Carmelo Anthony on his 15-game suspension in the 2006-07 season and David Stern

[Lebron23]

David Stern just like all of the commissioners in pro sports history were ruthless and business minded

“I go speak to him and say, ‘Why’d you do me like that?’. [Stern said,] ‘…Do you want to be in the streets, or do you want to be in the NBA? You’re f-—g with a corporation now… I know who you with. I know where you live at. I know when you close your eyes...’ …That’s when I knew the NBA was f—-g with the feds.”


https://clutchpoints.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwp.clutchpoints.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2023%2F03%2FCarmelo-Anthony-recalls-chilling-conversation-with-late-Commissioner-David-Stern.jpg&w=3840&q=75

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0e/27/36/0e2736ddd519b569854494b64c725d20.jpg

[Kblaze8855]

I see people talk sometimes about how Stern was much tougher on his stars than Silver but when you think about it the stars today are much closer power wise than the players were to Stern. And a lot more are downright tycoons. Inside 5-8 years they will probably have an expansion team in Vegas Lebron will be a public facing owner of. Wade is in ownership. KD and Steph plan to. And all of them have the kinda money to be significant members of an ownership group. Top tier stars today all make half a billion or more off the nba and nearly as much off the court. Some of these guys will be voting on Silvers compensation package in years to come.

Stern was old and had been in charge for 20 years when he was acting like a mafia boss to young guys like Melo. They were never gonna be a threat to him.

Players today not only have more power publicly they are in position to enter the corporate world with the people who are in charge now. Lebron is worth 30 times what Adam Silver is. His film studio is worth more than nba teams were worth as recently as 2015(the hawks and wizards were bought for less).

Different power dynamic.

[Phoenix]

Taking all that above into account, what are the odds on the players creating their own league that can seriously challenge the NBA? And if there's any chance of such, over/under 20 years from now?

[Real Men Wear Green]

Taking all that above into account, what are the odds on the players creating their own league that can seriously challenge the NBA? And if there's any chance of such, over/under 20 years from now?

No chance. The ex-players with money are buying into the NBA not creating leagues and teams. Making a new league with the money to attract the top talent is a huge undertaking and not really worth it for the guys that could possibly make it happen. You would need a crop of billionaires that can outbid the NBA. Someone that can offer Wembanyama a hundred mil per year while the NBA will only give him a rookie contract. That kind of thing.

[Phoenix]

No chance. The ex-players with money are buying into the NBA not creating leagues and teams. Making a new league with the money to attract the top talent is a huge undertaking and not really worth it for the guys that could possibly make it happen. You would need a crop of billionaires that can outbid the NBA. Someone that can offer Wembanyama a hundred mil per year while the NBA will only give him a rookie contract. That kind of thing.

I figure such an undertaking would need the buy-in of your mega-mongul types outside the NBA. Jay-Z, Tyler Perry, Oprah, Bob Johnson, people like that. Then you'd need guys like MJ, Magic on-board and working with guys like Lebron who clearly want to go that route post-NBA. I figure it's a longshot, but just food for thought. I feel like at some point the shifting power dynamic between players and the league status quo will reach some kind of impasse. May not amount to anything, but you may start hearing whispers.....

[ArbitraryWater]

Stephen A said the same on "Countdown" regarding Ja about the feds:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtgwfsEGpyg

[Wardell Curry]

I see people talk sometimes about how Stern was much tougher on his stars than Silver but when you think about it the stars today are much closer power wise than the players were to Stern. And a lot more are downright tycoons. Inside 5-8 years they will probably have an expansion team in Vegas Lebron will be a public facing owner of. Wade is in ownership. KD and Steph plan to. And all of them have the kinda money to be significant members of an ownership group. Top tier stars today all make half a billion or more off the nba and nearly as much off the court. Some of these guys will be voting on Silvers compensation package in years to come.

Stern was old and had been in charge for 20 years when he was acting like a mafia boss to young guys like Melo. They were never gonna be a threat to him.

Players today not only have more power publicly they are in position to enter the corporate world with the people who are in charge now. Lebron is worth 30 times what Adam Silver is. His film studio is worth more than nba teams were worth as recently as 2015(the hawks and wizards were bought for less).

Different power dynamic.

