The NBA started the 2011-2012 season with a lockout and it has since ended and one of the issues that was addressed during the time was the gap between small market teams and the major market teams and yet the very first hours that the collective bargaining agreement is signed, what happens? A team in a major market benefits from a horrendous trade and continues to tarnish the once promising legacy of NBA Commissioner David Stern.
Now the trade involves the Los Angeles Lakers, Houston Rockets and New Orleans Hornets and the key pieces in the trade are Pau Gasol, Kevin Martin, Luis Scola and Chris Paul. When the trade does get finalized the team that actually benefits from the most juts happens to be the team in the big market, the Lakers.
Of course the example of Paul being traded isn’t the first time a smaller market team has been fleeced in a trade! One just has to look at what happened with Carmelo Anthony when he was dealt to the New York Knicks last season and another example is how the Lakers acquired Gasol from the Memphis Grizzlies.
Though the uneven trades have been bad enough and makes Stern look bad, the game itself has evolved into a shell 0f its former self. There’s hardly any contact in the league anymore and the NBA continues to slip when it comes to being a popular sport as either fans are tired of the “superstar” calls or would rather watch college basketball.
Most of the issues stem from rule changes that have been implement by Stern and the reason for the changes was that these rules were supposed to offer higher scoring. One of the issues the NBA had during the mid 1990s was the lack of offense, so rules changes such as no more hand checking and even at one point moving the three point line, luckily the NBA realized that mistake and fixed that, and lastly what has really hurt the NBA has been the rule to what is now referred to as “one and done.”
Basically the NBA made a mountain out of a molehill in terms of when an individual could declare for the NBA Draft. It used to be that they could go directly from high school into the draft now it’s one year removed from high school, 19 years of age or by playing one year of college basketball.
The rule has basically made it to where numerous players are declaring for the draft after playing one year of college basketball and most likely if the rule had not been a huge deal those players would have stayed for at least two or three years in college before entering, now players are in a rush to enter that they do not develop a very sound game fundamentally.
An example of this is Brandon Jennings of the Milwaukee Bucks who instead of attempting to play only one year of college basketball, when directly to the professional ranks overseas, he entered the NBA Draft a year later. Jennings is now entering his third season in the league and he has yet too shoot over 40 percent from the field.
Finally the icing on the cake on why Stern has worn out his welcome as Commissioner is the officiating in the NBA. I eluded too it a little bit when talking about “superstar” calls, yet the biggest issue surrounding Stern on that front was his reaction to the Tim Donaghy scandal.
Donaghy was a former NBA referee who admitted to fixing NBA games, Stern did his best too discredit anything that was stated and made it appear that Donaghy was the lone wolf, that he was rogue and that there were no other officials involved. One of the examples was the 2002 playoffs with the Sacramento Kings against the Los Angeles Kings, there were clearly obvious bogus officiating in that series and Stern couldn’t even admit that.
Now, it would be great too say since Donaghy’s admission of guilt and rigging games would put an end to the discussion of the referees that cannot be said. Out of all professional sports, the NBA has the worst officiating it’s almost as blatantly bad as watching a WWE match especially if it involves one of the NBA superstars.
There’s foul calls that are made when there’s no contact involved, the referees will not call a traveling violation, will forget the three second count as a superstar could be camped out in the lane for 20 seconds, etc….Of course if that player doesn’t happen to be a superstar then those calls don’t get made.
Case in point Monta Ellis is one of the better shooting guards in the NBA and he’ll of course draw a lot of contact and there would be no whistle. An example of this was against the Lakers last season, when Ellis at will was getting to the rim and on his third straight layup attempt, Andrew Bynum just grabbed Ellis’ arm and there was no foul called. If Ellis had done that to Bryant, there would have been a definitive whistle and free throws. Also, on Youtube there’s a number of examples of nonexistent foul calls that were called against Greg Oden.
By the way Bill Simmons wrote an excellent article on how to fix the officiating in the NBA and that can be found here.
Stern in the beginning of his tenure as Commissioner ran the NBA when it was extremely popular, there were great physical battles between teams such as the Chicago Bulls and Detroit Pistons, there weren’t very many one-sided trades and for the most part the players were fundamentally sound.
All now that can be said about the NBA is the players lack fundamentals, small market teams get fleeced when their star player has decided that they want to go play for a bigger market, “superstar” calls are the norm and the officiating is dreadful. There’s no doubt that Stern has worn out his welcome as Commission and should resign effective immediately.
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[...] with what hes been doing off late, we aren't the only ones hoping for this: David Stern Should Resign as NBA Commissioner Immediately | Golden State Warriors NBA Commissioner David Stern Should Resign: Fan's Opinion – NBA – Yahoo! Sports David Stern [...]
The NBA has become more popular than ever. TV ratings for the finals topped the MLB’s World Series. That doesn’t include China and other large countries that watch the global NBA. Stern is doing fine, not great, but fine.
TV ratings don’t necessarily mean being popular. Stern has been more concerned with expanding the NBA’s image globally than the actual product. He needs to be gone.
Any time you use Bill simmons as an unbiased source, you lose all credibility. That guy is a d_bag and a Celtics homer. Next! And, F David Stern
I’m not a huge fan of Simmons, yet this had nothing to do with the Celtics and he made a great point on how the NBA could fix the refereeing issue that continues to plague the league.
This article is very poorly written and completely biased. Have refs ever missed calls on Monta Ellis? Sure. But if you could turn off your hate of Kobe for a full game you would see that he quite often gets fouled with no call because he’s skilled enough to make a play out of it anyway. The same can be said of Lebron. Now, somehow Wade does seem to get an inordinate amount of calls to go his way, but not enough to change game outcomes. I really thought your article was poorly written, however I still end up agreeing with your main point that Stern absolutely has to go. The power has gone to his head which has left room for very little logical reasoning.
Joe I’m going to have to disagree with you on both counts poorly written? No. Completely biased? No. I was using the example of Kobe it could have equally been using the name Lebron James, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony, Dwight Howard, etc……