However, as the league survived a lockout a season ago and is set to begin an 82-game regular season for the first time in two years, Stern made the surprising announcement that he would be stepping down in 2014.

June 28, 2012; Newark, NJ, USA; NBA commissioner David Stern in attendance during the 2012 NBA Draft at the Prudential Center. Mandatory Credit: Jerry Lai-US PRESSWIRE

It shouldn’t be that surprising, as it has appeared he has been laying the groundwork for his departure for the past several seasons. However today’s announcement was still surprising nonetheless.

During the NBA’s Board of Governors meetings in midtown Manhattan, Stern advised the league’s owners of his intention to retire on Feb. 1, 2014, the 30-year anniversary of his taking the job. In doing so, Stern, who turned 70 last month, has stayed very much in the character he’s developed during those three decades.

He made it clear he will remain in charge of league operations for the next 15 months, making sure his hand-picked successor will be installed. The league owners said they will begin negotiating with deputy commissioner Adam Silver to take over for Stern when those 15 months end.

“It’s been a great run. The league is in, I think, terrific condition,” Stern said (via ESPN). “I’d like to think I did an adequate job. But one of the things I did best was provide a successor. I’m not going anyplace in the next 15 months, but this gives us the opportunity to have a very smooth transition.”

He’s right about the league being in great shape.

During Stern’s tenure the league’s annual revenue from its television contract increased 40 times, and the average player salary jumped from $250,000 a year in 1984 to more than $5 million right now.

Stern has always been surrounded by controversy and has always been viewed as a shrewd negotiator, but he has impacted his game in a more positive fashion than any of the commissioners in the four major sports during that time frame.

On his watch, there has been extremely strong revenue growth throughout the league, the expansion from 23 to 30 teams, the movement into small markets such as Sacramento, Memphis and Oklahoma City, the spreading global reach spurred on by the league’s backing of letting its players take part in the Olympics, and the establishment of the WNBA.

Stern also oversaw the implementation of drug testing that helped root out a major league issue in the 1980s.

In addition the value of franchises went up in a big way. When Stern took over in 1984, teams were being sold in the $20 million range. In 2010, the Golden State Warriors set a record when they were sold for $450 million.

On the surface, Stern is not a likeable guy and for every good thing he has done, there have been whispers of conspiracies behind the scenes, ranging from the very first draft lottery in 1984, in which the New York Knicks won the rights to draft Patrick Ewing, to last season’s lottery, and everything in between.

Heck, there was even an FBI investigation about one of his referees involved with illegal gambling.

Stern has angered as many people in his near 30 years as he has reached out to. He often seems to not care about his fan base, one that has made the NBA what it is today.

During his watch, he’s made sure to protect his larger market teams, while not necessarily giving the same due to the smaller market teams.

But with everything negative associated with Stern, you can’t argue about the success the league has had and the shape that it is in right now and at the end of the day, that is really all that matters when evaluating his legacy.

Fifteen years from now, Stern likely won’t be missed much among the fans of the NBA.

However, here’s hoping that Silver can have similar success and a similar tenure to that of his predecessor.

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But while Stern should be given credit for recognizing and attempting to deal with the problem, when he stepped in to do something about it, he did exactly what every NBA defender has done as of late – Stern flopped.

He not only flopped, he did it in a big way.

On the surface Stern will have you think that he’s doing something about the flopping problem that’s running rampant in the NBA, but his new rules, what New York Knicks’ fans should dub the LeBron James Rule, do very little to address the problem of flopping in the NBA.

The league announced on Wednesday a new anti-flopping policy that starts with a warning and steps up to some major money. During the regular season, the steps will be warning for the first violation, $5,000 fine for the second, $10,000 fine for third, $15,000 fine for the fourth and $30,000 fine for the fifth violation.

The NBA Players’ Association is not happy with the ruling, nor should they be. But while both sides argue about the potential of losing money, they should realize that Stern missed the boat altogether when it comes to taking flopping out of the game.

The current rules do nothing to prevent flopping during game action. With the average NBA salary at close to $2 million and more and more superstars making in the $15-$20 million range, does Stern really think a $10k or even a $30k fine is going to get the message across?

