Davis Stern is an ****.

[carlos1223]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV4QLK0HnOc.

[Sweezo]

OMG does that piss me off...

[KingInExile]

Hey, Stern has never met an opinion that he wouldn't be willing to abandon for a few million dollars. I seriously think it is time for him to leave the league.

[SonicYouth34]

David Stern=

[BigSkyBlazerFan]

The NBA wear turning your back on a historic franchise happens

[jenn_gp]

The city wanted to play this during the trial, that's why Mitch Levy was on the list to take the stand.

Unfortunately, they didn't request it in time.

[PDXKnight]

What a joke of a commissioner! He's so full of BS it isn't funny. If he truly cared about basketball, he'd actually work to save a franchise like the Sonics, but instead, decides to move your team to the east coast (as if they don't have enough teams on the EC anyways ). Thanks for the I-5 rivalry, we had some great times! Hopefully it'll be back eventually!

[KennerLeaguer]

What a joke of a commissioner! He's so full of BS it isn't funny. If he truly cared about basketball, he'd actually work to save a franchise like the Sonics, but instead, decides to move your team to the east coast (as if they don't have enough teams on the EC anyways ). Thanks for the I-5 rivalry, we had some great times! Hopefully it'll be back eventually!

Seriously when did Oklahoma become part of the East Coast?

[Bulltalk]

What a joke of a commissioner! He's so full of BS it isn't funny. If he truly cared about basketball, he'd actually work to save a franchise like the Sonics, but instead, decides to move your team to the east coast (as if they don't have enough teams on the EC anyways ). Thanks for the I-5 rivalry, we had some great times! Hopefully it'll be back eventually!

In the end, this was just a bad business move by Stern. He orchestrated a team's move out of the 15 largest metropolitan region in the country into the 44th largest metropolitian region. LOL Just look at the teams in the bottom 4 metropolitan regions in the NBA, Memphis, Salt Lake City, New Orleans, and now Oklahoma City. Of these 4, 2 of them are economically suffering franchises, and one of them, Salt Lake City, is almost a miracle of success.

Meanwhile, Stern has left such a bad taste in the mouths of Seattleites, we well might have lost any momentum to steal another franchise from another NBA city, probably one of the 2 franchises in one of these bottom 4 metropolitian regions by population, Memphis or New Orleans.

What an effing joke.

[Sweezo]

From this point forward...what can Stern be expected to accomplish as a commish? Hasn't the league taken a few steps back in his last few years at the top? I don't see the NBA as being as big a draw as it once was, scandals abound, and there seems to be little stability with franchises anymore. Very little of the publicity the league has received the past few years can be considered positive...and no one can truly believe that expanding the league into having franchsies in foreign markets is a good move right now, can they?

[jenn_gp]

^No but over the past year we've also discussed how it makes ZERO sense economically to move the Sonics out of the 14th largest market to the 45th, which actually happened.

I don't know how the NBA has plans to make it to China or Europe in the future...if they continue to follow this path of moving larger market teams to smaller cities, they are headed down a long and difficult road.

Which I would find absolute joy in right now.

[Sweezo]

As would I...

[DoctorEvil]

I'd say f_@K Stern, but it looks like the mayor already had a three way with him and Bennett-the-OCKsucker. What could Nichols have been thinking to spread so wide for those two??????

[Bulltalk]

From this point forward...what can Stern be expected to accomplish as a commish? Hasn't the league taken a few steps back in his last few years at the top? I don't see the NBA as being as big a draw as it once was, scandals abound, and there seems to be little stability with franchises anymore. Very little of the publicity the league has received the past few years can be considered positive...and no one can truly believe that expanding the league into having franchsies in foreign markets is a good move right now, can they?

I don't have a clue. But orchestrating this move out of Seattle was certainly a step in the wrong direction from a business standpoint, especially considering that Seattle is somewhat of a gateway city to the orient, and, by my research, the moving of a franchise 29 cities down the ladder in terms of metropolitan population.

Basketball is a weird sport. It's such a star driven sport, and one in which the idea of parity is very difficult to achieve. On the one hand, the NBA seems dependent upon a few glamorous franchises to keep interest up beyond the mere interest of the "homies" for their teams. On the other hand, so many teams can become locked into mediocrity or worse for the longest time without any reasonable hope for title contention that fan interest is always in danger of waning, especially as the cost of being a fan rises to almost ridiculous proportions.

Obviously cost control has got to be near the top of the agenda for Stern. It seems that too much pressure is being put upon cities to sustain their current economic model. Do you have to build a new stadium every 10 years to survive? LOL

I don't know. I don't even know what an international NBA would look like. Can you imagine the travel time for the Knicks to play Beijing?