David Stern was hailed as a great visionary from the world of sports in the days following his death on New Year”™s Day.
The Scarsdale resident, who died at the age of 77, was much more than that. Educated as a lawyer, he took a National Basketball Association (NBA) teetering on the edge of irrelevance (with games broadcast on tape delay) and turned it into a worldwide entertainment powerhouse.
While talk radio shows covered such Stern moves as helping to create a salary cap for players, becoming NBA commissioner (a job he held for 30 years), increasing TV revenues, creating a dress code for players and issuing harsh punishments for those athletes who broke the rules, his most memorable accomplishment may have been exporting the game of professional basketball to the world.
Team owners were not entirely convinced regarding the wisdom of sending players to the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. Stern knew that the U.S. “Dream Team” could accomplish much more than crushing the competition on the way to a Gold medal. Superstars who remain household names among basketball fans to this day, including Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Charles Barkley, were the stars of Spain that summer.
The current 2019-2020 season has featured more than 100 international athletes from 38 countries and territories. League games are broadcast on television in more than 200 nations and are played overseas.
The NBA”™s fan base in China has expanded as its footprint constitutes a colossal business. More than 300 million people in the world”™s most populous nation play basketball.
In the 1980s Stern met with CCTV, China”™s state-run TV network, to have NBA games broadcast in the country. The NBA Finals were shown live in China starting in 1994.
Numerous reports mentioned that Stern had no problem displaying a prickly personality. But this is proof that the most well-liked person in the room is not always the right man for the job. Stern was the right man at the right time and because of him the NBA is one more part of American culture that is embraced around the globe.
