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NBA FINALS: HEAT v MAVERICKS

June 9, 2006

David Stern

DALLAS, TEXAS: Practice Day

COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: Thank you, everybody. I'd like to report that in the World Cup, the score of the football match is Germany 1, Costa Rica, nil. Shows that we're keeping track.
This is my first Finals press conference, I believe, without Russ Granik up here at the table. Russ, I hope you're watching and your handicap is heading in the right direction. But thanks for the memories.
I'm going to speak to, really, a few items that have been the subject of a lot of questions in the course of my travels during the playoffs, and then open it up to questions.
I would like to start by saying that, interestingly enough, I was focusing on the two teams in The Finals. This is the first time in my 22 years as commissioner that there have been two teams in The Finals who were created actually while I was at the NBA, that came into existence. I had the great pleasure of being at Reunion Arena when Dr. J and the 76ers came in to play the first basketball game in Dallas, NBA game, in 1979. Someplace I have the program. I could not locate it, but it's carefully put away someplace.
And of course the Miami Heat, spent a lot of time with Donald Carter and Norm Sonju and in the case of Miami, I spent a lot of time with Ted Arison when that team was formed. I was commissioner when that came into being. I was general counsel when Dallas came into being, and it's kind of interesting to reflect upon how these teams have developed and how there are many great similarities between them, very good management, extraordinary commitment to winning, wonderful entertainment experience, ownership is strong in the case of Mark and Micky. Their senior executive management is strong in the case of (Terdema) Ussery and Eric Woolworth and there are great coaching stories with Avery Johnson and -- what the hell is that guy's name? Oh, Pat Riley. (Laughter).
It's good to see. It's good to see for the communities because we love to see communities get their chances. That's what you spend your careers doing if you're in sports, trying to level the playing field that over time there will be opportunities for all teams to have an opportunity to get to the NBA Finals.
That said, the game is something that there have been a lot of questions about, a lot of articles written about. And I guess what I would say is I think that the rules changes that were implemented in 2001-2002, we eliminated the illegal defensive guidelines, you know, have taken a while to have the impact on the league that we anticipated or hoped or thought might be the case. But by allowing a zone to be played and eliminating isolation, we put an emphasis, the people who drafted the rules changes put an emphasis on I would say movement, ball movement and shooting. It became, you know -- if you're going to be zoned, you'd better -- it really does help to have five guys who can shoot. And one of the things that we've begun to see is coaches deciding to play what looks like their five best players almost without regard to position.
I don't claim to have any of the answers. These are just observations of a fan, and so we're seeing a lot more ball movement. We're seeing, you know, if you are daring someone to shoot, someone is taking the occasion to shoot. And that has affected the way that teams have, I believe, begun to draft, as well. And so we've seen over time, in the past, if you were going into isolation, if you had somebody who was great on defense and rebounding and he was not going to be a central part of your offense because he was going to go stand at halfcourt to throw a defender out, it wasn't relevant. You could protect him. But that's become harder, so now we're seeing teams draft for multi-talented players over time, leaving aside size in the middle.
And at the same time, we have seen a huge influx of international players. For us, that means that we are just drawing from a larger pool. It may have happened faster than we thought it would happen, but we are drawing from a larger pool of elite players. The original pool was United States centric; it still is; but nevertheless, with 82 players born outside the 50 United States, we are seeing a huge impact on our game in terms of the quality of play because of the number of players that are now making up that pool, and we think that will only tend to increase as more and more elite players make themselves available to us on a global basis.
Just by way of a slight statistic, of the countries that are participating in the world championship, we have 40 -- other than the U.S., there were 47 players from countries who are participating in the world championships. And there will be more coming in in the draft. So by world championship time, it's conceivable that there will be well over 50 players, NBA players, eligible to play for non-U.S. countries, which just begins to show the sort of growth of the game.
We think this is going to continue, be good for the game. We like the 19-year entry age. We think that the Development League was an important, important advance for us because of the combination of the 29 or 26 to 29 assignment that is we made of players on rosters and, in fact, the other players, the other dozen or so that we actually brought up who were not on NBA rosters, but were available and stayed around to be available if the NBA teams needed them; and then some of those players got signed for next season already.
So it's very much about the game, and we think that by expanding the development league to 12 teams, we announced the affiliations yesterday, the new affiliations for next season. And I'm quite certain, slash, optimistic that we'll have a minimum of 15 the following year; that the Development League is very important to us focusing on the game. That's really been a big deal for us because, you know, that is our passion, and those are the kinds of things that we had very much in mind when we were entered into the Collective Bargaining Agreement, to allow the assignment, to allow the development league.
