As commissioner of the NBA, Stern was like the membership chairman of an upscale country club. If you wanted to be part of his exclusive league, you had to do it on his terms, his way, his rules.
In the beginning, all Tanenbaum wanted was an NBA team for Toronto. At the time, it wasn’t something in great demand. Yet he wound up butting heads aggressively with the remarkable commissioner, who passed away on New Year’s Day at the age of 77.
Tanenbaum tried to buy the Denver Nuggets in 1991 and move them to Toronto. That didn’t work or go over well with Stern. He didn’t want to lose the franchise in Denver, where it remains to this day.
He told Tanenbaum the New Jersey Nets were for sale. That didn’t seem to work out either.
In the meantime, Tanenbaum pulled an end run of sorts on Stern. He tried to buy the San Antonio Spurs. He didn’t inform the commissioner of his actions. When he met in New York with Stern in 1992, to discuss the possible purchase, Tanenbaum didn’t realize he was walking into a storm.
“He was beside himself with anger,” Tanenbaum said years later. Stern was used to have troubled franchises in his league. He had problems in Cleveland, San Antonio, San Diego, Denver, Utah, Indiana, and Kansas City in his early years on the job. San Diego, the former Buffalo almost Toronto franchise, moved to Los Angeles. Kansas City wound up in Sacramento. Over time, the Spurs became one of the signature franchises of the NBA.
And after Tanenbaum and others knocked on the door of a number of NBA opportunities, including the Indiana Pacers, Stern decided it was time to expand to Canada. He awarded franchises to Vancouver and Toronto. But again, he did it his way.
He wouldn’t allow Pro-Line gambling on NBA games and made that an issue of acceptance. And when it seemed obvious that Tanenbaum would be awarded the franchise — at least that was the conventional thinking at the time — Stern passed on Tanenbaum and partners in favour of John Bitove Jr.
The message at the time was rather clear: You do business our way or you don’t do business with us at all.
David Stern ran a phenomenal league in a phenomenal and occasionally singular way. There has been no one else like him in professional sport. The NBA was paddling in circles, going nowhere, when he took over as commissioner in 1984 and over the next 30 years he built the most popular sporting entity in the world.
The NBA championship trophy may be in the name of Larry O’Brien, Stern’s predecessor, but realistically, it should be in Stern’s name. He built this league. He was a magician: He turned nothing into something.
As son of a New York deli owner, Stern had a personal flair and in the words of longtime NBA executive and author Pat Williams, he was “an innovator, a creator, a marketer, a visionary, a hustler, a salesman, and yet still a people person.”
He said that long before Stern passed away.
He was everything Gary Bettman, his old associate, hasn’t been able to be. Stern was never, it seemed, the voice of only the owners as Bettman happens to be. He was the voice of the game. He represented players, management, ownership, fans, in driving the NBA from a league that didn’t have its championship games broadcast live on television to one in which the biggest of stars are stars all around the globe.
Tom Brady may be the greatest quarterback to ever play, but he’s next to nobody in France or Germany or China or Africa. Stern’s NBA began to change when Larry Bird and Magic Johnson transported their collegiate rivalry and made it mandatory viewing in North America. From Bird and Magic, there was Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley and The Dream Team from the 1992 Summer Olympics and now LeBron James and Kawhi Leonard and Steph Curry and Kevin Durant.
The $125 million that Bitove apparently overpaid for the Raptors in 1994 is now an NBA championship franchise worth close to or maybe more than $2 billion U.S, which is more than $2.6 billion Canadian.
Not everything was perfect under Stern, who adopted similar league-think policy that Pete Rozelle had previously utilized in building the National Football League. He succeeded in Toronto and failed in Vancouver, which was always a regret of his. He lived through corrupt officials and corrupt ownership and drug issues and through Magic Johnson contacting HIV and yet found a way to never lose sight of the target. The negotiating he managed, doing the deal that brought Yao Ming to the NBA, changed the league’s business forever and made him a figure of envy for all of North American professional sport.
Bettman, the NHL commissioner, started in sports in the NBA front office. “I am extremely saddened at the passing of my mentor and long-time friend David Stern,” he said in a statement released Wednesday. “He was a man of great vision and energy who is responsible for the operational and business advancements that created the modern sports industry. David taught me how to be a commissioner and, more importantly, how to try to be a good person.”
In the early years of the Raptors, Bitove and broadcast billionaire partner Allan Slaight, could no longer work together and that’s where Tanenbaum and Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment came together in partnership to purchase the team. Tanenbaum has been the de-facto owner since then, even though he maintains a minority ownership to giant corporate partners Rogers and Bell.
The man Stern once read the riot act to later became a friend and respected and important colleague. On the passing of David Stern, the chairman of the board of the NBA just happens to be Larry Tanenbaum.
Tanenbaum released a statement:
“Canadians will not forget that it was David Stern who oversaw the expansion of the NBA to Canada, and that it was David Stern who declared that the Toronto franchise would be a success – we are grateful he was able to see our team thrive, and his prediction ultimately came true. David’s vision for our league was a global one, and we were among the very first beneficiaries of that vision. He set the tone for the modern NBA: focused on excellence, driven to exceed expectations, socially conscious, and determined to have an impact on and off the court. Masai has spoken about how everyone who loves the NBA owes David a debt of gratitude – I agree wholeheartedly. Over the 30 years that David and I spent working together, I came to rely on his intelligence, resolve, good humour and candor. We, and the Canadian basketball community, will miss him greatly.”
Raptors’ president Masai Ujiri released the following statement:
“It was rare to see a leader with such great vision, who then also executed it. Everyone who plays, works in or watches the NBA owes a debt of gratitude to Mr. Stern. The league that we know and love would not exist without his dedication, his hard work, and most especially his vision. He was transcendent. He oversaw the expansion of our league to Canada. He knew there was basketball talent around the world and he saw opportunity for players and fans everywhere – he is a great, global giant in sports. We are proud of what he did, and his death pains us. On behalf of our entire organization and all basketball fans across Canada, we send plenty blessings to his family.”
BY
ssimmons@postmedia.com
