David Stern

• 1. Introduction

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  David Joel Stern was born on the 22nd of September 1942 in Manhattan, and he died on the 1st of January 2020 - New Year's Day - after a brain hemorrhage he suffered just weeks before. Those two dates bracket one of the most consequential careers in the history of professional sport. By the time Stern stepped down as NBA commissioner in 2014, after exactly 30 years in the role, he had presided over a league that broadcast to over 200 territories in more than 40 languages. The man who took over a league described as being in its darkest period left behind a global enterprise with 30 franchises, a women's league, a development league, and a digital footprint that included NBA.com, NBA TV, and NBA League Pass.

  How did a kid from Teaneck, New Jersey, who idolized a player named Carl Braun and attended Knicks games with his father at Madison Square Garden, end up reshaping the way the world watches basketball? And what did it cost along the way - in battles with players, in controversies over relocations, in accusations that cut to the bone? Those are the questions this documentary will answer.

• 2. A Lawyer's Foundation

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  After graduating from Teaneck High School in 1959, Stern studied history at Rutgers University, where he joined the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity and earned his degree in 1963. He then went to Columbia Law School and received his J.D. in 1966 - the same year he began his association with the NBA, initially as an outside attorney at the firm of Proskauer, Rose, Goetz and Mendelsohn.

  His most significant early case was Robertson v. National Basketball Association, a landmark lawsuit filed by star player Oscar Robertson. Stern was the lead attorney for the firm on that matter. The settlement he helped negotiate allowed the NBA and ABA to merge, in exchange for abolishing the so-called option clause in player contracts and allowing players to become free agents for the first time. That outcome reshaped the balance of power in professional basketball.

  By 1978, Stern left the firm to join the league directly as its general counsel under Commissioner Larry O'Brien. Two years later, O'Brien promoted him to executive vice president for business and legal affairs, making him the de facto head of marketing, television, and public relations. In that role, he drove two agreements that would define his reputation inside the league: a drug testing policy and a salary cap. An August 1980 report by the Los Angeles Times had estimated that between 40 and 75 percent of NBA players used cocaine. The drug testing policy was the first of its kind among major North American sports leagues. The salary cap, meanwhile, gave players 53 percent of all revenues, making owners and players effective partners in the league's finances.

• 3. Stars, Shoes, and the Dream Team

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  On the 1st of February 1984, Stern became the NBA's fourth commissioner, taking over during what observers called the league's darkest period. His first strategic shift was a change in marketing philosophy: rather than promoting teams, he promoted individuals. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were already forces in the league. The 1984 NBA draft, held soon after Stern took office, brought Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley into the fold.

  Jordan's arrival, in particular, opened a new commercial era. His Nike shoe contracts brought national attention to the league in ways that traditional advertising had not. Stern understood that the league's stars were its product, and he structured the NBA's public identity around that insight.

  For international growth, Stern moved with unusual directness. In his first year as commissioner, he offered Argentine television analyst Adrian Paenza and Argentina's Channel 9 the rights to air weekly NBA highlights for two thousand dollars a year. In 1987, he began shipping VHS tapes from his New York office to China's state-run television station. He also pushed for NBA players to compete in international tournaments, a campaign that contributed to the formation of the 1992 United States Olympic basketball team, known as the Dream Team, which became the catalyst for the first wave of international players entering the NBA.

  One of the Dream Team's members was Magic Johnson, who a year before the 1992 Games had announced at a press conference - with Stern seated beside him - that he was HIV-positive and retiring from basketball. The public climate around HIV at the time was one of fear and stigma; some people believed the virus could be transmitted through sweat or a handshake. Stern, having read medical literature and consulted specialists, allowed Johnson to play in the 1992 NBA All-Star Game and then for the Dream Team. The NBA also put new infection-control procedures in place, ending a prior practice that had allowed players to continue on the court while bleeding.

• 4. Expansion and Hard Choices

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  In 1995, the NBA moved into Canada for the first time, adding the Toronto Raptors and the Vancouver Grizzlies. During Stern's full tenure, seven new franchises entered the league - the Hornets, Timberwolves, Heat, Magic, Grizzlies, Raptors, and Bobcats - bringing the total to 30 teams by 2004.

