was the most enormous growth and we rode that growth. That was a river that came running by our door — actually, it was more like an ocean.

Another thing happened: Right now, the only building in our league that isn't new or rebuilt since 1984 is the Meadowlands, and that's planned for replacement in a couple of years. All of the sudden, we have 30 teams playing in buildings with club seats, suites, video boards, sound systems, I mean, it is almost unfair to compare the experience. And by the way, the TV thing is significant in another way. Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain labored in relative anonymity. I just read some place that Greg Oden has already appeared in two ESPN games.

The third is Michael Jordan, but for a different reason than you might think. Michael Jordan and Nike made sports marketing a consumer product business as well, where teams put their marks on everything from apparel to furniture to hard goods …

SIMMONS: But you guys had a little bit to do with that, in terms of marketing players and games? You guys were the first ones that did it, right?
STERN: You know, interestingly enough, when I became commissioner, everything I knew I copied from either Major League Baseball promotions or NFL Properties. They were very generous with their time, Bowie Kuhn and Pete Rozelle … the NFL had NFL Films, baseball had MLB productions and MLB Promotions, the NFL had NFL Properties, so it was sort of, "OK, we have all these people doing things in a pretty good way, what could we learn from them?" But it was the Michael Jordan/Nike phenomenon that really let people see that athletes were OK, and black athletes were OK. Defying a previous wisdom — not only that black athletes wouldn't sell in white America, but that the NBA as a predominantly black sport could not sell in white America. And then sponsors became interested. So all these things came together at the same time.

I mean, in 1985, we invited the Chinese national team — actually, we didn't really invite them, we just said, "Some day, we hope you'll be here," and we got a telex saying, "we accept your invitation" [laughs] — and I remember thinking, "Where are we gonna raise the $250,000 to cover this tour?" And while they were on the plane, Kaliber, the nonalcoholic beverage for Guinness, agreed to a deal with us that allowed us to cover the expenses. It wasn't always that we had a blue chip [sponsor] lined up … sponsors began looking at sports, or at least looking at us. So those three things, the marketing, the arena and the television were huge, because I refuse to say that Player X of today is better than Elgin, Wilt, Willis, Bill Russell, Havlicek, Harry Gallatin …

SIMMONS: When you took over, the number one problem was drugs, in terms of the perception of what was going on, as well as the fighting…
STERN: By the way, people screw up the timing — remember, I didn't become commissioner until 1984. The best thing that happened to us was that in April of 1983, we made a collective bargaining agreement with the players, and we came up with the salary cap for the first time. And there was more of a notion of a partnership between the owners and players. And separately, we came up with the anti-drug plan. Back then, people really appreciated the fact that the players and the owners were addressing both the financial issues and the drugs issues. It wasn't so much that we cleaned it up, because it wasn't as bad as everyone said it was, it was that we addressed it. At the time, everyone said, "Oh, it's the NBA, too much money, players making $250,000, that's ridiculous, they're black … "

SIMMONS: The drug thing was pretty bad though. You guys had a lot of good guys wiped out. Spencer Haywood, Micheal Ray [Richardson], Bernard King, David Thompson…
STERN: Everyone was saying it was only us — it was in the schools, in the prisons, the hospitals, the law firms, it was an item of public and foreign policy. I mean, America was in the grip of something, we were sort of the harbinger of what what happening, that young men were engaged in using drugs. No question. And our guys, we happened to have a young age base, our demographic fit it. So as a result, we have one of the earliest employee-assistance programs on the subject. It ultimately got outvoted, but at the time, it was the first attempt to deal honestly with the problem.

SIMMONS: So, looking at the problems since you took over — the fighting and the drugs — that got settled, the games got a little too chippy in the late-'80s, you fixed that …
STERN: If we did one thing wrong, and we did a lot wrong, but we should have moved on the game itself, [how physical] it got, and honestly, how slow it got.

