From the New York Times:
In a Transition Game, David Stern Is Passing the N.B.A. Commissioner’s Hat to Adam Silver
By HARVEY ARATON
David Stern stepped into a conference room through a side door from his office. He carried a can of soda and a small plate of tortilla chips.
“My lunch,” he said on a recent weekday afternoon as he settled in to be interviewed jointly with Adam Silver, who will succeed him Saturday as N.B.A. commissioner.
... Stern, 71, was, in the 1970s, a rising star at the New York law firm Proskauer Rose, which provided legal counsel to the N.B.A. and created a way inside the sport he followed growing up across the Hudson River from Manhattan in Teaneck, N.J.
Silver, 51, spent much of his youth in Rye, north of New York City, the son of a Proskauer partner. ...
After graduating from the University of Chicago Law School, Silver seemed to be following in the legal footsteps of his father. “I loved basketball, but I never dreamed about playing in the N.B.A. or certainly working for the N.B.A.,” he said.
The credentials and connections couldn’t have hurt after he wrote a letter to Stern seeking career advice. Silver joined the league in 1992 as Stern’s special assistant and subsequently became chief of staff, the senior vice president of N.B.A. Entertainment, and the deputy commissioner when Russ Granik left that position in 2006.
“We’ve been working intensely close for 22 years,” Stern said. “I’ve been giving him advice and he’s been giving me advice for over two decades. It depended upon the owners ultimately, but I thought he was the logical successor.”
Such is the rebuttal to the social media chatter about the commissioner’s office being too New York-centric, or even too Jewish. Support for Silver, according to league insiders, was widespread. ...
On average, as Bryant Gumbel has suggested, NBA team owners aren't exactly all that different demographically from Stern and his protege Silver.
But when Stern said, “We think alike about a lot of things — not just about basketball, but about life,” he was stressing a more essential point that N.B.A. owners seemed to grasp.
Indeed.
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24 comments:
Same kind of diversity as the Fed.
"small plate of tortilla chips": non-black Hispanic?...
Pic of Ezra Klein & Matt Yglesias talking to the staff of Vox Media.
Think I see a Black guy in the background, lol.
https://twitter.com/clockwerks/status/427859193563869184
Passing the buck to Yellen
Passing the ball to Silver
Mark Cuban's grandparents changed their name from Chablinski when arriving from Russia to avoid pograms.
Pic of Ezra Klein & Matt Yglesias talking to the staff of Vox Media.
Shouldn't it be called Lox Media?
The MLB and NHL commissioners are Jewish as well.
Chua and Rubenstein's triple package.
That linked article about Bryant Gumbel is funny. Here are some good quotes:
Wright generally include the phony narrative about Jews being slave-traders (the traders were, in fact, mostly Muslims) and slave-owners.
Maybe we can help assuage some of our white guilt with this news.
And here’s a tip, Bryant: Stern and other Jews built the NBA into what it is so that the mostly Black players could command contracts worth not just tens, but now hundreds, of millions. Without Stern and other Jews, most of these Black NBA players would be, instead, selling crack on Eight Mile, rather than living in mansions and driving Bentleys.
Wow, I can't believe she could get away with writing that.
David Stern is hoping to get his name in that leaflet, "Famous Jewish Sports Legends."
This isn't the same Steve Sailer who wanted wealthy Jews to get involved in college/professional sports is it?
Time for cultural ju-jitsu. Demand "diversity" in the Commissioner's job, i.e. Black.
Do this particularly in the NBA and NFL. Which constantly promote "diversity" in coaching but not in things that matter -- like Commissioners who can make or break a league.
Personally, I think oh I dunno, Ron Artest or Allan Iverson would make a much better street-oriented "diverse" commissioner in the NBA than this guy Silver. And given how much money "diversity" makes, why not demand the NBA make Ron or Allan the next Commissioner? After all, wouldn't you want a diverse commissioner instead of a boring White Jewish lawyer?
Alinksy -- make them live by their own rules.
