|
It's also worth noting that Jordan's had a tremendous amount of influence on Tiger Woods, who also has a body that's closer to a football player than a golfers and has significant issues with his own temper to the point of roid rage freakouts on national television. In short, Jordan hasn't just destroyed the game of basketball but golf as well.
|
#
¿
May 5, 2013 19:33
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 03:53 |
|
|
There's an interesting story about Tim Glover and Jordan's influence in the Bulls locker room, but it requires a bit of setup. Illicit drug use in professional sports is practically mandatory, to the point where it could be called an epidemic. Weed is the primary offender, followed by prescription painkillers and steroids, followed to a much smaller degree by opiates and harder stuff. The major leagues either don't test or don't punish for weed, because they feel it's not a performance enhancer slash just about everyone is on it so there's no real competitive advantage, and it's not addictive like prescription pills are. It's part of the reason they don't want an outside agency doing their testing because they'd have just about everyone piss hot and it'd look bad even though weed's a non-starter these days outside of Republican campaigns. But the basic, unwritten/unspoken agreement because the leagues and players is "smoke up to deal with the pain, but stay away from pills and the harder stuff." Needless to say, the players don't always listen. Weed/pills/steroids is obviously highest among the NFL, followed by pills with NHL players, though Ovechkin is said to be as addicted to weed as a person could be. NBA has weed/steroids with a small contingent of pills, and MLB is mostly uppers and downers due to the length of the schedule, with the other stuff mixed it. But I digress. Every locker room has someone, either called a bagman or a runner or some term, who's job it is to supply the players with whatever substances they need to perform on a regular basis. The only rules is that it's never brought up in the open locker room, where media/cameras could pick up on that stuff (remember all of the hubbub about McGwire and andro during his '98 season?), it's never mentioned to the higher-ups even though they're aware (see no evil, basically), you charge everyone the same rate and don't try and create a market (this last one will be important later). The role usually falls on someone in the training staff/team doctor; we all saw that Deadspin story about the Chargers doctor being a quack, the players love him because he'll give them whatever they need to deal with their pain, and if you're gonna go after him you need to go after the other 31 doctors in the NFL and everyone else who's using a prescription pad to get access to famous athletes and pad their wallets. You want a trainer or someone who has access to these drugs without raising a lot of questions and will be a constant in the locker room, as opposed to a player or a coach who could be gone at any time. Sometimes there's exceptions, such as Jerome Simpson with the Bengals and getting weed FedEx'd to him a couple of years ago, but that's an exception that proves the rule. Tim Grover was Jordan's personal trainer and as such had access to the Bulls' locker room. Jordan quickly let it be known that if anyone was going to get anything, it was going to be through Grover, and such Grover became the Bulls' bagman. Grover mostly dealt with pills and steroids, since NBA players have their own crews and someone in that crew is responsible for getting weed or whatever else. This was fine with everyone, and Grover continued in that role even after Jordan retired to play baseball. But things got interesting once the Bulls traded for Dennis Rodman. Rodman was fine with the Pistons, where he looked at Chuck Daly as a father figure, but really fell apart when Daly was fired (to the point of sitting in the Pistons' parking lot with a shotgun in his lap, and that's not a joke), and was traded to San Antonio. There's Rodman began acting up and getting heavily involved in drugs, to the point where the Spurs needed someone to keep an eye on him. They assigned Jack Haley, a little used backup center to be Rodman's wingman on the road, and the two of them got along well enough. But Rodman clashed heavily with Bob Hill and David Robinson (one of the few players who did not smoke or do drugs), and was dealt with Chicago. Rodman's agent (he went through so many I have no clue who it was at this time) let it be known to the Bulls that Rodman needed someone with him at all times, and so the Bulls signed Haley for the minimum and placed him on injured reserve. Haley's job was to get Rodman to the games (and practice