In 1984, when David Stern took over as commissioner of the National Basketball Association, there were only 23 teams in the league. The NBA was the second smallest league in terms of teams as Stern took helm; the NHL had 21 teams, Major League Baseball had 26 teams and the NFL had 28 teams.
As I mentioned before, Stern--with the new budding star power in Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan--was able to help the NBA grow its television presence through the '80s and into the '90s. Eventually he took the popularity of the game and expanded into Miami, Orlando, Charlotte, Minnesota, Vancouver (eventually Memphis) and Toronto. There were a handful of relocations, but we'll get to that on Friday.
Looking at the size of the markets, it's almost amazing that Miami didn't have an NBA team until 1988. Stern oversaw this growth within the North American borders with the league growing to 30 teams, the same size as MLB and NHL (the NFL is now 32 teams).
Very few games were played internationally; the Washington Bullets played only four, to be exact, before 1980. In the 1984 preseason David Stern scheduled the New Jersey Nets, Phoenix Suns and our beloved Seattle Supersonics to go to Europe to play 12 games against various International Basketball Federation (FIBA) teams. Then there wasn't another international game played until 1987, but slowly the games began to pick up speed.
What was the event that triggered this, though? What made David Stern realize that the NBA could compete with soccer as the world's sport?
In 1989, FIBA head, Boris Stankovic, approached Stern about letting NBA players play in the Olympics for the first time. Up until this point the United States only sent college/amateur players to the Olympics. The world wanted to see the best, though; they wanted to see Jordan, Bird, Magic and the rest. This wasn't Stern's idea, but he didn't stand in the way either.
During the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, the Dream Team took the world by storm. Many heralded this as the greatest basketball tournament of all time, despite the Dream Team winning by an average of almost 44 points throughout the tournament and winning the gold medal over Croatia by 32.
Without the Dream Team and Stern's blessing of letting pros play in the Olympics, we might not have seen stars like Dirk Nowitzki, Tony Parker or Manu Ginobili. Those three were just kids in 1992 during the Olympics and credit the Dream Team for starting their love of basketball. We'd have a markedly different league right now.
After the '92 Olympics, Stern continued to push the game internationally. Eventually regular season games started being played overseas. How could we forget Halloween 2003 when Rashard Lewis dropped 50 points on the Clippers in Japan? Then of course this past year the Nets played the Hawks at the O2 Arena in London, and even more regular season games are planned for overseas in the coming years.
Other major American sports like football and baseball haven't taken off internationally the way basketball has. Outside soccer (youth through professional), there isn't another sport that rivals it like basketball does in league numbers around the world. All because David Stern made sure to push his stars into the European and Japanese markets, and capitalized on the Chinese market with Yao Ming and so forth.
Despite what you might think of the man himself, you can't deny that with his shrewd moves and persistent push into other markets, David Stern has made basketball the sport of the modern world.
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Comments
"David Stern has made basketball the sport of the modern world"
Do you think it has supplanted soccer worldwide? I still have difficulty at times watching a full match…unless it’s a World Cup final type game..no doubt it is probably bigger in markets like China…now with Randadive, look out Cricket..
By VoxMediaUser704744 on 01.30.14 1:19pm
No. And not even close.
And I cannot see the day that anything ever does. Futbol is in its own category.
By MrCLM on 01.30.14 1:54pm
Again. . .
. . .the only way basketball probably doesn’t become a global sport is if Stern was a Bavasi-esque bafoon as commish.
It’s really that simple.
Good riddance to him.
By Tommy_G on 01.30.14 9:35pm
Yeah, I tend to look more at how it already peaked in the American sports landscape, and is now possibly permanently behind auto racing and college football
NASCAR.
Maybe it’s not fair, but I view the inability to stay ahead as the sports landscape diversified toward the end of the 20th century to be a massive failure of leadership. The sport I love deserves better.
Harris Interactive: The Most Popular American Sports
By smb282 on 01.30.14 10:34pm
I'm not sure what your trying to say here
It sounds like you are trying to say basketball is the number two sport in the world (pretty sure it isn’t) and baseball most definitely is popular in Asia.
By bukuma on 01.30.14 2:30pm
Basketball
If I recall, b-ball is the fastest growing sport in the world, with a popularity second only to football/soccer.
By Matt Tucker on 01.30.14 3:09pm
The Super Bowl is on more channels worldwide than the NBA Finals.
By evilchameleon on 01.30.14 3:10pm
That's because they've built it into an event.
American football has far less fans around the globe than basketball, and certainly far less global interest in play.
By Matt Tucker on 01.30.14 3:13pm
Actually, technically
Cricket has more players and people following it than basketball, but cricket’s reach is not anywhere near as global as either soccer or basketball.
Baseball is top 5.
By Matt Tucker on 01.30.14 3:12pm
That was my thought as well, it is hugely popular in India and parts of the middle east
Along with its European roots.
By bukuma on 01.30.14 5:04pm
By Paul Rogers on 01.30.14 3:08pm
The resebmlences
between Pinky and the Brain and Silver and Stern, both physically and characteristically, are uncanny.
By Eric E on 01.30.14 6:30pm
David Stern David Stern David Stern blah blah blah
By Catherine Boland on 01.30.14 6:09pm
David Stern is out in 2 days
Good riddance.
By Ultrasonics on 01.30.14 8:10pm
Just listened to an interview of Mark Cuban on Mike & Mike
a few things he said worth noting:
1. NBA franchise values will head over the billion dollar mark thanks to the CBA and the new TV Contract (Knicks and Lakers of course already through that mark).
2. Before the CBA many teams were losing money (I think this is open to interpretation — most posted income before depreciation and amortization). Interest expense I think is also open to interpretation in a lot of these teams.
3. Lots of praise for David Stern, says he made basketball into the 2nd most popular sport in the world because it was so easy to understand and cheap to set-up (hmm, those $500 million arenas don’t seem so cheap to me). I’ll also give Naismith the credit for basketball being a popular sport everyone loves to play.
4. Says thanks to David Stern everyone can recognize and name a player on the Knicks bench yet wouldn’t be able to identify Richard Sherman (I laughed a bit at this — a little exaggeration).
5. Said he agreed with David Stern 99% of the time on league matters, disagreed with him 100% of the time on officiating matters.
Anyway, lots of exuberance from Cuban on the financial strength of the league.
By Catherine Boland on 01.31.14 6:42am
Thanks catdawg2 for passing this along
By SonicsUberAlles on 01.31.14 10:07am