David Stern forced Michael Jordan to step away from the NBA to lessen the potential for a scandal. Adam Silver is spineless.

I don't know how you could possibly compare the two. David Stern: "I know where the bodies are buried." Does anyone in the entire world actually believe Adam Silver would be caught dead saying that? Even in 10 years?

[FultzNationRISE]

Taking all that above into account, what are the odds on the players creating their own league that can seriously challenge the NBA? And if there's any chance of such, over/under 20 years from now?



I figure such an undertaking would need the buy-in of your mega-mongul types outside the NBA. Jay-Z, Tyler Perry, Oprah, Bob Johnson, people like that. Then you'd need guys like MJ, Magic on-board and working with guys like Lebron who clearly want to go that route post-NBA. I figure it's a longshot, but just food for thought. I feel like at some point the shifting power dynamic between players and the league status quo will reach some kind of impasse. May not amount to anything, but you may start hearing whispers.....



So you want a league created by players, or just... black people?

[FultzNationRISE]

David Stern forced Michael Jordan to step away from the NBA to lessen the potential for a scandal. Adam Silver is spineless.

I don't know how you could possibly compare the two. David Stern: "I know where the bodies are buried." Does anyone in the entire world actually believe Adam Silver would be caught dead saying that? Even in 10 years?

Part of it is different personalities but Stern himself would have to be more careful with what is said even behind closed doors today. This isnt the old days where you could pull a favor with your editor friend at the newspaper to make sure something doesnt get a lot of attention. You cant really keep anything under wraps in the social media era.

[hold this L]

I see people talk sometimes about how Stern was much tougher on his stars than Silver but when you think about it the stars today are much closer power wise than the players were to Stern. And a lot more are downright tycoons. Inside 5-8 years they will probably have an expansion team in Vegas Lebron will be a public facing owner of. Wade is in ownership. KD and Steph plan to. And all of them have the kinda money to be significant members of an ownership group. Top tier stars today all make half a billion or more off the nba and nearly as much off the court. Some of these guys will be voting on Silvers compensation package in years to come.

Stern was old and had been in charge for 20 years when he was acting like a mafia boss to young guys like Melo. They were never gonna be a threat to him.

Players today not only have more power publicly they are in position to enter the corporate world with the people who are in charge now. Lebron is worth 30 times what Adam Silver is. His film studio is worth more than nba teams were worth as recently as 2015(the hawks and wizards were bought for less).

Different power dynamic.

Silver is the biggest bitch-level president I think top level pro sports have ever had. There's a reason NBA players have more power than any other sport, and they're still the whiniest/most entitled out of any sport. Silver looks like the guy that was regularly getting bullied in school and now he's asked to be someone who can tell multi-millionaire/billionaire guys to piss off. Dude wilts immediately.

Last season started with the refs finally reffing games normally and it took 2 months for that soft as baby shit fraud to wilt from owners and players bullying him.

[tontoz]

Stern and Silver are about as far apart as two commissioners could be. Stern was too hardcore and Silver too spineless.

[Kblaze8855]

Tell them to piss off how?

A lot of them are literally richer than the owners outside the net worth added by owning the team. The ceo of the company that owns the spurs has a net worth less than 20 percent of Lebron. Luka and Jokic have deals the size of dudes net worth. There’s a serious misconception about the money and power balance between established stars and owners these days. Especially the family owners who have teams bought decades ago for a few million dollars and have their entire net Worth tied up in being an owner.

They’re paperwork billionaires living off side business and revenue sharing but they don’t just have billions of dollars. There are quite a few new ones who buy NBA teams for billions as a play thing but even they tend to have way more partners than you think of.

They have to selloff tremendous portions of the team so they are more cash rich but many of them did it long ago when the teams were worth 300 or 400 million so they sell 10% for 30 something million dollars instead of for 300 million like they would be getting now.

The end result is that players who can get two or three $200 million contracts and have shoe deals and side money for even more end up as rich or richer than the people you think run shit.

What’s your plan to push around guys richer than most of your ownership group when locking them out only harms your broadcast and streaming rights deals, which is how you actually monetize your team without selling it?

