Ok. I’ll admit it. I have a crush on David Stern. Not like a Channing Tatum inexplicable choreography crush or Ryan Gosling “hey girl” crush, but a crush nonetheless. Yesterday, he was on Mike and Mike and I decided it was time to come out. I like a commissioner.
Here’s the thing: you may not like his decisions or his role representing some of the richest, whiniest men in the country (see: Dan Gilbert). But every time I listen to him speak, he answers questions with intelligence and consideration. In the interview linked above, at 5:16, Mike Golic references a Steve Kerr piece on grantland.com about the immaturity of young players coming into the league, and Stern says, “tell me what Steve said.” Essentially he admitted, “I don’t know.” In this day and age of executives totally willing to run companies into the ground rather than admit they might not know something, I am interested in someone willing to admit he hasn’t seen everything.
In addressing the 66 game schedule and how most NBA fans liked it better than the 82 game monolith, he was pretty up front about the problems, essentially saying, hey I like it too, but how do we do the math? How do we resolve our contracts with arenas, or television, or the players themselves? And, I found myself reconsidering my own “66 or bust” stance.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit the following: in the same way that some think everyone with a British accent is smart, I tend to think everyone with an east coast accent is giving it to you straight. It’s an unfortunate bias, borne surely from my emergence in a Queens, New York, hospital, but I do try to correct for it. And, I think that even if Stern had a Texas accent, I would appreciate his candor and his seeming willingness to examine the issues at hand with talk show hosts way below his pay grade.
I’m kind of bugged by the fact that my first sports post is an ode to a commissioner, but what can I do? The Indians are in first, the NBA playoffs have been predictable and I have no opinion on hockey. What’s a girl to do?