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NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 4, 2010

THE MODERATOR: Good evening. Welcome to our pregame press conference.
I would like to welcome AEG president and CEO Tim Leiweke, and NBA Commissioner David Stern. Mr. Leiweke and Mr. Stern will begin by giving a brief opening statement before we go to questions and answers.
I will now pass it over to Mr. Leiweke.
TIM LEIWEKE: Thank you, good evening. Welcome back to the 02. On behalf of everybody at AEG, we're very proud and happy to have the NBA back. This is our fourth one. Like the other three before, we sold this one out literally in a day.
For us this is a special occasion because we get the opportunity to have our team, the Lakers, as part of our building here. So we are pleased to have the World Champions here.
I know our team is very excited about London, the building, Europe. So this is a great evening for everyone here in London at the O2 and at AEG.
We also are excited because after years of working on details, this is the first year we will actually host two additional regular-season games in March with the Nets and with the Toronto Raptors. We're very excited about those games, as well. They have sold well. We put additional tickets on sale today and we expect both those games will also sell out.
The gates are pretty amazing and it shows the passion and support that Europe, London and the UK have for the NBA. To have an opportunity to have three NBA games this year is amazing.
My hat is off to the Commissioner for his commitment and vision to an international sport. We wouldn't be here today if he wasn't committed to that. We've had a great partnership. We're building these arenas everywhere. So we're pleased that this vision has worked.
It's exactly what they had promised everyone. This is probably as great a brand and league as anywhere in the world and we're very honored to be partnered with him not just here and in Germany, but in China, the two arenas in Beijing and Shanghai.
Mr. Commissioner, welcome back. We're always happy to have you back. I appreciate you promising and guaranteeing me the Lakers would get out of this healthy and win. That's fantastic early on. Thank you.
I will turn it over to Commissioner David Stern.
COMMISSIONER STERN: I knew it would be a problem having Tim go first. I have nothing to say (laughter).
But I want to thank you all for coming and say that we were in Milan last night where the Knicks played Armani Jeans Milano and we'll be moving on to Paris for a game on Wednesday and Barcelona for a game on Thursday. The Knicks will be playing the Timberwolves in Paris, and FC Barcelona, the original home of Pau Gasol, will be hosting the Lakers on Thursday night.
It's all part of NBA Europe Live brought to you by EA Sports. We couldn't do it without EA Sports. I want to say thank you again to Peter Moore of EA Sports. This is the fifth year we've been doing it and I think it's terrific.
It really is a global game. After Barcelona I'm heading to Beijing and Guangzhou where we have the Nets and Rockets playing. Beijing, Guangzhou, I guess it's Wednesday, Saturday. So that will be fun, as well.
We have an exhibition game in Mexico City. If I'm going to talk about everything outside of the United States, there's also one in Vancouver. So we're really very, very excited to see the sellout tonight. I told the Timberwolves they shouldn't be shaken by the number of Laker jerseys. It's a historical matter. But this new young team will be selling lots of jerseys in the future.
It's incredible to see how lively the fans are walking through and how engaged they are. We're enjoying it a lot.
You know, we don't go anyplace without our friends at NBA Cares. That's us. We've done clinics. We've done local WNBA, Junior WNBA, Junior NBA events. Our players have been very well-received throughout all the activities. So that's very, very important to us.
We are excited. We're always excited about our partnership with AEG just because Tim said it already, I would be remiss if I didn't mention it again. Not only Wukesong, of course the Shanghai arena, which is gleaming with respect to the EXPO in Shanghai. Our work with them and around the world has been great. They've hosted us not only here but in O2 World in Berlin. They tend to keep Staples busy and running late into the NBA season historically. Tim tells me it's all his doing.
TIM LEIWEKE: I said it was the Clippers actually.
COMMISSIONER STERN: I really have got a problem (laughter).
I also want to say that basketball had a great summer. We had the World Championships, where Turkey was a great host country. You can't do better than the home country and the USA in the final and have our young players shine so well.
The women's World Championship finished last night. They were so jealous that the host country, the Czech Republic, played against the USA team, also WNBA players. It was, I'm told, a very thrilling event. And we had a couple roster changes in Miami this summer. So that engendered a fair amount of activity. We are looking forward to the games, the regular-season games, in March.
One additional item is we're going to be behind something called Basketball Week in the UK where there will be events all over the country focusing on this great game. As we have the run-up to the Olympics, people will begin to realize that this summer's activity, which saw Team GB qualifying for Euro Basket and hopefully for the Olympics as well, is a huge opportunity for us to showcase our game, showcase our values and showcase the legacy of the Olympics, which will be demonstrated that the basketball is about the world's most inclusive sport. We're going to demonstrate that leading up to the Olympics and the legacy in basketball will be generations of kids playing basketball.
I wouldn't be doing justice unless I said, as Sophie Goldschmidt, our head of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and our headquarters in London, for kids 18 and under, basketball is the greatest participation sport. We think the future is very bright for the future of basketball in the UK. We're excited to be working with FIBA, LOCOG and others in the run-up to the Olympics themselves and the legacy of those Games.
Thank you very much. I guess we'll take questions.
THE MODERATOR: We'll now go to questions.

