Warning: David Stern Rant

According to the LA Times, David Stern is the best commissioner in all of professional sports, and while it is difficult to argue a subjective analysis, it is easy to argue the facts the author lays out in Stern's defense.

Helene Elliott points out that - while the ongoing lockout has tarred his legacy - Mr. Stern will leave office as the best leader professional sports has known. To prove it, she quotes Scott Rosner, the associate director of Wharton Sports Business initiative at the University of Pennsylvania:

"To think about where this sport was when he took over in the early '80s, so many teams losing money — the majority of the teams losing money — the Finals were on tape delay in many markets across the country, and David has brought that league to where it is."

Point One - Tape Delay
This is a falsity, and an "associate director of Whatever" should know it. Stern became commissioner of the NBA in 1984 and CBS began broadcasting live coverage of the NBA Finals (and playoffs, for that matter) in 1982. Only a fool would give Stern any credit for that achievement. Is it possible that some markets were still opting to tape-delay the games in 1984, even though CBS was broadcasting them live? Certainly, but to think that Stern's leadership - and not the Lakers/Celtics phenomenon - was the main factor is beyond ludicrous, it's just flat-out idiotic.

Point Two - Profitable Teams
Excuse me, but are we not in the middle of a lockout caused by the fact that nearly all the teams are losing money? How is this any different than the situation Stern inherited 30 years ago?

Stern - and his boosters - cannot have it both ways. If, as he claims, the NBA is bereft of profitable teams, then he needs to take responsibility for that. If, however, he is a great commissioner and his teams are making bundles of money, then why are they trying to bend the players over a park bench?

Just because David Stern had the good fortune to get his job precisely when Larry Bird and Magic Johnson were leading the pre-eminent franchises in the league and months before the greatest professional athlete in American history was set to debut for the Chicago Bulls doesn't mean he's a genius, or the best commissioner in America, or any of that crap.

It just means he was pretty damned lucky.

Name That Sonic: Lumberjack Division

Can you name this hirsute Seattle Sonic from years gone by? I've obscured the jersey number just to make it less than completely obvious.

Tacoma Sonics? Oh, Please

The Tacoma City Council, seemingly intent on getting their names in the newspaper this week, have put out the question: What would it take to make the Tacoma Dome an acceptable arena for either the NHL or the NBA?

Of course, the correct answer is lots of strippers, but the council isn't interested in that, they're more interested in how much money it would take to get the 29-year-old building into something resembling pro-sports-ready status. $45 million? $145 million? $3.1 billion?

Anyone with a nickel's worth of common sense would tell you that there is no way 17,000 people are going to make the drive down I-5 at 6:30 to watch a basketball game (Anyone out there remember what it was like in 1994-95? Care to re-enact that fiasco? I didn't think so.).

And that's what it boils down to. It's conceivable that the NHL would give it a look, but even that's pushing it. Any professional sports team in this region that wants to be successful is going to need to draw people from the greater Seattle area, which means either a team in downtown or on the eastside, not Tacoma, no how matter how much money they put into renovating the Tacoma Dome.

(via Bellingham Herald)