And speaking of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, we agreed with our players sort of as a principle, not everything came directly from the Collective Bargaining Agreement, not everything came after it, but as a principle, that we would work hard to demonstrate the respect that our players had for the game and its history, and the engagement that they have with our fans. The reality of that has to do with the autograph signings that were part of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, the meeting with the season ticket holders. Yes, in our own activities with respect to the dress code, things that we thought might distract from the notion that our players did have a great respect for the game, because they do. Whether it's how they are attired in the National Anthem or, etc., we have thought and still think that showing respect on the court and around the court is about showing respect for the game and the history and tradition of the game. And, frankly, our players have really done us one better with respect to their attire, with respect to the way the Mavs come out and put their hands over their heart during the National Anthem. Those are player-generated ideas, not ours. Because they do want to demonstrate their commitment and their respect.
And speaking about their commitment, that has been the focus of our players during this past season, their commitment to their communities and broader communities. You all know about NBA Cares and you know about our players' responses to Katrina and the hours that our teams and players put in, and this afternoon, we have a community relations event where we'll be dedicating yet another NBA reading and learning center. We're into the 100s on that. But what we are also finding is that more and more, we're getting requests. Our players are getting deluged, I would say beseeched to lend themselves in their names to lend themselves to local and national causes. Last week we kicked off with UN AIDS and Unicef, a program for public service announcement on AIDS awareness, particularly with respect to kids. It's about the children, say yes to kids and say no to AIDS. With Mrs. Kofi Annan and with the head of UN AIDS and the head of Unicef, and the request was for our players, and so a long list of players helping out.
At the very moment, the World Food Program was asking us if they could introduce us to a player and (Loul) Deng just cut a public service announcement for them having to do with the tragedy in Sudan and our players are responding in a very positive way. They feel very committed to this and they are doing it.
We are feeling particularly good about that and we are coming up to an off-season that, you know, we have our Basketball without Borders again in Mexico, South Africa, Lithuania and China, the world championship is going to be upon us soon, the team goes to training camp next month under Coach Krzyzewski and manager Jerry Colangelo as they head to Japan, a couple of pit stops to play against Lithuania, Korea, Brazil and China. Then of course we have the Pistons, Heat playing in Puerto Rico. The Golden State Warriors and Denver playing in Monterrey, Mexico, and the Clippers, Suns, 76ers and Spurs playing in no particular order in Russia, Italy, Spain and France with a stopover after that to play in Cologne against the two finalists at the European Final Four, CSKA Moscow and Maccabi Tel Aviv, which is really kind of interesting.
Of course we have a couple of teams coming over here from Europe to play exhibition games against our teams. So it's really -- and obviously the NBA Europe Live is brought to you by -- EA Sports is the full name of that extravaganza in Europe and it's going to be very, very exciting for us in terms of kicking off the season.
And we had a great game last night, which was a great experience, but it was great to see the aforesaid coaches in action and two very interesting rosters starting to feel each other out in a series that we think is going to be a great one.
That's my brief -- probably my longest opening statement ever for which I apologize, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Q. Could you talk a little bit about the international player, it used to be a few years ago it was just shooters and now you've got a few bangers. So they are not only coming in in better numbers, but I think they are better players.
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: No, they are complete players. It's a global -- it's a global game. They have paid our players the ultimate tribute. They have adopted it. There is, you know, no difference, I mean, no difference in the skill level, and no difference in the range of the game and no difference in the attitudes that could be affected on the court. It's really a lot of fun to watch. It's very much a global game.
I guess and on this one I'm speaking derivatively because I can't speak to this precisely, but I've been told this, that, yes, the international player is drilled and schooled differently than our American player. I've never been to an AAU summer league game. I'm not aware of what goes on at the athletic shoe and the apparel camps and I haven't been going to many high school games or sessions recently. But I am told that there's a lot of playing and not a lot of drilling. As a result, in our Development League, the regimen we're putting in and have put in has a lot more drilling, a lot more focus on that. And some of our NBA teams do that as well.
And I think what's going to happen in our high school and college and various other games is that coaches will ultimately be held more accountable for developing the skill sets by doing potentially unpopular things in training that make American basketball players the full players that they deserve to be, rather than what, you know, is some of the handicaps under which they are currently operating.