as much as possible) on time and in condition to play, with the latter more important than the former. It was also important that Haley keep Rodman out of handcuffs and out of newspaper headlines, and his unspoken role was to get Rodman whatever substances he needed as long as Rodman stayed in the starting lineup. And for the most part he did that. Haley had his own supplier of stuff from his time in San Antonio, and since what he got Rodman didn't clash with what Grover was supplying to the Bulls, the arrangement was fine. Jordan didn't like that Rodman didn't take the game as seriously as he did and wasn't always in best of condition/present as practice, but Rodman was the only other member of the Bulls who played as hard as Jordan did night in and night out, so Jordan gave Rodman his begrudging respect (about as high an honor as Jordan gave anyone, with few exceptions). However, Haley was looking to pad his bankroll a little bit, so he started dealing weed to other Bulls players and eventually steroids, undercutting Grover. As you might expect, this broke the unwritten rule of not creating a market, and also underminded Jordan's absolute authority and rule, and Jordan's ego was as big at this point as it ever was in his career. Jordan went to Jerry Reindsdorf (he hated Jerry Krause with a passion after Charles Oakley was dealt) and wanted Haley released. Reinsdorf refused, on the grounds that Haley was the only thing keeping Rodman in line. It's rumored that Jordan tried to have Haley ran off the road or intimidated into leaving town, but Haley never got the message. So Jordan had to take matters into his own hands. Being on injured reserve, Haley wasn't allowed to practice with the team (and he wasn't signed to play so why bother), and as such got out of shape. Jordan constantly mocked Haley for his condition, and one day Haley was alone lifting weights in the Bulls locker room while Rodman was sleeping in the trainers room. Jordan came in, saw Haley lifting by himself, and decided to deliver his message himself. While Haley was in the middle of a bench press set, Jordan picked up a 100-pound dumbbell and dropped it on Haley's stomach. Haley dropped his weights on his chest, nearly killing himself, and as he struggled Jordan screamed in Haley's face to get the gently caress out of his locker room and never come back, and walked away. Locker room omerta meant that Haley was never gonna go to the police over it, but the Bulls and Jordan ended up paying Haley a tidy sum in hush money. Haley stayed out of the locker room and kept out of Jordan's sight as much as possible, to the point where Rodman and Haley traveled separately from the team when possible. But after the '95-96 season, where the Bulls won an NBA record 72 games and Jordan's fourth title, Haley was released. The Bulls used a rotating cast of people to try and keep Rodman in line, with the most success coming with Luc Longley off all people, who didn't require much sleep and had a BDSM-streak that dwarfed The Worm's. And Jordan's absolute rule was reestablished in the locker room. There's more, but I'll tell those stories later. e- fixed spelling/grammar. C. Everett Koop fucked around with this message at 03:59 on May 7, 2013 |
|
#
¿
May 5, 2013 22:42
|
|
|
Sorry, I have to, er, "protect my sources" on stuff like that. Yeah. Cough cough. But here's another story about Jordan's time with the Wizards, and while there's plenty of stuff to hit on I'll stick with the general overview of it. After Jordan retired, in part because the Bulls barely held together in their second threepeat, in part because of the lockout, he wanted to either coach or be in the front office. No one wanted Jordan to coach because his style was always more stick than carrot, if you get what I mean (and if you don't read just about any story about Jordan and his teammates). The Bulls and Hornets offered him token positions, where he'd be more of a figurehead and a community relations leader. Jordan didn't want that, thinking he could run a team. No one really bit for a while, so enter David Stern. The Bullets/Wizards had been down for several years in the late 90's despite having the main two of the Fab 5 in Chris Webber and Juwan Howard. But Webber pouted his way to a trade to Sacramento and the team couldn't gel, finishing in the basement in the '99 strike year. Needing anything to give that franchise a kick, Stern pitched to owner Abe Pollin of having Jordan run his team, in return the Wizards would get the number one pick in the draft (that's another story, but Stern's used the draft as leverage for years to get what he wants, that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone). Jordan agreed and Pollin sold a small