SIMMONS: You tried to do some things, some of them didn't work, like the 3-point line was too close.
STERN: Yeah, the notion there was, "Well it's all about the coaches, and there's nothing we can do," and then we said that couldn't be the answer, so …

SIMMONS: in the early-'90s, the biggest problem was these guys coming right in and making $40 [million] or $50 million, there's like a whole lost generation of guys where the incentive was removed for them right away.
STERN: I don't buy the incentive issue …

SIMMONS: Really?
STERN: I never bought the public's view. I think that players play, and they compete, and it's not about incentives. More important was that it became a game — the contract negotiations, what agent could do better for his player than somebody else's, and the economic model turned to such craziness, that you couldn't look with a straight face at anyone who wanted to invest [in a team]. And that was an issue.

SIMMONS: Well, in my opinion, the biggest problem you have now is something like that Vince Carter thing last year, where a guy is getting paid a lot of money, doesn't like his situation and goes on cruise control until it changes.
STERN: I'm gonna say something that doesn't deny what you're saying. It's been going on in sports since the beginning of time.

SIMMONS: Except in football.
STERN: No, in football too. The quarterback gets benched, he says there's not room enough for both of us here, I'd rather go somewhere else. It happens all the time. And it happened before you were born, and it will happen after both you and I are gone. That's just the reality. … With that said, you're right. That attitude is corrosive. The idea that a player would imply or say that he wasn't giving his all to his team is anathema to everything that a sports league stands for.

SIMMONS: So how do you fix it?
STERN: That's a good question. In a way that I'm not sure I would ever get the power, or that I have the desire to — which is just, let's take that asset away from the team and say, "That guy's gone." And I'm not so sure that …

SIMMONS: You have the legal power?
STERN: No, you could get the power. But be careful what you wish for. Guys are human, they say stuff, they do stuff, they behave, they pout, I mean, I understand that — they're unhappy, they're trained to win, to excel, to be appreciated, and then, they hit a bump, and they respond in a way that they're not even proud of. And so, I don't believe in capital punishment in effect, so it's a problem. We did indicate to the players that we would start this year small, but we said to the players, "We gotta address this issue, we need something to do," and they said, "You have that power to do it." And I said, "What power is that?" And they said, "Conduct detrimental to basketball or something," and they said, "OK."

SIMMONS: In '99 [with the lockout], you grew a beard, you dug in your heels, you were ready to cancel the season … it was almost like poker. You were hoping they would fold, you knew these guys had their money spread all these different ways, right? What was the mind-set heading into the lockout?
STERN: We didn't have a business model that worked. And if we didn't make a change then, we would never make a change. The players couldn't afford it, but quite frankly, many of the owners couldn't afford it. Right now we have a system that has a cap, an individual player's cap, a rookie cap, an escrow, and a tax. And by the way, I always believed that the hard cap works for the NFL, but it doesn't work for a league with smaller rosters. [Imagine in the '80s, if teams were saying], when their contracts expired, "All right, who we gonna get rid of, Parish, McHale or Bird?" or, "Who we gonna get rid of, Kareem, Magic or Worthy?" It just didn't make sense. We always wanted a softer cap that allowed teams to retain their own free agents, but we needed to come up with a system that said, "Yes, but you can only pay them a certain amount by the years of service."

SIMMONS: I still can't believe the agents agreed to that.
STERN: You know, they're smart, they're smart. This was a system that was going to pay the players more … it was about the system. The salary cap keeps going up, the average salary keeps going up. It's really about distribution, to the extent that one player doesn't take out a disproportionate amount so it remains there for the other players.

