Donald Sterns - A Guy With Too Much Power

Just as I was about to post my blog, I get word that Chris Paul has been traded to the Clippers (I will get into that trade in a later post).  Instead of scrapping the whole knock on David Stern post, I will continue with it…

You may have heard, David Stern (we will call him Donald Sterns because that epitomizes him lately).  Just like Menino (read: Mumbles) butchering his name Donald has butchered this NBA season or lack there of an NBA season so far.  He has been on such a power trip lately and has outstayed his welcome as commissioner for a long time now.  In my eyes, a commissioner, just like a lot of CEOs and the President should sign contracts and after the contract is over he should be gone.  Bring in some new hungry guy who wants to think outside the box and be creative as a commissioner.  I won’t bore you with all the details, but before and now even after the lockout, the NBA needs a major reform.

I will give Dan’s sport (hockey) a lot of credit for what they did in their lockout (minus the whole missing a full season thing).  But, they got it right.  They have a hard salary cap, lower salaries and short contracts.  Guess what?  Their star players don’t usually leave for Hollywood or South Beach to play with their buddies.  That’s something that needs to change.  What happened to developing your own talent and drafting well?  But the absolute worst thing that the NBA has is the sign and trade.  Say you are Eric Gordon after this season, you are free agent but don’t want to play in New Orleans.  You can demand going somewhere else, sign with New Orleans and get traded for pennies on the dollar.  Oh, what’s that Donald? You will get rid of these after 2014, how about now?  Now we have Chris Paul demanding out of New Orleans, Dwight Howard demanding out of Orlando.  Last year we had the Carmelo saga, who is the next to try to go Hollywood or another warm destination (John Wall is that you?)

Let’s get into the real reason I am writing this post.  Donald and the rest of the 29 other owners own the New Orleans Hornets.  Wait, what’s that?  I’ll repeat that in case you missed it.  Donald Sterns and his 29 other owner buddies own one of the team.  Talk about a conflict of interest.  So their biggest asset, Chris Paul, sees this lack of direction with his team and he immediately wants out.  He got traded to the Lakers Clippers because of this.  Oh, you caught that Lakers thing?  So Hornets’ GM Dell Demps was given authority to trade whoever he wanted for whatever he wanted, just like any GM can do.  So he made a deal with the Lakers to get a solid nucleus of Lamar Odom, Kevin Martin and Luis Scola plus a couple draft picks.  The deal was agreed on by the 3 teams involved, and then Donald vetoed it.  YES, HE VETOED A TRADE THAT MADE PERFECT SENSE FOR EVERYONE INVOLVED.  You know why?  Because the lockout happened in part because players were leaving small markets for bigger markets (read: Lakers, Heat, Knicks).  So not only did you get another great comic sans rant from Dan Gilbert but Donald decided what better time than this to show everyone who is boss.  Talk about a power trip.

In the words of Scott Van Pelt “If you are Dell Demps, don’t you just show up to work, play some words with friends and drink heavily?”  Why did he waste everyone’s time by saying Demps had all the power if he really didn’t??

Can’t we as NBA fans vote our incompetent commissioner out of office?  Don’t the guys paying for all this, us the fans get any say?  Where are the checks and balances in this league?  Who checks Donald’s power?  Donald, let me be another in a long line of people saying you don’t belong as the commissioner anymore.

-The Boss

Posted in: Matt,NBA