Q. If you could just go back to 2001 when the discussions emanated about the rule -- changing the defensive rules and doing whatever was done, what was the depth of concern about the state of the game at that point?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: Well, from my own perspective, and I did have one, I was dissatisfied with the notion that the game had to be however the coaches coached it. Coaches, you expect coaches to do whatever they need to do to win within the rules, and maybe sometimes rules loosely defined at the limits; that's their job and that's what they do. But I was concerned that perhaps we were not doing enough about the very rules and that we should do more to do that, to consider the changes that need to be made to address the game. And, you know, I had had some strong conversations on the subject with Stu Jackson and asked him to tell me if we could wave our magic wand what would we do, I said, spend your Christmas vacation doing that. And we were discussing it with -- Jerry Colangelo walked in and said he thinks there's an issue here. I said, great, we agree, you're the head of the committee, let's appoint the blue ribbon committee because it's time to do it.
And the concern was, my major concern had to do, No. 1, with the sort of roughness of the game, but more than that, my abiding sense that isolation, and Jerry's abiding sense, that isolation really was -- seemed designed to hide the talents of a good percentage of our players and that we had to try to do something that was better than that.
Q. Specifically, was there a concern that the league was too much defensively oriented and that offense was almost an afterthought in the minds of so many of these coaches to whom you just alluded?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: That was less -- the good defense, that was less the issue than the notion that -- it wasn't -- there was a lot written about that. You know, hard defense and good, smothering defense and smart defense was okay from our perspective. It was, so this is the offensive set? You put one guy in the corner and four guys, as I've said, in the parking lot, and that's our NBA basketball? That was really more; it wasn't about the defense, because, you know, all politics is personal, but the personality of teams was great. And the time when San Antonio was running and gunning and the Washington then Bullets were the Bruise Brothers. The ideas that there were different styles or that Coach Riley was teaching his Knicks how to swim when we were going for rebounds and the like. Shame on us if we don't police that. Good defense is fine. Intense defense is fine.
But the sets that were being thrown up there were isolation sets. And what was also happening, and this was something that came a little bit later as we were going through this and this is something that Stu Jackson and Ronnie Nunn focused on was a lot of, how do I say this -- a lot of slowing down of players on their way to the basket, but not necessarily rising to the level of a foul. And we had to struggle more and that I left to the true basketball people to come up with a methodology where we could through points of emphasis 2004-2005 season begin to allow players to move about without getting clipped on a regular basis so that there was no foul, but by the time they worked their way to the basket, it was as though they had been on a forced march.
And so I would say the rules changes, the points of emphasis, the drafting issues, the overall improvement, and then this year, actually, the pure luck, and I do mean luck, of having close games, seven-game series, lots of overtime; and so everyone is saying, oh, this is great. It's good. It's not as great as everyone says because it wasn't as bad as everyone said it was, but we really lucked out this year in terms of this playoffs. So as a result, ratings are up across the -- across all three networks. You know, ratings, all segments -- male, female, young and old -- are up. And attendance is up and Game 1 is up over last year. Although, I quickly rush to say that all ratings of all sports are going down. So you cannot anymore live and die by ratings because, you know, if we were up, I think for the season we're likely to be the only sport that's up. So you don't know what's going to happen in terms of ratings. Although, I will say that on that related subject, the number of streams of highlights and the like, you know, a word that I wouldn't have used or even known about when these franchises were formed over a decade ago, is suddenly like 30 million streams a month on NBA.com or ESPN.com or the other places where we authorize streaming of NBA highlights. It's just a completely different world out there, and that's just changing the way that people are consuming us, in ways that I don't pretend to know about, but which we are trying very hard to respond to. And I would be remiss if I didn't say that our network partners have been great. I mean, the commitment that TNT has made over the 22 years, both to the game, the announce teams, yes, and even Charles and Kenny and Ernie and Reggie and all kinds of Magic and everybody else, it's been great; and the willingness of Walt Disney to jump in and improve our telecasts each year and their new studio show with Dan Patrick and Mark Jackson and Michael Wilbon, the game's top two announce teams and the talent that's on there with Mike Breen and Hubie Brown and Mike Tirico and Brent Musburger, and -- all right, Bill, I'll mention Bill Walton, too, and Steve Jones, etc., we are really feeling very good about the kind of partners we have and the way that it's working.
Still a work-in-progress as we're in year four of a six-year deal, but we're feeling pretty good about that. So that's where we are now.