SIMMONS: This is the big one: what you did with the 19-year-old age limit. I just don't like it, I feel like you're the rich parents shipping the kids off to boarding school because you just don't want to deal with them.
STERN: This was not a social program, this was a business issue. There was a serious sense that this was hurting our game. Having an 18-year-old player not playing, sitting on the bench, is not good for basketball. If we could have these kids develop for another year, either (A) they'd see that they weren't so good, and we'd see that they weren't so good, or (B) they would get better, and when they came, they would be able to make a contribution. And that would improve the status of basketball. … For us, the opportunity to make them older and to assign players to other leagues so they could get minutes was a good thing. The other thing was that draft picks are very valuable. And the opportunity to see Darko Milicic, Martell Webster, Gerald Green, Kwame Brown, you name it, any high draft pick, for one more year, will in some cases move players up in the draft and in some cases move them down. And that's a good business issue, and ultimately leads to having better basketball players on the roster to make the basketball better. Is it potentially unfair to a player who could have come in right away? Yup. We can go both ways on it. Actually, if it winds up helping the colleges, that isn't a terrible thing.

SIMMONS: You also might have the guy going to college, starting to date someone on campus and thinking, "Eh, maybe I'll stay for one more year," and all of a sudden he's in college for two years.
STERN: You know what? From a business perspective, the fact that he ends up being more experienced, picks up another move or two, gets to be known because he took his team to the NCAA — I mean, Carmelo Anthony "The High School Senior" compared to Carmelo Anthony "The College Freshman" was a huge difference, we had an NCAA champion … and people were killing us for it, they were saying, "Oh, the basketball's terrible because the players are too young, they don't have the requisite skills, they don't have this, they don't have that." Actually, some do, some don't, a year later they're going to be better, [plus] the opportunity to send them down, like a Gerald Green, to get minutes so the team could say, "You know what, he looked good. He got his rhythm back, he got his confidence back, he got to play a few minutes." That was the whole idea. This last collective bargaining agreement was about basketball and about player reputation. It wasn't about the money.

SIMMONS: As a leader, are you one of those guys who has to make every decision, or do you delegate trust to like six or seven people? Because it's usually one of the two.
STERN: I would answer that I delegate, and then I episodically micromanage.

SIMMONS: Interesting.

SIMMONS: Was that [The Malace at the Palace] the biggest thing that happened since you became commissioner? Or would you say Magic?
STERN: In retrospect, [Artest] was big because it showed some fundamental flaws in fans, and the risks that are attached to a game. But it was pretty cut and dry, I think, in what we had to do. Magic was a situation in which our league was put at risk in a big way. This one [Artest] was like, how many thousands of times can you watch the same footage? In some ways, it was like the perfect storm. The hassling wasn't broken up fast enough, the players were misbehaving, there was a player lying on the scorer's table getting a tummy rub, there's a fan who may or may not have belonged there tossing a beer and just happened to hit the guy, and then he goes there and wasn't stopped by anybody.

But in some ways, what turned my stomach more was the sight of fans standing at the vomitorium feeling free to pour their libations on our players. Oh, criminal activity — a guy tossing a chair? I mean, that was inexcusable. But to me, it was a quick lapse of judgment, a wild, uncontrollable melee, and some very bad behavior by fans who thought that some force had been unleashed and they could avoid any civilized norm. Honestly, it was like, "OK, we're gonna deal with it. You can't do this, that's why security is there, we're gonna deal with the [responsible] fans, we're gonna fine the fans … we're gonna define in a better way what behavior is going to be, we're gonna define exactly where security should be posted, and we're going to examine the issue of alcohol to the extent that it may have played its part."

SIMMONS: So all that stuff was cut and dry.
STERN: Yeah, as far as I was concerned.

SIMMONS: Where the Magic thing had a few wrinkles to it.
STERN: Exactly. Before Magic announced that he was HIV-positive, there was a young kid in Indiana named Ryan White who wasn't allowed to go to school because he was HIV-positive, so this was a country that was very much attuned to a bad reaction. So long story short, as far as I'm concerned with Magic Johnson, because HIV was now attached to the face of a beloved athlete, it changed the face of AIDS in this country. Remember, we said he was going to play. We didn't say that lightly, we went out and hired the best doctors and medical people we could find, we spent every night here in the office, it was not an easy situation. But if Magic wasn't allowed to be play, did that mean we therefore had to test everybody, so then we would have to get rid of all the players who were HIV-positive?