percentage of the team to Jordan as a sign of good faith. Jordan, as we all know by now, was terrible as a GM, repeatedly going into practices and the locker room to curse out players he didn't think were trying hard enough or good enough to be on his team. He got sick enough of Juwan Howard moping around to do that blockbuster trade with Dallas, just to prove a point that Jordan would deal anyone at anytime, even though he lost just about every personnel move he made. It also led to Jordan still thinking he was better than anyone on his team, and that he could still play the game. Abe Pollin agreed, on the basis that 41 home games of Jordan was exactly what he needed to make some money off the team. Part of his comeback (which was to be announced on 9/11, obviously got shifted to the back burner and led to Jordan donating all of his modest salary to charity, which is part of Jordan/Nike's PR mastery and might be the only decent part of this story) involved Jordan having to sell back the portion of his ownership to Abe Pollin, who said that he'd resell after Jordan retired again. Jordan retained control over all personnel matters, hiring Doug Collins as his coach and shifting the roster around to his whims. Part of that included what to do with the #1 overall pick. Jordan's scouting mostly consisted of playing pickup games with handpicked players, I can't remember exactly but I believe those who played were Kwame Brown, Tyson Chandler, Eddy Curry, Eddie Griffin, Rodney White, and Richard Jefferson. He didn't work out Pau Gasol because Jordan still thought Euro players were soft, he didn't work out Shane Battier because Duke, and he didn't work out Joe Johnson or Jason Richardson because they were 2 guards and Jordan didn't want to waste the pick on his position. Brown played the best, as Curry and Chandler were both incomplete big men and the other three didn't impress Jordan, who wanted a big man with his pick. And so Jordan made Kwame Brown the #1 pick in the 2011 NBA Draft. Brown, like everyone else did in those games, played his heart out to impress Jordan, who had been a childhood idol. But Brown had always been the best athlete as he rose up the ranks and never learned how to work hard, which quickly became evident once he joined the team. Had Jordan been willing to nurture Brown he could have made something of his talent, but because Jordan broke down his teammates to prove that he was the alpha dog, Brown didn't know how to react, and once Jordan soured on Brown, it was all over. It came to a quick head midway through the 2001-2002 season, where Jordan and Brown had some incidental contact during a drill. Jordan grabbed Brown and slammed him onto the court, and proceeded to unleash a torrent of profane insults on the rookie. Collins and a couple other veterans, I know Popeye Jones and Hubert Davis for sure, also joined in and dogcussed the rookie out of the gym. Instead of using the abuse as motivation, Brown sunk into a depression and his career really never recovered. Even after turning more of the roster over and getting his guys in, like Jerry Stackhouse and close friend Charles Oakley, Jordan grew tired of the team and what he felt were overpayed, underperforming players who were profiting greatly off of the work that guys like he, Magic and Bird put in. He retired after two years, of which the only memorable public moments were Mariah Carey's dress at the All-Star Game and the Nike ad where he played himself (and there's a story about the shooting of that ad I need to tell at some point here). True to their agreement, Jordan sat down with Pollin and wanted to buy back his share of the team for the same price as before. Pollin, now with leverage and with a franchise that was worth more thanks to the two years of home sellouts, changed the deal, saying Jordan's shares were going to cost more and that Jordan wasn't going to have personnel control over the team, seeing how bad a job he had done in that regard before. An incensed Jordan cursed out Pollin and said that once Pollin died, Jordan was going to piss on his grave, and left D.C. David Stern was brought in to mediate but neither side was interested in reconciliation, and Jordan stayed away from the league for several years. He came back in with the Bobcats as he bought a minority share and had personnel control, used his option of first refusal when Johnson wanted to sell, and is now the majority figurehead of the organization. As for Pollin, he died in 2009, and there's a rumor that in his personal collection, Jordan has a photo of him pulling a Calvin on Pollin's grave. He'll never admit it unless you're in inner, inner circle, and no one would admit to taking the photo as long as Jordan still breathes.