Q. A parallel where Bob was before, you talked about these last years about really working on the game and concentrating on the game, you had such a terrific run through the '80s and through the mid '90s, did you feel like the game was in such good shape that you maybe found yourself concentrating on more marketing elements, international elements, instead of maybe be more vigilant about just keeping the game --
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: No, I think that you have to sort of make adjustments as the coaches make adjustments. And by 2001, we decided, maybe a couple of years too late, because we always watched the game and we always deal with it. I'm very conservative on that subject about changes to the game. Always everything I've done with respect to the game is a minimum of a year late and I mean that sincerely. That's just the way we are, and sometimes more. Because, you know, here we are, we're in our 60th Finals and it's a pretty -- you know, it's a pretty recognizable game, vis-a-vis it's forebears and that's good. So I just don't think that it's for us. It's one thing for us to change a network or change a distribution system or market a different way or something, but the game itself I think deserves a lot more respect than that. And so we are very slow to move, and we do have a healthy respect for the coaches and the way that they have adjusted to the game and taken advantage of the rules and used their talent well. So it's sort of a give and take and a to and fro. But I have no doubt that whatever we did, we did too late. But the beauty is it's going to outlive us all, so we'll deal with it as slowly as we think necessary because it deserves that respect.

Q. What do you think makes a good NBA owner? And second part to that, how confident are you that there will be a team in Portland in the future?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: Are you're trying to get me in trouble with some number of owners? (Laughter).
I think that there's no one formula for a good owner. A good owner should be committed to putting the resources into the team that is necessary and into hiring the right people to do it. In some cases, the owner should, you know, if so inclined, be the face of the franchise, as here in a Mark Cuban, and other circumstances it could be, you know -- it could be the coach in the case of a Pat Riley, because a Micky Arison tends to be a little bit lower key. Or in some cases it could be a team president that, you know, somebody decides is the right face for a franchise; you know, a Jerry West in Memphis.
So I think there are multiple ways for owners to deal with that. But what I do think that fans want is a strong sense that there's somebody who is in the office or in bed thinking about how to win and how to make it a great entertainment experience for the fans. That's the most important thing about ownership, and ready to make certain commitments in support of that.
I'm encouraged and believe that there will be a team in Portland in the future of the NBA. I think that the recent announcement about -- whatever that announcement means, I brought in the handwriting experts to try to figure it out precisely. (Laughter) but I have determined it's authentic and I think it means, although that the parties are open -- whenever someone says they are maximizing value, at least on Wall Street that usually means they have brought an investment banker to see where that leads and often that leads to considerations of changes in equity structure; I didn't say ownership, let the record show. But ownership.
And so I think that we've got two parties that just seem to be willing to take a complementary good faith step to see whether we can't start a series of events that would cause the ownership situation there to be clarified and the team to stay in Portland, because I think it's important to both parties, and that really is what they bring to it.

Q. Do you get any sense from Paul Allen that he's really ready to let go of the franchise or where do you think he is on that?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: I think he wants the best for the franchise, and I'm not sure what that best will ultimately be, but I know that he's open to doing what's best for the City of Portland and the franchise, I really do believe that.