SIMMONS: Was that the saddest day you've had on the job when you found out?
STERN: Yeah, yeah. Because we didn't know …

SIMMONS: Because at the time, you're thinking, "God, he's got like 2-3 years left … "
STERN: And I had just been with him in Paris! The Lakers played in the McDonald's championship in 1991, I think it was … and we came back from Paris during the exhibition season, and the next thing I know, we had a decision to make. I was on my way to Utah to announce the All-Star Game, and people look back on it now and they forget what it was like back then, HIV was a huge thing … and so we decided that I was going to L.A. and standing next to Magic because he was our Magic, and it was sort of like, "That's it."

SIMMONS: What was the moment in the first 10 years when you realized that the ceiling for the league was much higher than you imagined? Just in terms of the global potential and the financial potential
STERN: Actually, it's a funny story — just before I became commissioner [in 1983], that was the year we were reduced to four regular-season games on CBS. There was a consent decree that said networks are not allowed to sell games internationally that they didn't produce themselves — when CBS cut back to four, it meant that the international market was suddenly starved for regular-season games. So some very nice gentleman knocks on my door from Italy one day and says, "I'm here."

And I said, "What do you want?"

And he says, "I want to buy games. I used to buy them from CBS."

So I said, "You want to buy our games?"

So he says, "How much are they?"

I said, "How much did you pay before?"

He said, "$5,000."

So I said, "$5,000 a game?"

He said, "Absolutely."

So I said, "That's our price, too!" [Laughs]

So we were suddenly in the international distribution business — and it just sort of began over a period of time to sink in.

SIMMONS: What do you think of the new breed of owner that came in over the last few years? These guys come in, they put themselves at the forefront, they market themselves, they overspend for the teams, they're always coming up with stuff, they're chartering planes …
STERN: You need a lesson in history. What would you call Ted Turner? Was he a new breed or an old breed? Remember, we had him in 1977 — there was no one as swashbuckling and quirky and great as him. What about Jerry Buss? Our owners have always been wealthy — the thing you're focusing on more is the new breed that becomes the face of the franchise.

SIMMONS: Well, I don't remember that happening before recently, not even with Ted Turner.
STERN: But you know what? It depends. In some cases, if you go back historically, Ben Kerner was the face of the Atlanta Hawks. Walter Brown was the face of the Celtics. But by and large, I think it's a good thing when fans go to sleep at night thinking that there's an owner who's worrying about some combination of the entertainment experience and the team's well-being.

SIMMONS: Yeah, Paul Gaston owned the Celtics for many years and I never felt like he was emotionally committed to the team, whereas I really like Wyc [Grousbeck]. I feel like he lives and dies with each game.
STERN: That's right, and that's important. It could be the coach, the general manager, the owner, it's always good for the fans to know that there's someone who's engaged, someone who cares a lot about the team.

SIMMONS: You were excited when he [Michael Jordan] came back?
STERN: I was surprised.

SIMMONS: Were you really?
STERN: Yeah, I really was. I was on a skiing vacation in March and someone said Michael was coming back, I was like, "Get out of here." He called me when he retired but he didn't call me when he was coming back.

SIMMONS: When he retired, did you try to talk him out of it?
STERN: [Making a face] Noooo. I may look dumb, but I'm not crazy.

SIMMONS: What would be bad about you saying, "Are you sure you want to do this? You're in the prime of your career … " I mean, you have a relationship with him, right?
STERN: Because I felt one way and one way alone when he retired: "Hey, if that's what you want, you earned it, great! You should have the right to do whatever you want to do. Whether our business hurts our not, you've made your contribution." And then he went to play baseball and I said, "Great! You want to try do that, that's terrific, too." And then he wanted to come back, so, "OK, why not?"