Overheard some Jewish talk radio host say:
"What the NFL needs is the Rooneystein Rule. Every head coaching vacancy, at least one Jewish person should be interviewed. Because owning the team just isn't enough anymore!"
anony-mouse said...
This isn't the same Steve Sailer who wanted wealthy Jews to get involved in college/professional sports is it?
It's the same Steve Sailer who suggested they do that instead of getting involved with Israel and US foreign policy. You do understand the concept of a trade, don't you?
About as diverse as the NY Times, and even more kosher!
If I were rich and dying of cancer I´d sue the hell out of all these liberal phonies for discrimination, disparate impact and all-out racism, if necessary.
Merit. Merit. Merit. Merit. Merit. Merit. Merit. David Stern is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I have met in my life. Merit. Merit. Merit.
I, for one, welcome our new Hebraic . . .oh the hell with it, I need some coffee.
i deliberately don't post about this, because steve blocks those kind of posts. so now it's ok?
last time i did check, 14 out of 30 NBA owners were jewish, the highest out of any league. it may have fluctuated up or down by 1 or 2 owners since then.
"The MLB and NHL commissioners are Jewish as well."
as is the MLS commissioner.
it's all based on merit, of course. negative jewish stereotypes DO NOT APPLY here, we live in a meritocracy now.
end sarcasm. back in the real world, only the NFL has resisted deliberate jewish takeover. but you do occasionally hear them discussing moron ideas, like making condoleezza rice commissioner. as if the rooney rule wasn't bad enough.
i suppose they did settle for putting rice on the NCAA football committee. why not. she apparently 'likes football'. that seems good enough to me. doesn't that qualify everybody to run an organization? heck, i like sexy models. been watching them for years. shouldn't playboy put me on their executive board?
If Jews were as nepotistic as you imply, there would be at least some Jewish players in the NBA - surely there are a few Jews on college teams or in the Israeli league good enough to sit bench in the NBA?
You do understand the concept of a trade, don't you?
That's gonna leave a mark.
If Jews were as nepotistic as you imply, there would be at least some Jewish players in the NBA
Israelis Gal Mekel and Omri Moshe Casspi are Jewish.
Jordan Farmar is generally considered Jewish. His father is black, but he was raised by his Jewish mother and his Israeli stepfather; he was bar mitzvahed; and he considers himself a Jew.
Great, the guy who ruined the NBA and basketball in general picked a younger version of himself to be his successor. I'm sure he knows to cherry pick company guy refs to officiate deciding games in the playoffs where the league's marquee franchise is playing in elimination games. Does anyone over the age of 25 even watch the NBA who isn't in NYC, LA, or Miami? Basketball has the opposite problem of baseball, In MLB, the fan base is aging, in the NBA it never ages, people lose interest after high school or college because they realize the certain teams and players get preferential treatment in the playoffs and therefore the postseason is a farce.
"Great, the guy who ruined the NBA and basketball in general picked a younger version of himself to be his successor. I'm sure he knows to cherry pick company guy refs to officiate deciding games in the playoffs where the league's marquee franchise is playing in elimination games."
I've heard this for years, but it doesn't explain why San Antonio, one of the smallest markets in professional sports, was "allowed" to win four NBA titles. Or why even-smaller Oklahoma City was allowed to take the Supersonics from Seattle.
San Antonio was able to pay the Danegeld to get into the NBA, which other, more basketball-mad ABA markets like Virginia, Carolina, Kentucky, Memphis and Utah couldn't. There's a survivor's depth in that franchise that's lasted. Hence the trophies.
Seattle brought the Stanley Cup to the US for the first time. They belong in the NHL, not the NBA. but in the '60s and '70s, the NBA preferred growth markets-- Seattle, Portland, Phoenix, Houston-- to hooptowns.
Seems fitting to me, given the long history of Jewish involvement in basketball, from Abe Saperstein, founder and long-time coach of the Harlem Globetrotters through Arnold "Red" Auerbach, the greatest operator in NBA history, to the Jews running the league today.
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