Q. You mentioned the owners in this series, everyone kind of knows Mark. Can you talk about Micky a little bit and his contributions in Miami and to the League?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: Well, number one, aside from constructing the team to get it here, we built a new building there, the American Airlines Arena, and that was driven by him. So he's very important, not only put together the team but gave it a great place to play. He went out and hired Pat Riley to help him assemble the team, and elevated Eric Woolworth to enable him to do all of the business that had to be done. He's very, very community centric; the Heat have for the longest period of time had a series of events, most recently earlier this year a function at Pat and Chris Riley's home to raise a lot of money for local charities. They have been enormously supportive of Alonzo's Zo's Groove, they are so specifically community oriented it's just great.
And at the league level, Micky of course is chairman of the board, has been a very important with respect to other issues like collective bargaining, expansion and just about everything -- and television. And he's particularly good at the analytics, and so he uses math to boil things down and before he was the chairman of the board, he was the chair of the audit committee. As I promised him, that if he became chair in our negotiations that I would, you know -- that somebody would succeed him as head of the audit committee, which Glen Taylor agreed to do, when he's just a very solid businessman who is able to put our business in a broader context.
You know, Mark has a huge series of strengths that he brings to us as well. Particularly we like the idea that someone is continually looking at the fan experience, because we do that as an organization. We are the league that has the most people devoted through team, business and marketing operations to working with our teams on best practices. You know, everything from how the fan or consumer interfaces with us; we call it the driveway-to-driveway experience or the holistic-consumer experience, the game presentation, the ticket pickup, the concessions. Fans take that for granted, but a long time ago, not in derogation of the game, but really in support of it, that the arena experience should be a place that was welcoming and the fans were treated in a way that they deserve to be treated. I think that here in Dallas, that is an absolute, at the top of the list. And that's a very good presentation.
In addition, Mark adds a huge technology and sort of let's try it even if it hasn't been tried before component, and I think that's been refreshing as well. There are these one or two little issue that we have, but what the heck, it's just amongst friends. (Laughter).

Q. The pregame entertainment last night seemed a little more subdued than it was last year. Did the clubs last year issue some concerns about that? Did that factor at all into what we saw or didn't see last night?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: No. We just asked -- actually we asked Dallas what they would like to do and they came up with Mr. Jack Ingram.
I tell you the truth, I thought the National Anthem was great. Actually you could understand the words. They were clear, simple, ended in a period of time. But what do I know. It was great.
No, you know, we're always trying things around the game. But actually what we did decide we would do, again, was using the Championship trophy replicas as a mode of the introduction because we would like -- and really, I think, as an attempt to give The Finals the stature and dignity that they deserve, you've heard us focusing this year more about The Finals and the 60th year. I don't know whether you folks have -- you got an opportunity to see the opening that ABC did for The Finals, but I commended to the media that didn't get a chance to see it. It's an amazing opening where they literally on a frame-by-frame basis, you have to take out the footage of great Finals past and players past and were put in the context of this opening. And it's evocative of the great history of our Finals, and every player that you would expect to be there, what few voices, you know -- and it's on NBA.com. I've been corrected. It's on NBA.com which you can get to, you need a computer for that, Adam? (Laughter). Yes, it's on NBA.com. But you can't open it up on your Blackberry unless you have the Trio 700p you can do it, or your Q from Moto.
It was evocative of the great Finals past what little bit of Musburger, a little bit of Johnny Most and a little bit of Rudy T. and a little bit of everybody else. It reminds us of what a great event this is. And so it doesn't detract from the basketball, and, in fact, I think you owe it to basketball to put it in the right sort of combination of dignity, but grandness and promotion too, so that people come to understand what it represents.
That's an ongoing issue that all sports have about, quote, marketing. But I want to be unapologetic about that, because if you don't do the best to promote your sport in the current environment, then your sport will be minimized and ultimately diminished. And that is ultimately a disrespect to the sport. And that's I think the ongoing dilemma that all of us have, that on one hand, we want to talk about and grow the game, because we're committed to growing the game; that's our mantra, that's why we have the Jr. NBA and the Jr. WNBA. That's why we have the WNBA. That's why we have the Development League. That's why we are so focused on the game. But we are also committed to growing the game and focusing on the game by focusing on our teams and our players and our entertainment experience. We think that's a huge obligation that you have because if you don't do that, given what's happening out there, then your game will not get the exposure or respect that it deserves.

Q. You mentioned this is the 60th NBA Finals and I don't want to subject that you've been here for all of them?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: No, it seems like that.