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2013 19:10
|
|
|
Diddie posted:Tales of Jordan being an overcompetitive rear end in a top hat never get old. Well, here's one that never fails to blow everyone's mind when it gets told. I'm sure I'm not the first to put it out there either, but if you've ever wondered the lengths Michael Jordan would go to humiliate someone and prove that he was the best, here's one small step down that path. Before his second and final season with the Wizard, Jordan was pitched an ad idea by Gatorade that had him playing a younger version of himself, which Jordan signed off on. The spot, entitled 23 vs. 39 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL6pYmybB9Y), was a technological marvel at the time, using face-mapping technology to make a younger Jordan for the current MJ to ball again. The face wasn't the hard part, it was finding the rest of the body. They needed a 6'-6" black male, slender build with some muscle, who could play basketball to a respectable degree but wasn't already in the league or in college (even with the different face the NCAA wouldn't allow an athlete of theirs in a commercial unless they were the ones profiting off of it), and who would be available to shoot a commercial around Jordan's schedule. In the end they found Kevin "Special K" Daley, who had played for Azusa Pacific University and was kicking around the lower levels. Daley was brought in, made up, and went through several of Jordan's dunks to serve as B-roll and a test for the cameras and lights. As Daley dunked, Jordan and Grover, along with a small entourage for Jordan, entered the gym. Jordan saw a guy wearing his jersey, doing his dunks, and was not happy. However, he was professional at first, and they shot the staredown stuff, then a couple of staged baskets. The director wanted the two to be even, so he had older Jordan make a play, followed by the younger one. Wanting to use nat sound, he encouraged some mild trash talk, and after Daley made his scripted shot and mildly taunted Jordan, that flipped the switch. Jordan grabbed the ball, slammed it down on the court, and said they were playing one-on-one for real. And keeping score. Everyone panicked. The director said that the cameras had to be moved for each planned shot, Jordan told him to move them after each game. His entourage called David Falk, who basically gave Jordan carte blanche to do what he wanted. The Gatorade execs were concerned about Jordan hurting himself but they weren't about to say no. And Daley was going to get a chance to go one-on-one with his idol from him growing up. He shouldn't have. Once the games started, Jordan beat the living poo poo out of this kid. Daley went to drive, the bigger Jordan physically bullied and bumped him, hacking away whenever Daley tried to take a weak jumper. Daley tried to get an outside game going, but Jordan called him a coward and physically bodied up on him. On offense, Jordan did whatever he wanted as Daley bit on every fake and Jordan played him like a fiddle. And talked trash. Oh did he ever talk trash. Jordan was already known for being one of the best trash talkers in the game, but surrounded by cameras, mics, and high rollers in expensive courtside seats, he kept it mostly PG-13. But in a closed environment with someone he felt was disrespecting him (of course Jordan did), he unloaded on Daley with both barrels and kept it up. Crew members, who are no strangers to salty language, said it was a verbal beatdown they had never seen before. Every other word out of Jordan's mouth was either "motherfucker" or "human being", and Jordan never let up. They played about six or seven games and Jordan easily won them all, Daley scoring maybe six or seven points total and getting shutout several times. As they moved the cameras, Jordan would ask questions of Daley, only to insult and curse him out upon hearing the answer. After Daley stopped responding, Jordan increased the heat even more. Towards the end, he tried to rip the Bulls jersey off of Daley's back, saying that Daley didn't deserve to be wearing it. No one dared to do anything lest Michael's steroid-enhanced wrath be directed towards them. Finally, once the director said he had all the shots he needed, Jordan grabbed the ball, autographed it, and then threw it to the other end of the gym, screaming at Daley to go chase it down and get the gently caress out of his motherfucking gym. The problem was that they weren't done. The director had all the action shots he needed, but they still needed to do the sitdown at the end where the UNC Jordan showed up. Jordan iced down courtside, still steaming, still letting everyone know who was king. When it was time to shoot, Jordan plopped into his seat, but no one could find Daley. It took them 15 minutes before they found Daley sobbing in his car and brought him in to shoot the final scene. Daley sat down, the lights went on, Jordan flashed that charm, the director yelled cut, and Jordan told Daley to get the gently caress out of his gym again, which Daley did. The good news is that Daley wasn't permanently scared off of basketball; he's been with the Globetrotters since '04. Gatorade, however, destroyed most of the footage and has only used videotape of Jordan for their promotions since.