  Expansion brought more complexity, and Stern showed he was willing to use the commissioner's authority with force. In 2000, it emerged that the Minnesota Timberwolves had secretly promised player Joe Smith a more lucrative future contract in exchange for signing below market value in the present. Stern abided by arbitrator Kenneth Dam's ruling, voiding the final year of Smith's contract, fining the franchise $3.5 million, and stripping the team of its next three first-round draft picks - one of the harshest punishments in league history at the time.

  The dress code Stern announced before the 2005-06 season generated some of the most charged debate of his tenure. The policy banned headphones, chains, sleeveless shirts, T-shirts, indoor sunglasses, and other items during NBA-related public appearances. Allen Iverson criticized the policy directly: "They're targeting guys who dress like me, guys who dress hip-hop... I think they went way overboard." A decade later, observers credited Stern's policy with helping push NBA players toward a high-fashion aesthetic that became a defining cultural trend.

  The one-and-done rule followed in the 2006 NBA draft, requiring players to be at least 19 years old before they could be selected, ending the path from high school directly to the pros. Stern had framed the policy in 2001 by saying that players gaining more maturity, coaching, and life experience was beneficial. Critics objected to his reference to 18-year-old adults, most of them African American, as "these kids", pointing out that no equivalent restriction applied to young people entering other professions or sports.

• 5. Controversies That Defined His Legacy

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  In the 2006-07 season, the NBA replaced the leather ball that had been in use since 1970 with a new microfiber version. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban supported the switch, arguing the old ball was inconsistent. Players did not agree. Shaquille O'Neal described the new ball as feeling like "one of those cheap balls that you buy at the toy store." A study financed by Cuban found that the new ball bounced between 5 and 8 percent lower than leather balls when dropped from four feet and bounced 30 percent more erratically. Stern initially held firm against reversal. Two months into the season, the National Basketball Players Association filed a formal grievance, citing the ball's quality and the cuts it was causing on players' fingers. On the 11th of December 2006, Stern acknowledged the league could have done better and announced the NBA would return to the leather ball starting the 1st of January 2007.

  In 2007, Stern became entangled in the relocation of the Seattle SuperSonics, a franchise moved by its new Oklahoma ownership group from the nation's 14th-largest market to the 45th. His support for the move drew sustained criticism. His tenure overall saw six NBA franchises relocate.

  The 2011 lockout, which cost the league regular-season games for only the second time ever - the first was the 1998-99 lockout - drew the sharpest personal attack of his career. HBO commentator Bryant Gumbel accused Stern of acting like "some kind of modern-day plantation overseer", framing the charge around the racial dynamics between the league's predominantly white ownership and its predominantly Black player base. That December, Stern vetoed a three-team trade that would have sent Chris Paul to the Lakers, Lamar Odom to the league-owned New Orleans Hornets, and Pau Gasol to the Houston Rockets. The league's ownership of one of the teams in the deal created an obvious conflict of interest, and the reaction from players, journalists, and fans was almost uniformly negative, with players turning to Twitter to voice their objections publicly.

• 6. The End of an Era

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  On the 25th of October 2012, Stern announced that he would step down on the 1st of February 2014 - exactly 30 years after he had taken the job, longer than each of his three predecessors. At the time of his retirement, he held the record as the longest-tenured commissioner in the history of major North American sports leagues, though that record has since been surpassed.

  His deputy, Adam Silver, succeeded him. Stern remained connected to the league with the title of commissioner emeritus. In 2012, he received the Olympic Order. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2014 and into the FIBA Hall of Fame in 2016.

  Outside basketball, Stern served on the Rutgers University Board of Overseers, was a director of Jazz at Lincoln Center and chair of its Marketing Committee, and held the title of Chair Emeritus of the Columbia University Board of Trustees. He was also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In his later years as commissioner, his annual salary stood at nine million dollars. He and his wife Dianne lived in Scarsdale, New York, and had two sons, Eric and Andrew.

  On the 12th of December 2019, Stern suffered a brain hemorrhage and underwent emergency surgery. He died in Manhattan on the 1st of January 2020, at 77. Every NBA team wore black jersey bands for the rest of the 2019-20 season. LeBron James, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Kobe Bryant were among those who publicly mourned him. Bryant, who had played the entirety of his career under Stern, died 25 days later.