Q. You did mention you were here for the creation of both of these teams, and it seems like people around knew these high, high profile positions are dropping like flies, Russ, Paul Tagliabue is stepping down. Have you given any thought as even junior commissioner in the horizon your own time in the position?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: God, that's depressing. I want to point out that I am the third-oldest sitting commissioner, in case anyone gets confused. Bud, Paul, me, and then the baby over at the NHL. And the answer is that I'm having a ball. The challenges that we have, the leagues of the NBA, the Development League, the WNBA, the international and the technology components, together with I think sort of the opportunity to work with deputy commissioner elect Adam Silver, president of the NBA-elect Joel Litvin and president of marketing partnerships and international Heidi Ueberroth, and really a group of people as we have gone delving in, which will be sort of showcasing on or about July 1, the number of people who have been at the NBA for, you know, long periods of time is exciting to me. So I don't have any -- I think about it, I must confess, because everyone always asks me. But I don't have -- and I reserve the right to change my mind -- but right now, I'm not planning to do anything but be commissioner.

Q. What would it take for the league to revisit the 2-3-2 format and considering what you got out of the last three rounds, the reasons for that?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: That's a good question. It was as much about travel and convenience. We weren't trying to elongate or shorten the series. It was about, you know, Game 4, travel, Game 5, travel, Game 6, travel. And it actually was drawing people -- and in addition, we did it because we couldn't get media to cover our game and by putting the 3, at least it might get an editor to authorize his reporter to go to three games with one round tier, and that was the issue.
I'm not mindful of the sort of sense that the 2-2-1-1-1 format worked. But you know, that Seattle-Miami Final, or, you know, Boston-Clippers, it's a long trip. I just don't know. I mean, I think it's something that we're -- it's for the board to focus on. We would be open to considering it. But for us, the 2-3-2 was -- seemed to be urgent at the time.
It's possible that it's less urgent now, but it does allow us to stage the event better, to house the media better, to do a lot of things better. But, you know, it may not be -- it might be better 2-2-1-1-1. I'm not going to sort of sit here and say it isn't. I just don't know the answer.

Q. It's just comforting to know that the league can still afford you under the salary cap at this point.
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: Right. No, I had to take a cut to get all of these other people involved, but that's okay.

Q. Fresh blood in the NBA Finals, is it a good thing or is there something to be said for a Chicago or L.A. or Boston there that teams know it's really special to beat a team like that or go against them?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: My only political holdback here is I don't want to sit here and say it's great, we should always have a new team because I don't believe that. But once you have a new team, it's great. To me the teams have to battle their way through, and to me, and then they get there, and if there happen to be dynasties, that's great. But if there happen to be new teams where their fans can sense what's going on, I mean, watching, sitting around and flipping the station here, the TV here in Dallas, it's quite remarkable. I mean, watching the local news programs, it's front and center. It's great.
You know, I just think that in some ways, in some ways I guess it really would be perfect in a crazy way if every city had an opportunity to experience what it's like. Just after you're sitting there and watching them do it.
But to me it's really about battling your way through and just being good enough to be in The Finals and the event defines the teams rather than the team defining the event. I know that that -- it's hard to, you know, say that coming from somebody who grew up thinking the natural state of affairs since I've become commissioner early on was just to go from Boston to L.A. and back to Boston again. You could get sort of spoiled; or Chicago, you know, Detroit, Portland, Houston, New York. But to me, it doesn't, you know, much matter except to see after the fact what fun it is for the city that is a first-timer experiencing it.

Q. You said in March, New Orleans, that you didn't want a team going back to New Orleans if they were not going to succeed. How will you determine in the coming months whether they can succeed in New Orleans and when will you decide permanently if they will go back for the long term?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: I'm glad you asked. Actually next week -- next week, Joel? Next Friday, Joel Litvin and others from the NBA office are going down to New Orleans to have a series of meetings with the powers that be to do whatever we can possibly do with them to chart out and work toward the successful, both financially and artistically, return of the Hornets to New Orleans.
I don't want to, you know, lay out Joel's work plan here, but there's a lot of work and we're going to be working with New Orleans and with Louisiana to assure that the team's return there is successful. Because we understand that the worst possible scenario, and we agree with our friends in New Orleans, is to sort of go back and have a team that doesn't succeed and then moves when its lease expires. We don't want that to happen. We are going to work for the successful run of the Hornets to New Orleans.