Q. Regarding the regular-season games here in March, did you choose the Raptors and the Nets because the games wouldn't sell out over there and would sell out over here?
COMMISSIONER STERN: No. Both of those teams are working hard on selling. We asked teams for expressions of interest. The Nets, who will be I think quite a bit better than they were last year, their owner was very anxious to have them involved in international games. So that was the point there.
They're also going to be participating in China. And, on the way to China next week, the Nets team is going to stop in Moscow and do a clinic for three thousand kids.
Toronto is a very international city. They really like the idea how inclusive a city and diverse a city it is. I won't make any jokes about the Commonwealth, but they're very interested in internationalization, as well.

Q. In the playoffs for the NBA, every round is always a 2-2-1-1-1. Why in the finals is it 2-3-2. And also, the NBA franchise in London, is it a fantasy or reality someday?
COMMISSIONER STERN: Did you follow me here to ask me those questions (laughter)? I'm delighted to answer them and I think they're good questions.
Maybe the premise is not quite as valid as once it was. But the 2-3-2 harkens to an era where, number one, by doing the three, and begging I could get editors to send their reporters to the middle three games because nobody wanted to cover the NBA back in the day. That was a long time ago.
At the same time, even though he later denied it, but it's true, my great friend and a person who I admire greatly, now deceased, Red Auerbach, we were in the middle of going L.A./Boston early in my career as Commissioner. You think about it 2-2-1-1-1. I remember playing on a Friday night, they flew 'all night', said the TV announcer, literally walked through a ballroom on Saturday when they arrived, they flew Saturday and played on Sunday. It was just very grueling at that time. Against the prospect of a Portland/Miami, an L.A./Boston, we did 2-3-2.
It's not written in stone. Everything is open.
The issue of a franchise in the UK, actually if Tim could guarantee us an owner, a season of sellouts, a heck of a TV deal, we got it. But beside that, what I think is it makes more sense to talk about in the future, a distant future, could be a decade, I've said this before, a multi-team division here which makes travel more intelligent, where teams could come over, play as many teams as we have here, and if it's in the same conference, play them again and then go home.
What we need are O2 and O2 world, the building that I think will be built in Milan for the EXPO 15 and the building that FC Barcelona or Real Madrid will build on property designated. As our game gets better known post Olympics with TV coverage, the kind of business that we make here, maybe that will come into view. But it's nothing soon.

Q. Considering the relationship between AEG and the Lakers, is there a chance that this will become an annual event, have the Lakers come and play at the 02 every year?
TIM LEIWEKE: Have you talked to Phil? Not going to happen.
COMMISSIONER STERN: We actually like to rotate our teams, we really do. We think it's great for our players. They enjoy it. They understand that it's now part of their expected program. It's enormously helpful to them and for us to see the impact they have on youngsters around the world. It continues their education.
I think it's great. It's been very important to us. Not just games, but we did a Basketball without Borders program in Senegal, brought players and coaches. We did it in Singapore and we did it in Barcelona.
The number of players, my head is full of statistics, but literally hundreds of appearances by our players, retired players, coaches. They travel the world. They like it very much where they enjoy to rotate it.

Q. What is your latest opinion on having maybe an NBA All-Star weekend overseas some time?
COMMISSIONER STERN: A number of players asked me about it, because they like it. But realistically speaking, right now we're focused only on domestic because the cut that we would have to make into the middle of the season, I guess we play our last game on Thursday night, we resume on Tuesday, I could be off depending on the team, in order to rest people, have them travel, work out, not be jetlagged, it would take more. Since we've got so many U.S. venues that are asking for it, and also saying this helps me negotiate with Tim.
But that said, I think we're going to be domestic for quite a while.