|
|
#
¿
May 7, 2013 18:14
|
|
|
The B_36 posted:Laettner was not a bust. If we're going to have this thread, we should try to stay away from blatantly obvious untruths like your Laettner comment, and stick to the obvious truths, namely that Michael Jordan was a huge steroid cheater. When Jordan acquired Laettner for the Wizards, he did turn Christian into an alcoholic and that pretty much ended his career, FWIW.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2013 16:37
|
|
|
ChampRamp posted:
It's why everyone on the '92 Dream Team didn't want to be the leading scorer, and it's how Barkley ended up being the leading scorer of the Dream loving Team. MJ was hiding from the piss tests back then too.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2013 16:58
|
|
New Proof
|
So it's been a while since we've had a good, completely truthful Jordan story. Today's will be about Michael's greatest foe. Not Bird/Magic/Kobe, not male pattern baldness, not a backdoor slider, not even the gamblers he got himself into debt with. The one person Michael Jordan hates more than anyone else in this world is former Chicago Bulls General Manager Jerry Krause. All because Krause had the audacity to build a team around Jordan and help Jordan win his six rings. Krause was a former basketball scout and current baseball scout, noted for discovering Earl Monroe and Phil Jackson and developing a good relationship with the future coach, when Jerry Reinsdorf, who owned both the Bulls and the White Sox (for whom Krause was scouting for at the time), hired Krause to run the Bulls front office. Krause was tasked with building a team around Jordan, who was seen as a great scorer and a hell of an athlete, but not a leader or someone who was capable of winning a title. It was still a big man's league, with Houston's twin towers of Ralph Sampson and (H)Akeem Olajuwon excepted to dominate against Magic's Lakers and Bird's Celtics, and Patrick Ewing's Knicks were expected to contend as well. So as part of his first draft, Krause looked to add size. Even though Jordan wanted Duke guard Johnny Dawkins, who gave Jordan fits in college when the two competed (and for Jordan to be complimentary of a Duke player was rare, though Jordan doesn't hate Duke as much as he hates NC State), and the organization went as far as to tell Coach K that Dawkins was their pick, Krause swerved everyone and took Ohio State forward Brad Sellers. Sellers was an all-Big Ten forward his senior year, averaging just under 20 points and 13 rebounds a game. His strength was a versatile mid-range game, which would allow the Bulls to stretch the floor and pull the Ewings away from the basket, which would give Jordan more room to operate. If Sellers lived up to his potential, he would be a solid complimentary piece to Jordan and help move the Bulls up the ladder. Jordan, as we would all expect by this point, was livid. He wasn't close to the status he is now or was at his peak, but the Bulls were unquestionably his team and Jordan was growing used to getting his way. Krause drafting Sellers over Dawkins, especially after the Bulls had been committed to the latter pick, is what immediately soured Jordan on the portly GM. Michael would make it his mission to destroy Sellers in practice, throwing elbow after cheapshot elbow into Seller's kidneys and doing everything possible to make Sellers' life a living hell. He would pull Seller's bags off of team buses and planes, instruct room service to ring Seller's room at all hours of the night, and do everything short of planting drugs on Sellers to let him know that he was not welcome. Sellers never lived up to his potential and was ultimately made expendable when Krause later drafted Horace Grant, who might be the only person to come out of Clemson that doesn't completely poo poo the bed when faced with a high-pressure moment. Jordan and Krause had a rocky relationship from that point on, but there was one more trade that would put Krause permanently on Jordan's shitlist. The Detroit Pistons started their rise in the later 80's, as Bird's Celtics were beginning the downside of their arc. They were one of the few teams that could reliably hold Jordan in check, utilizing their "beat the everloving poo poo out of him" defense. The Bulls' counter to that was Charles Oakley, a mean motherfucker who acted as the equivalent of a hockey enforcer and was Jordan's