Q. And when will that decision be?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: The decision is made. We're just working on making sure that the decision is a good one.

Q. The City of Oklahoma City and the Hornets have been going through -- they have been haggling over revenue, does in situations like that in general -- do franchises normally win because of the limited availability of Major League franchises?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: No. I think that it's a question of, you know, the outcome is usually determined by some mechanism, whether it be arbitration or, you know, conciliation or mediation or litigation. But I'm sure it's not going to come to that between the Hornets and Oklahoma City. We won't let it. And because the marriage of the Hornets and Oklahoma City has been too good for the Hornets, for Oklahoma city and for the NBA. We are converts to Oklahoma City as a Major League city. We think that they have been nothing but great in keeping their sort of various promises with respect to the Hornets and understanding the trauma that caused the Hornets to be available to relocate. I'm a diehard democrat, but I might even vote for Mayor (Mike) Cornett because I think that he's done a great, great thing there with the community and with the state to do the right thing for the people of New Orleans, as well as taking care of his obligations to the people of Oklahoma City. So we really like Oklahoma City and we're in their employ as they seek Major League status by getting another franchise.

Q. I was wondering if you can elaborate on how the rule changes have affected the types of players teams draft?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: I'm out of my element but I'm going to try, which is to say that there is a premium on shooting, passing and being fast and movement, being able to move. And as I watch -- I was watching -- I'll leave the current teams out of it, otherwise I'll really get in trouble. But as I watched Boris Diaw and Leandro Barbosa, it's just, you know -- well, one watches a Parker and a Ginobili, it's really just interesting to see the way our teams are drafting these players who are multi-dimensional, multi-talented.
I grew up watching basketball, and the idea that a Steve Nash would ever guard a Dirk Nowitzki under any circumstances was like -- would be discordant to me. But our teams are mixing it up in very interesting ways because maybe our system of defense and the rules changes allows them to do that more. And so I just think that, you know -- I got a call earlier this week from Billy Cunningham, just checking in to say how much he's enjoyed watching the playoffs. And opining that he thinks for the first time, he says, coaches are putting their best five players on the court, regardless of their position. And I had not even focused on it quite that way. He just said it's so much fun to watch as a fan.
And so I think that's what's happening. I can't tell you with precision why or whether it's exactly what's happening. I'm really just more sort of a collector of insights from people who know much more about this game and are far more of an expert than I, but it's just fun to have a conversation because it's about the game and it's about the players. Frankly, to tie together what we've done, we think that by sort of clearing a way or being lucky enough not to have focused on some of the sort of issues that have bedeviled us in the last year or two in terms of player reputation, it has allowed our fans to focus on the game, and I'll say it, the passion that the players have for it, their engagement with the fans, their commitment to their communities and respect for the tradition and history, and that's when we win as sort of a league, and that's the way around the world, you know, people are tuning in and we are about to -- sort of start to the earlier question of where I'm going, I mean, we are about to see large viewing growth for the NBA outside the United States on broadband, on digital television and on regular television because it's beginning to happen based on what we've done over the last several years.