Q. David, the NBA has been very involved with expanding the game over here. Is this because you have something to aim for with the Olympics? What do you see as the NBA's involvement after the Olympics?
COMMISSIONER STERN: Well, I think it's no secret that the UK trails other European markets in their basketball development. But we think it's a great market. We think that participation rates are increasing. That's why we have our headquarters here in London. We think that the Olympics provides a huge opportunity to demonstrate that this is a sport of great inclusiveness.
Of course, we'll have commercial activities as well. But it's important for us to be focusing on legacy events like courts, like clinics, like the development of the game. Frankly, we think there are many elite athletes and future athletes in the UK. We just want another 1 in 10 to bounce the ball rather than kick it. We'll be happy with that because that would probably double the number of people who were playing our game.
So we think that's a huge opportunity and we think that the qualification by Team GB is a big deal. We think even the opportunity to have a Team GB, unlike certain other sports where they have the three separate countries involved, just demonstrates the community and the teamwork that's going to be demonstrated by our sport.
If you get the impression I really like our sport and think it has great values, it's true, I do.

Q. Tim, you have two ice hockey clubs in Germany. Would basketball be an alternative for maybe Hamburg? David, you haven't been to Berlin I think for two years now in the O2 World. Will Berlin be an alternative again?
TIM LEIWEKE: We have a good relationship with Alba Berlin. They play at the 02 Arena and they do quite well, have been successful in the German and Euroleague. We do follow them. They are someone that actually signed a lease with us when we were designing the building, so the building was designed for basketball to make sure that it works for them.
We are very interested in the future growth of the NBA in Germany and in England and in the UK as well as all of Europe. But for us, clearly our focus is the partnership on facilities. We own a piece of one of these already. So we'll focus on doing a good job in partnership with Dr. Buss and then do the best we can at being a good partner with the NBA with facilities where we see that as a better role for us.
That said, we're very supportive of basketball and will be working with Heidi and everybody on the NBA side to bring a preseason game back to Germany in the near future.
COMMISSIONER STERN: He didn't answer you about hockey. But everybody is entitled to a couple of mistakes.
TIM LEIWEKE: You know, that's a very successful team over there, the Ice Barons.
COMMISSIONER STERN: They're extraordinary. He tells me about it all the time. And we wish them great success. It's fun.
You're right. We haven't been there in a couple years. We were there before that, and there again. It's on the list of things we do. When you look at some of the things, we have our relationship with Tim, 02 here, the enormously successful games we stage here. Danilo Gallinari and Mike D'Antoni went home to Milano last night. It was an emotional homecoming. And in Barcelona, you know, FC Barcelona, the home of Pau playing the Lakers. And for Paris, I thought we would see the fashion show coming into town. All politics is personal.
But, you know, Berlin has been and will continue to be a stop on our agenda.

Q. Commissioner Stern, Pau often talks about the impact of the Barcelona Olympics on him. What is the significance of him coming back as a two-time champion?
COMMISSIONER STERN: You know, I was asked that question earlier. It used to be that European players would sit at the end of the bench. What they've shown us now, our international players, they come in and are at All-Star level. Whether it's the Argentinians, the Brazilians, the Germans, the French, the Italians, you know, the Spanish, the Chinese, it's great. They've made our league so much stronger.
So to have the opportunity for a player like Pau to go back, and his brother Marc played there as well. It's just been great for our league. We're delighted to go, in effect, with Pau, because the fans love him there. He really has changed the appetite for basketball enormously in Catalunya and Barcelona.

Q. Recently the Premier League moved to the idea of having a regular-season game abroad, causing some backlash. Are you able to give me an idea how the basketball-watching public in the U.S. feel about their game being taken away?
COMMISSIONER STERN: You know, it's a different situation for us. I was following that very closely. We follow everything in sports very closely. I was commiserating with Mr. Scudamore. We have 82 games. So a game here or a game there, our fans don't begrudge our attempts to grow the game internationally.
In fact, I think our fans feel that it enhances our league because it grows the game around the world, it encourages more players to play our game, it makes our teams stronger. We have 80 international players, an equivalent of eight rosters of international players that reach our game.
Our fans are very supportive in addition because they feel that being connected to our game connects them to the places where our players come from. We're a nation of immigrants. There's no one I know who can't trace his or her roots to someplace else. We're the only country to pose that game. It makes it young and unusual, perhaps. It has its own issues, but we're proud of it. So as a nation of immigrants, we welcome others.

Q. Are there any player availability issues for 2012? You have the tight turnaround in 2012 from the Finals to the Olympics?
COMMISSIONER STERN: I don't think there will be an issue. I think the biggest problem with the coaching staff and Jerry Coangelo from USA Basketball will have will be to deal with all the players who want to join the roster in addition to the players who played in the World Championships this summer.
My guess is there will be some roster changes and some additions. But I don't think we're going to have a problem because I think the 2012 Olympics are going to be a huge event here, and basketball is going to be the biggest ticket at the 2012 Olympics.
Thank you very much.
TIM LEIWEKE: Thank you.

End of FastScripts

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