closest friend on the team. But neither Oakley nor Sellers could reliably defend a franchise center like Ewing, and Krause looked to shore that gap by adding Bill Cartwright, a center playing out of position on the Knicks due to Ewing manning the middle. Cartwright wasn't as great a rebounder as Oakley was and had a reputation (undeserved, btw) as being soft, but he could score when called upon and was capable of locking down scoring centers, which is what the Bulls needed. When the Oakley/Cartwright trade happened, Jordan and Oakley were in Vegas to see a Mike Tyson fight when they found out about the trade on television. Jordan reportedly smashed a VIP area in anger and needed Oakley to run interference on the casino guards to keep Michael from going to jail. The two flew back to Chicago, so Oakley could pack his gear and keep Michael from killing Krause when Jordan saw him. But Oakley was gone, and no one else was going to protect Krause from his bully. As mean as Jordan was to Sellers, he was ten times that to Krause. In public, he would take potshots at Krause, with little snippets to the media here and there. In private, it was significantly worse. It was reported that Jordan called Krause "crumbs," after seeing Krause with powered donut on his face. The reality is, of course, far worse. The old Chicago Stadium didn't have the on-site training facilities that today's modern arenas have, so the Bulls had to train in a separate gym. Nutrition wasn't as thought of back then, so a spread would consist of breakfast carbs and pastries. One day, Krause was enjoying a donut from the spread when Michael saw him taking from the player's food. Incensed, Jordan tried to forcefeed the entire box of donuts down Krause's throat, calling him "crumbs" among every other profane name in the book. That wasn't the only poor behavior Jordan displayed against Krause. In addition to demanding that Reinsdorf fire Krause on untold occasions (Reindsdorf, one of the few people in position to tell Jordan no and live to tell that tale, never budged, having faith in his hiring decisions), Jordan would bully and haze Krause whenever possible. Krause would be on the phone in his office when Jordan would come in and shove all of Krause's stuff off the desk. If Krause was at a urinal, Jordan would come along side and urinate on Krause. On more than one occasion, Krause would be eating in the hotel lobby when Jordan would come spit in his food, letting "crumbs" know that he needed to lose some weight. (That led Krause to start eating all his meals in private, even when Jordan wasn't in the same hemisphere, and gave way to a severe weight disorder Krause fights to this day.) Krause did himself no favors with an aloof attitude and disdain towards others in the Bulls' and league offices. A great relationship with Phil Jackson sparked by Krause scouting Jackson led to hiring Jackson as coach, which led to the Bulls' six titles. But the two of them had a falling out and Jackson won't speak Krause's name to this day. Even Krause and Reinsdorf ended on bad terms, with the two barely speaking to each other outside of professional capacity towards the end of Krause's term. In the end, the Bulls won six titles, even as everything collapsed during the sixth title run in '97-'98. Krause blew up the team, with Jackson retiring, Pippen being traded to the Houston Rockets, a number of younger players being brought in, and Jordan retiring for the second time. Jordan would ask Reinsdorf one final time to fire Krause and hire him as GM, which Reinsdorf would once more refuse. And thus Jordan's time with the Chicago Bulls was over. While he's never gone on record, it's widely assumed that the reason Jordan wanted to go into an NBA front office was to show Jerry Krause that it was Jordan, and Jordan alone, who won those six NBA titles. It wasn't due to Krause trading for Bill Cartwright and Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman, wasn't due to drafting Horace Grant or hiring Phil Jackson or convincing Toni Kukoc to play in the U.S. It was all because of number 23, and Jordan was going to show Krause just how easy it was to for Michael Jordan to build a championship team. As we've all seen, Jordan's failed magnificently in this regard. Through his time with the Bullets and Bobcats, Jordan's ineptness as an executive is widely documented. Oddly enough, for a player who was legendary for his work ethic matching his boundless talent, Jordan has never shown a willingness to put in the work necessary, as opposed to Krause who enjoys sitting in the stands with a notepad and pen. To this day Krause serves as a baseball scout, seeing more games in a month than Jordan watches in a year. In the end, Michael Jordan's greatest foe was a short, fat man who's greatest crime was making Jordan the legend he is today. And if that doesn't speak to Michael's character, nothing will. C. Everett Koop fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Oct 25, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Oct 25, 2013 18:12