Q. I was going to say because of that, I wanted to add on, there's the possibility of the first player from Israel might be drafted, what would that mean?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: That would mean so many requests for tickets for me. (Laughter) I am totally, totally sort of -- I've got two views on that.
But it would be, you know, it would be even worse because I now get calls complaining that they are up at four o'clock in the morning watching the game and somehow it's my fault. It's just another, you know -- Maccabi Tel Aviv is obviously a perennial champion and Israelis are crazy about basketball. Of course, as I had mentioned to others here, the team that was on the floor for Maccabi television was four Americans and Croatians, talk about the internationalization of the game and Prague, if anyone saw the game which is available on NBA TV, you know, there were 10,000 Tel Aviv fans sitting in Prague dressed in their yellow and blue, and it's a relatively small country. So that would be very interesting for us.
But it's going to happen. The roster of NBA teams is going to be enriched by huge numbers of international players, and it's going to happen. But I also believe that the production of American players so to speak and their development is going to go through a renaissance, if we have to fuel it ourselves, okay. I think that the scandals, and I used word scandal, of these non-existent high schools that send players to colleges, and that gets acted upon only because the New York Times does an expose tainting our game. We have just begun the dialogue about whether, in fact, we should try to support academies or schools or something because if we know who our players are going to be, and it seems that everyone else except us knows or at least can act on us; because the street runners, the summer teams, the summer camps, the AAU, the apparel run camps or something, there's just, you know, we're the last -- and we in a funny way and maybe even the colleges, are the last people to get to these kids. The colleges, maybe never, except for us enact the rule, and then us. And we have just begun to ask ourselves the question, is there something subject to a thicket of rules that like makes it illegal for the NBA to think about certain things without destroying a kid's collegiate eligibility or something like that. But it just strikes us that there is something out of whack that these world-class athletes get exploited and exposed all the way up. They ultimately get to us, but by that time, they are fully -- they are developed in ways. And is there a way without compromising their eligibility or something that we can become more involved in helping them out; if, in fact, we can identify today with some certainty, I don't know that we can, but I'm just giving a positive for you, the potential draft class of 2012, and there are some people who now rate high school teams, you know, talk about potential letters of intent of high school juniors. I mean, it's a whole industry, and we read the magazines, so everyone else knows who those kids are. They are out there doing things for them, giving them things, traveling them, doing all kinds of things, and yet, those kids are precluded from -- college coaches are not allowed to talk to them because of an arcane set of rules. And certainly if we talk to them, we kill their collegiate eligibility. There's something totally wrong with the development system for young basketball players. It historically has not been the place for professional league to do it, but on the basis of the consistent failures of everyone else to do it, we are at least thinking about it and we'll be getting some dialogue with some interested parties to see if there's something that could be done here.

Q. Given the revelations this week about Jason Grimsley and HGH in basketball, how concerned are you that there still doesn't seem to be a real good test for that? Are you getting any type of indication from the UCLA lab or the lab in Montreal that they are anywhere close to coming up with something good?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: You know, I don't know enough about the facts there about how he did on the tests that were administered. But we are absolutely confident in our testing system. Four random times a year with, you know, a chain of custody that only a group of obsessed lawyers could come up with and make it work. We are a little bit disgusted by the to and fro between WADA and the labs that were analyzing the Lance Armstrong stuff. Either you have a system that you respect and you give a player the right to have a B sample, you know, that's the system, that's the process. You test and if the first one comes up, you then test the second one.
For the head of WADA to go public and say Lance Armstrong -- somehow saying the B sample was never tested and then the head of WADA saying, well, that's just an excuse, thereby tossing his procedures into the gutter, is to me a huge joke, okay; that the players should be tested, there should be random tests, they should be given to accredited laboratories as we do it, it should be handled by somebody, not the league, which is what we do. And then you should respect it.
And then, when someone comes out, as I think a Dutch group did, and said that the way Armstrong was handled was incorrect, and then for them to be attacked by WADA; I mean, the politics of drugs is a disgrace as well. And we are determined with our players to have a fair system that respects their rights, but also subjects them to the obligations that we think they have to be subjected to and we are totally comfortable with it. If it turns out there is some way to avoid it, then we'll deal with it. But we don't think there is. We think that our system is working pretty well. We had a couple of relatively well publicized, both suspensions that affected the playoffs and, you know, career-threatening, two-year suspensions as well. We don't like to have to do it, but those are what the results yield and we think those results are pretty accurate.
Now, I may turn out to be naive here, but of course, there's some magical ingredient, but we are in touch with the best labs, the best experts. We have them on retainer, etc. We think that we're up there on state-of-the-art.

Q. But still with HGH and its derivatives --
JOEL LITVIN: It requires a blood test.
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: We don't do blood testing. So it's another discussion that we have to have with our committee and then with our players.
By the way before the last Collective Bargaining Agreement, we've long had in place a committee that adds in substances and adds other ways to test. In some cases it's hair samples, other cases it's blood tests. This is a subject where we and our players are not on opposite sides. We like where we are, having eliminated this as an issue, and if you tell us that there's going to be another way that will detect something that is somehow enhancing performance, then we'll put it on the table and I'm sure our players will work with us on this. Because it's very good not to have this subject dominating us. Although, it doesn't seem to have hurt baseball's business a bit, but that's for another day.
Thanks very much.

End of FastScripts...

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