No, the LeBron James Rule is completely flawed.

Stern had the opportunity to step in and really do something to clean the game up and he’s the one who flopped.

The NHL has a rule for embellishing and the NBA could have done so as well.

There’s still nothing in the game to prevent guys from flopping. Do you really think that with the game on the line that players won’t still flop to get calls? They won’t be worried about fines one bit.

Instead, Stern could have taken the opportunity to really do something to take flopping out of the game.

How about awarding free throws to the other team? How about awarding a personal foul every time a defender flops? How about allowing the officiating crew to check the monitor to determine whether or not a defender flops and calling the foul accordingly?

Those are more proactive solutions to get rid of the flopping problem in the NBA. Hitting someone with a $10k fine may sound like a lot, but it’s not and Stern is still allowing flopping to impact the direct results of games, which is a problem.

Whether the players want to admit it or not, flopping is a problem in the  NBA, especially when you have stars such as James, Manu Ginobili, Anderson Varejao and others that spend more time impersonating actors than they do playing basketball.

No, the LeBron James Rule is a waste of time as it will accomplish nothing to clean up the NBA product.

At the end of the day, Stern had the chance to step up and do something, but instead of playing good defense and making a point, he flopped just like everyone else.

This means wonderful things if your a Knick fan! Famed point guard Jeremy Lin and sharpshooter Steve Novak will now be allowed to resign contracts with The Knicks without it effecting our Mid-Level and Bi-annual exceptions. The exceptions will therefore be available to use on veteran talent within Free Agency that likely wouldn’t have signed veteran minimum contracts.

Long shot names like Lamar Odom, Steve Nash, and Jason Kidd, while still being a challenge to sign, are now a real possibility. This new found money can be spent in many different ways, but the Knicks’ Front Office must be careful. They are only 3 million dollars away from being faced with harsh taxes, and they will likely spend that 3 million quickly so it better be worth it. 

More good news: Today is June 22nd, which means there are only 4 days left until J.R. Smith has to decide if he will pick up his player option. My gut is he will, as he has waited this long, and it is in his best interest due to the large amount of guards in Free Agency.

If we add J.R., Lin, and Novak to our current signed roster that pretty much equals our talent from last season. Not to mention that it is almost a lock that Jared Jefferies re-signs for his veterans minimum contract. In other words, we can essentially only be better than last season depending on who we add in Free Agency.

Lesser names that are now available due to our newly allotted exceptions include: Raymond Felton, Aaron Brooks (restricted), Andre Miller, Goran Dragic, Ray Allen, Jamal Crawford, Matt Barnes, and Kenyon Martin.

It is too soon to speculate which of these many avenues the Knicks will choose to go. The draft may shed some light on the situation as we will have to wait and see what area of their needs they cover. It is also unclear if they are planning on trading up in the draft.

At this point I can tell all of you are getting into that classic Knick Fan state of mind where you get overly excited and start to make plans in your head (see Lebron James fiasco), so I must warn you: The NBA will be appealing the decision that was made by Dam.

There is still a chance that this will be over turned, and as my colleague, Scott Davis, pointed out in his article, “because it’s The Knicks and it’s David Stern…that’s just what happens.” Commish Stern does have a tendency to cause controversy, and everyone with a brain knows that he will not take this lying down.

But. That’s a story for a different day. Today is a celebratory day. Go buy yourself something nice.

April 16, 2012; New Orleans, LA, USA; NBA commissioner David Stern at press conference announcing ownership to Tom Benson and the awarding of the 2014 All Star game to the city of New Orleans at the New Orleans Arena. Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-US PRESSWIRE

Surprisingly, Stern denied it (we had all been expecting him to fess up to a rigged lottery, after all).

Stern replied, “I have two answers to that. I’ll give you the easy one: no. And a statement: shame on you for asking.” Stern, evidently (somewhat reasonably) offended by the question, continued, “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” Rome and Stern debated the topic, with Rome pointing to the large number of people that believe the lottery is fixed, while Stern defended the league, essentially saying they were stuck between a rock and a hard place.

