Please Fix The NBA!

David Stern has been commissioner of the NBA now for almost 30 years. During his tenure, I have learned to despise his leadership. Despite the public image he has as the person who saved the league and brought it to all time heights in the 1980’s and 1990’s, I think he is power and money hungry. He does not care about the players. He does not care about competitive balance. He definitely does not care about the fans. He wants money, power and respect and will do just about anything to achieve all of the above.

Of course the thing that bothers me most as a small market sports fan is competitive balance of which the NBA has absolutely none. Since Mr. Stern has taken office, there have been a mere eight teams in the NBA that have won a championship.

Eight!

Out of 30.

And of course those eight do not include Sacramento, Utah and New Orleans. No. Those eight include Chicago, the second biggest city in the U.S.; Los Angeles, the third largest city in the country; Houston, San Antonio and Dallas which all place in the top ten. And then there is Boston, Detroit and Miami which are all in the top half of the thirty NBA teams in city size. That means that the bottom half of the league in market size has zero championships since David Stern took charge.

Zero!

Can you imagine what the odds of that are? I wish I could have placed all I owned on that bet 30 years ago. Of course I was eight years old, so that would not have been much. But my goodness. Now, I am not convinced necessarily that David Stern is rigging draft lotteries and has all NBA referees throwing games, but he has definitely stacked the deck against the small market teams. And he has made no effort to help these teams.

Why? Simple. Money.

That is why I am extremely excited that the NBA has gone into lock out mode. Initially, I was hoping that they would not only miss this season but 2012-13 as well. But the more I thought about it, that’s not what I’m hoping for. I’m hoping that this competitive balance problem can be fixed. Can the fifteen owners of these teams step up to the plate and stand up to Mr. Stern and do something about this please? The only other shot we have is that Stern steps down from the position. And he won’t do that until he is exposed as the terrible commissioner that he has been the past 30 years.