|
|
|
This isn't a Jordan story (there's more coming when I have the time), but with David Stern stepping down as NBA Commissioner I wanted to tell a quick story about him, and believe me when I say there's as many Stern stories as there are Jordan stories, just that David Stern was smart enough to stay out of the limelight. If you ever go to a cocktail party or any type of gathering, you'll understand that there are four different types of people. The most common are just regular joes, nothing special or out of the ordinary. After that you'll get people who think they're the smartest ones in the room but really aren't, we've all met those. Less common after that are the people who are the smartest ones in the room but are either too humble or self-doubting to believe it; I've met many academic types who were like this. The least common is when someone is the smartest person in the room and everyone knows it, especially them. I've been to far too many gatherings to count and in the latter category there are two men that are unquestionably king: Bill Clinton and David Stern. First, you have to understand that being the commissioner of a professional sports league is like being the hired babysitter of a group of elementary-age children, expect you've been hired by the children themselves. You've got to somehow figure out a way to represent a group of people who are very much used to have their own way all the time, and at times convince them that certain acts that go against their own self-interests aren't just best for the league, but best for them in the long run. Stern knew early on that getting the big teams in his corner was going to be key, and so he reached out to New York and Los Angeles. Jerry Buss had bought the Lakers in 1979, the same year Magic Johnson just happened to come on board, and was as stable as stable could be. Jerry was also dedicated to the long-term vision of expanding the league's market footprint, knowing that Magic was a license to print money. New York was a different story; they were owned by Gulf & Western at the time Stern took over and had a number of different presidents during Stern tenure with the NBA prior to becoming Commissioner. Jack Krumpe was in charge in '84 when Stern asked what it would take to get New York in his corner; Krumpe said "Get me Ewing and I'll vote for whatever you want." Needless to say, that wasn't the last time Stern would manipulate the Draft for political means. You might be asking why Stern wouldn't go for Boston, the league's most decorated team and still at their peak in the mid '80s. The reason is that Boston's ownership had been a rotating door; from '78 when Stern first joined the NBA until he took over in '84, seven different men had majority ownership claims for the Celtics. There was no point in getting Boston in your corner when the person you were buttering up might not be the same person at the next owner's meeting. To date no one has owned the Celtics for more than 14 years, current ownership is at 12 and counting. There's plenty more to say, but Stern saw early on that Owners squabbles always boiled down to money, with the little guys wanting more and the big guys not wanting to share it. If Stern could ally with the big moneymakers but convince them to share, everyone could win. And so was the story of David Stern's NBA. Sorry this is pretty sleaze-free, Stern kept his nose clean when it came to that TMZ stuff. But when it comes to power, man's a modern-day emperor. That's where the stories are.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 2, 2014 08:22
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 03:53 |
|
|
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."
|
|
#
¿
Mar 13, 2014 18:15
|
|