“I think if [the number one pick] had gone to Michael Jordan [and the Charlotte Bobcats]… people would have said, ‘Oh, David’s taking care of his friend Michael’”, Stern argued. “If it had gone to Brooklyn, which is going into Barclay Center, it would’ve been fair to speculate, I suppose, that we want to take Brooklyn off of the mat. So there was no winning.”

Stern makes a point that an argument could always be made that the lottery is fixed no matter who wins. However, this year, the Bobcats were by far the worst team in the NBA, and people were expecting them to receive the number one pick. Instead, when it went to New Orleans, a team that lost its superstar in Chris Paul this year, and had just been bought from the league. The year before, the Minnesota Timberwolves had the worst record in the league, but the Cleveland Cavaliers were awarded the number one pick, the year after they were snubbed by LeBron James.

Of course, there have been other theories that the draft has been fixed, but there also have been other years where the team that won the number one pick wasn’t all that surprisingly.

Stern said the idea is brought up as a cheap trick for media outlets to get an audience, and said Rome has made a living out of it. Rome took offense to the statement, and the interview ended shortly after with an awkward exchange of goodbyes.

Anyone that follows the NBA closely knows that the word conspiracy and the name David Stern pretty much go hand in hand.

Through time we’ve seen the 1985 lottery and the case of the allegedly creased envelope that allowed the New York Knicks to win the draft rights to Patrick Ewing.

Who could forget Michael Jordan going to play baseball and the alleged gambling suspension?

Then there is the always occurring theme of shady refereeing. Tim Donaghy in 2002 during the Los Angeles Lakers-Sacramento Kings series, or even more recent, any 2012 playoff game involving the Miami Heat.

Which brings us to Wednesday night’s lottery. Could it have been rigged?

Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports has found that many executives around the league are upset that the NBA-owned New Orleans Hornets were able to beat the odds and win the draft lottery:

“It’s such a joke that the league made the new owners be at the lottery for the show,” one high-ranking team executive told Yahoo! Sports. “The league still owns the Hornets. Ask their front office if new owners can make a trade right now. They can’t. This is a joke.”

Stern maximized the value for the Hornets when they were up for sale by nixing the original Chris Paul trade with the Lakers, making the Clippers pay a steep price to land the All-Star point guard.

Then he negotiated a $338 million sale of the franchise to New Orleans Saints’ owner Tom Benson and the team had just a 13.7 percent chance of having their pick come up No. 1.  Could there have been a hand shake deal along with the sale of the franchise that the Hornets would have the No. 1 pick in the draft?

It’s really not that crazy of a theory.

Of course it’s something that could never be proven, but given the things that happen in the NBA under Stern’s watch, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if that were the case.

The agreement was reached in time to salvage the much hyped Christmas Day games, which normally serve as the debut of the NBA’s national televised schedule. The triple header, which David Stern made reference to in a press conference early this morning include the Boston Celtics at the New York Knicks; Miami Heat at the Dallas Mavericks and Chicago Bulls at the Los Angeles Lakers.

The full details of the deal should be out later today, as the sides reconvened to talk about a number of B-list issues which include the age limit, rookie salary scale and drug testing.

The most important thing to take away from this announcement is that both sides finally compromised enough to get a deal done, and there will be a season.  The players had been making considerable concessions throughout this process however; it took some minor moves by the owners in order to get this deal done.

It has been reported that key areas in which the owners finally conceded include the Mid-level exception, and most evidently their stance on extend-and-trades. (more…)

The details, spelled out in an April 26 memo issued by National Basketball Players Association Executive Director Billy Hunter, marks the league’s push for a major overhaul of the NBA’s economic model and emphasizes to players an aggressive bid to significantly slash costs and shorten contracts.

The memo’s most eye-popping element is the league’s proposed $45 million hard cap, which cuts the current $58 million soft cap by nearly 25 percent.

Hunter said in the memo that the NBA projects the $45 million hard cap number with a team’s total salary not to exceed the cap for any reason. The proposed hard cap as outlined by Hunter also would eliminate the current luxury tax provision, which penalizes teams with a dollar-for-dollar tax for the amount spent on player payroll exceeding the salary cap.

