Wednesday, February 5, 2014

The NBA

            David Stern finally retired as commissioner of the NBA. I can't think of anybody who's done more harm to the game of basketball than him. The NBA would like you to believe that basketball didn't exist until David Stern came along. But, basketball did exist and it was much more exciting to watch before the Stern era. Those were the days before flagrant fouls, one, two and three, defensive three seconds, delay of game calls, (which only delay the game) break away fouls, three officials, ticky-tack calls on almost every play, the days when getting position to rebound wasn't a crime, when fighting was part of the game, when players could show emotion and not get a technical foul for it, when the NBA was more in line with real basketball, the game people love to play, not the phony version of what was. What's worse, are all the suck-up reporters, radio personalities and players that praise the job David Stern did. The popular misconception is that David Stern broadened the scope of basketball and made it a global sport. It was already a global sport, lest we forget the debacle during the 1972 Munich Olympics between the United States and the Soviet Union.