The true tycoon owners like Ballmer I’ve read reports are absolutely hated by jealous cash poor owners. Most of them simply can’t afford to alienate the players unions and stars without selling off more of the team to the true billionaires they hate or the low level guys who pitch in a few million and don’t want to pay any more later so they tell you to stay out of luxury tax and don’t do anything to harm the business and if enough of them get together they can sue you for a breach of duty to them which is kinda what’s happening to dude who owns the Commander’s in the nfl.

NBA superstars are as rich as most of the people in ownership groups these days and richer than a lot of the front facing owners a lot of us incorrectly assume are real world “Money ain’t a thang” billionaires.

It’s tycoon versus tycoon today, not tycoon versus hapless employee.

I’m telling you just wait five or six years. LeBron James will literally be one of Adam Silver’s bosses. Durant too. James Harden will make $74 million this year. Only two years of his earnings would make him a big enough piece of an ownership group that the commissioner has to listen to him.

It’s a partnership these days. They’re all too rich to push around. The nature of basketball with small team sizes allows the NBA to generate too much money with too few players. The NFL has to spread the money over thousands of people considering injuries. An NBA star is too big a piece of too big a pie for you to do anything about them reaching mogul status where you can’t make them do anything.

They’ll be making $80 million a season in a few years. Devin Booker is going to make more money than anybody in Hollywood. If I have 400 million good luck getting me to bend the knee. I have investigators following you too.

[FultzNationRISE]

Silver is the biggest bitch-level president I think top level pro sports have ever had. There's a reason NBA players have more power than any other sport, and they're still the whiniest/most entitled out of any sport. Silver looks like the guy that was regularly getting bullied in school and now he's asked to be someone who can tell multi-millionaire/billionaire guys to piss off. Dude wilts immediately.

Last season started with the refs finally reffing games normally and it took 2 months for that soft as baby shit fraud to wilt from owners and players bullying him.


Maybe, but the bottom line is... what counts. At least as far as the owners Silver's accountable to are concerned anyway.

And the NBA's bottom line has continued to grow under Silver. There was just a thread recently that he's being considered for CEO of the entire Disney umbrella.

Silver, the owners, and the players are all making a lot of money. Are the fans happier with the product? That's debatable, but you can find complainers no matter what the product looks like. At the end of the day, everyone with a financial interest in the NBA is eating good. NBA 'fans' as a collective have very little motivation, resolve, or incentive to spend their time trying to get better basketball. Everyones got their own lives and it's just not worth the effort, but the bottom line is they still appear to be watching. So it is what it is. I dont think Silver or anyone on either side of labor and management give a **** if he's a bitch as long as the money keeps rolling in.

[hold this L]

Maybe, but the bottom line is... what counts. At least as far as the owners Silver's accountable to are concerned anyway.

And the NBA's bottom line has continued to grow under Silver. There was just a thread recently that he's being considered for CEO of the entire Disney umbrella.

Silver, the owners, and the players are all making a lot of money. Are the fans happier with the product? That's debatable, but you can find complainers no matter what the product looks like. At the end of the day, everyone with a financial interest in the NBA is eating good. NBA 'fans' as a collective have very little motivation, resolve, or incentive to spend their time trying to get better basketball. Everyones got their own lives and it's just not worth the effort, but the bottom line is they still appear to be watching. So it is what it is. I dont think Silver or anyone on either side of labor and management give a **** if he's a bitch as long as the money keeps rolling in.

What you said isn't wrong, but what does it have to do with my statement? I never said the NBA is making less money, I'm saying that Silver is completely spineless. Did the bottom line under Stern now continue to grow? Hell, which major sport in the US is not growing in terms of money?

[PeroAntic]

You would need a crop of billionaires that can outbid the NBA. Someone that can offer Wembanyama a hundred mil per year while the NBA will only give him a rookie contract. That kind of thing.

Wait until the Gulf sheiks discover basketball. They already did exactly this in European football...

[Dbrog]

Wait until the Gulf sheiks discover basketball. They already did exactly this in European football...

And golf. They offered some of the Major winners more money on a SIGNING BONUS than the players had made in their entire career. Of course many players are going to take that trade.

Granted, i forget which club, I think it was Italy, tried this with Kobe in his twilight years and he didn't take it. Reports said that he really thought about it though.