The proposed hard cap is something the NBA has never had under collective bargaining, but it has become a critical element to owners. This initial proposal, and its steep cut in player cap space, demonstrates a strong commitment by the owners to dramatically curtail player payrolls while also supporting NBA Commissioner David Stern’s mantra of making the league more profitable.

Basically what this means for the Knicks, a team with over $43 million on their books for Carmelo Anthony and Amar’e Stoudemire alone in 2012-13 (when the proposed plan would be expected to be in play), is a major problem. There’d be no chance of signing another marquee free agent, as the league looks to level the playing field among small and large market franchises. The financial model that’s been proposed is similar to the NFL, where each team’s destiny is fairly distributed into their own hands. In order for this to take place, current player’s contracts would have to be restructured and scaled back to put teams under the hard cap, but good luck sliding that by the Player’s Association. If this report is true, the union and the league are as far apart as humanly possible at the moment. The chances of a lockout are very, very high, and us, the fans, are the biggest losers.

To donate to the FanSided and Site5 Holiday Season Charity Drive and help us help the BGCA help our children, visit this link.

Here are some things I’m thankful for in the world o’ Knicks (feel free to add your own thankful bits in the comments section below):

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Walt "Clyde" Frazier Splendidly Showing Sensational Sartorial Skills

Buckets writer Antony Marino’s recap of the New York Knicks’ victory over the New Jersey Nets explains how it was all about Learning To Lead And Leather Suits:

Last night a team of New York Knickerbockers with “no valuable assets*” foolishly pushed caution to the wind and actually consented to compete against a New Jersey Nets squad with an “exciting young core.*”  In the game of basketball.  In public.  On TV.  I know.  An untimely demise would certainly meet the foolhardy clowns that dared to face the future [current] power of Brooklyn [Newark], but from whence would it come? The lightning quick Devin Harris (you, sir, are not a point guard, but I will defend to my death your right to say that you are)? The quantum leaping Travis Outlaw (your titanic lack of basketball IQ is only rivaled in absurdity by your yearly salary)? The highly-touted rookie Derrick Favors (lots of guys would sit on the bench behind Kris Humphries, just not typically in the NBA)? The unstoppable Brook Lopez (okay, you are absolutely fantastic at basketball)? I, like many  prognosticators of Knick failure, waited in baited breath for this much maligned group of uncoordinated, orange and blue mouth-breathers to finally show their true colors, but alas this moment never came.

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Thank you, David Stern, for saving us Knick fans from our owner.

“Donnie finds this entire thing distasteful,” said one NBA source. “He’s had second thoughts about staying but he wants to finish the job.”

[...] Dolan’s insistence on giving Thomas the ambiguous title of consultant angered Walsh, who for two years has been trying to hire former St. John’s All-American Chris Mullin as general manager. Dolan has refused to sign off on hiring Mullin.

The Daily News doesn’t always have the best of reporting, so while Walsh’s interest in conceivably hiring Mullin has been documented, take it with a huge grain of salt, heck, take it with a whole tablespoon of salt, that Walsh definitively tried to hire Mullin and Walsh flat out said no for two whole years.  However, Walsh’s justifiable anger over the hiring of Isiah has been supported by ESPN:

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Don't let the open arms confuse you. If you say something David Stern doesn't like, he'll fine you. No, there's no truth to the rumor that The Beatles wrote "Back In The USSR" about him. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

First off, please, please, please don’t confuse me for a whiney Boston Celtics fan. I actually was excited for them two years ago when they got Kevin Garnett because I felt like KG and Paul Pierce were two guys who deserved a shot and I wanted to see what they could do. Then they both, particularly KG, turned into jerks. So now I’m staunchly anti-Celts. I hope they lose this series, and I’m psyched that the Magic won last night. But Orlando shouldn’t have been helped out so egregiously by the refs.

No, I’m not a conspiracy nut either who thinks the “League” told the refs to extend the series. I just think that the refs and the NBA honchos have let the power go to their heads. It’s insane how afraid the league is of dissention. For those who didn’t watch last night’s game, Kendrick Perkins, the one guy in the league who can do a decent job defending Dwight Howard solo, got two technicals and was tossed. The first happened when he was helping Paul Pierce up, but their grip slipped so his arm went back a bit into Orlando’s backup center Marcin Gortat. Gortat responded, slapping the ball away, and they got hit by double technicals. I understand that one. At the time, particularly from certain angles, it looked like Perk just maliciously elbowed Gortat on purpose. But upon video review, you can see it was more of an accident.

To read the rest of this, go to my original post on the main FanSided page.

Carl Braun, who was chosen for five consecutive All-Star games as a member of the New York Knicks, died Wednesday of natural causes. He was 82.

Braun died in Florida, the team said. He is the second former Knicks star to die in a week. Hall of Famer Dick McGuire, Braun’s teammate, passed away Feb. 3.

“Carl Braun was the first superstar of the New York Knicks and a cornerstone of our franchise’s early success,” team president Donnie Walsh said in a statement. “Watching him play at the old Garden was a privilege for us New Yorkers in the 1940s and ’50s. He is a true legend in our sport and he will be missed.”

Braun was an All-Star from 1953 to 1957 — he missed the 1956 game because of injury — and retired as the team’s career scoring leader with 10,449 points. He’s still in fifth place on the career list behind Patrick Ewing, Walt Frazier, Willis Reed and Allan Houston.

“As a young New York Knicks fan in the ’50s, I spent hours trying to emulate Carl’s patented over-the-head shot,” NBA commissioner David Stern said. “Carl was one of the NBA’s early great shooters, an All-Star fixture on those Knicks teams and, most importantly, a great friend to all who knew him.”

Born on Sept. 25, 1927, in Brooklyn, Braun also spent two seasons as the Knicks’ player/coach before ending his career in 1961-62 with the NBA champion Boston Celtics.

Braun is survived by his wife, Joan, four daughters and six grandchildren.

Lee is averaging 20 points and 11.4 rebounds and becomes the Knicks’ first All-Star since Allan Houston and Latrell Sprewell in 2001. Stern chose Lee over Milwaukee center Andrew Bogut, who is averaging 16.0 points and 10.2 rebounds and has helped lead the Bucks to within a game of a playoff spot in the East.

Many do think that Bogut could be the second best official “center” in the East (I use quotes ‘cuz like Chris Bosh wants to be called a power forward, much like Tim Duncan always has, but he should be considered a center).  However, Bogut started off the season slow and injured and has only come on recently.  Surely, David Lee’s consistent excellence (particularly in the face of such adversity as the Knicks have gone through) makes him a much easier choice.

I’m actually shocked that Atlanta’s Josh Smith wasn’t chosen (or even mentioned in that article).  The growth in Smith’s game (along with the addition of former Knick Jamal Crawford) has been widely heralded as the reason why the Hawks have made the jump from slightly above average to potential contender.  My guess is that since there are already two Hawks on the All-Star Team (which wrongly includes their center Al Horford), that’s part of the reason Smoove got the shaft.  Plus, Stern loves the major market of New York, so the potential of getting all those fans interested seems like a pretty strong pull too.  And again, that major market is another huge plus in Lee’s favor over Milwaukee’s Bogut.  Anyway, one thing’s for certain: initial reports that Stern only chose Lee because they have the same first name have proven to be false.

Congrats, big guy.

Clusters of spectators occupy sections in every arena, waving Israeli flags, chanting his name, pleading for an autograph, a high-five, or even a glance.

These past few days in particular have been a blur of activity: Pregame and postgame chats with a throng of fans Sunday in Toronto; a post-practice gathering Monday at Madison Square Garden with members of the media, including several Israeli television and print journalists; a private audience with Commissioner David Stern in his Olympic tower office hours later; a reception sponsored by the Israeli Consul General in the early evening and, finally, tonight’s long anticipated Kings-Knicks matchup that is being marketed as Jewish Heritage Night.

A Jewish acappella group sang the National Anthem

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