Quotes About David Stern

#1. David Stern should get with the mothers of the NBA and let the moms decide what the dress code should be. I asked my mother if I could wear a chain, and she told me yeah. So I do stuff that my parents allow me to do.

Shaquille O'Neal

#2. David Stern might be the smartest executive in the history of professional sports. His obsession with the Vagrant Kings is one of the strangest stories.

R.E. Graswich

#3. What I find fascinating ... you have to give David Stern and the NBA a lot of credit ... ESPN pays the league, and then the league tells them what to do. It's more ESPN's problem. You gotta have no balls whatsoever to pay someone hundreds of millions of dollars and let them run your business.

Stan Van Gundy

#4. We can never thank David Stern enough. His vision to use basketball to improve the quality of our lives to make this world a better and saner place, that guy, is the most important man in the history of basketball.

Bill Walton

#5. You do not want to make this guy mad. You see him sitting there all cool and calm, but underneath, he's thinking, he's plotting. I'm telling you, it's not normal. He's like Michael from 'The Godfather.' - Kevin Johnson on David Stern

R.E. Graswich

#6. I don't blame David Stern because a player gets on the court and he doesn't put out competitively. No one can make you play if you don't want to play.

Oscar Robertson

#7. I think that David Stern is probably the greatest commissioner that any sport has ever had in the history of this country.

Bill Russell

#8. I remember draft night, I shook David Stern's hand while rocking a red suit with white pinstripes and red gators I've always been a trendsetter.

Jalen Rose

#9. It's easy to be a spokesman and ambassador for a great organization like the NBA. I thank Commissioner David Stern for putting that trust in me to serve the NBA around the globe.

Dikembe Mutombo

#10. The stern hand of fate has scourged us to an elevation where we can see the great everlasting things which matter for a nation - the great peaks we had forgotten, of Honor, Duty, Patriotism, and clad in glittering white, the great pinnacle of Sacrifice pointing like a rugged finger to Heaven.

David Lloyd George

#11. I'm not big on looking back beyond the moment in which decisions and events occur. I'm always pushing forward.

David Stern

#12. I actually don't hope for a legacy. I think that it impedes your ability to make the hard decisions if you sit around saying, 'How will this affect my legacy?'

David Stern

#13. Our officials want nothing more than to be at the top of their professional game and make the correct call. That's what they do; that's their living, that's their pride, that's their joy. They don't achieve that because they happen to be human.

David Stern

#14. It was the Michael Jordan/Nike phenomenon that really let people see that athletes were OK, and black athletes were OK. Defying a previous wisdom - not only that black athletes wouldn't sell in white America, but that the NBA as a predominantly black sport could not sell in white America.

David Stern

#15. We will maintain heading until he's committed, then I want a hard
skew-turn to starboard. As hard as you can make it, Chief. I want our starboard broadside on him as he passes below us, and then I want to cut down across his stern and stick it right up his kilt. Clear? (Honor Harrington)

David Weber

#16. We couldn't get enough Jeremy Lin material in the NBA store fast enough. And when we did, it was just gone in minutes.

David Stern

#17. Everyone said that the NBA could not possibly make it because it had too many black players.

David Stern

#18. With every day that goes by, there will be further reductions on what's left of the season

David Stern

#19. I regret the 1998 - 99 lockout. I regret that we didn't work harder to educate our players and our owners about what the damage would be. I never can quite come up with the answer on what else we should have done, but I always blame a part of the problem on us and some part on the players.

David Stern

#20. I would say the league is viable as long as you have owners who want to continue funding losses. But it's not on the long term a sustainable business model that we're happy to be supporting. It needs to be reset.

David Stern

#21. I wrestled with my Catholicism for a long time. It took a long time to escape. It began with a sense that it was repressive, stern, judgmental. It was passionate, but it was terrifying. There were individual priests and nuns who were helpful, but the religion was cold.

David Rabe

#22. I believe that everyone should participate in democracy and enjoy doing it.

David Stern

#23. Believers are expected to be involved in what Judaism calls tikkun-ha'olam, repairing the world. Tikkun-ha'olam is deeply embedded in the Jewish ethic; for this reason even secular Jews usually find themselves concerned with bettering society.

David H. Stern

#24. I think that players play, and they compete, and it's not about incentives.

David Stern

#25. I love my job. I come every day having a ball.

David Stern

#26. Why are the people all so unhappy?" he asked Mister Wolf. "They have a stern and demanding God," Wolf replied. "Which God is that?" Garion asked. "Money," Wolf said.

David Eddings

#27. I'm persuaded that sports is the one place where the rules are pretty well set out, where fans are equal. And if you got game or you're a good official, you make it here, whether you're white or you're black.

David Stern

#28. Follow your dreams and make the most of every experience.

David Stern

#29. We have a broad array of teams. And if somebody asked me whether a team is a good buy, my response is, 'You'd better hurry up, they're going like hot cakes, and they're going to be even more valuable when we get a system that is even more sustainable.'

David Stern

#30. You walk into the playgrounds in Shanghai and Beijing, and you see youngsters who are shorter, shaking and baking and having attitude. And Jeremy Lin is going to inspire all of them.

David Stern

#31. I think it's ... I don't want to become a social crusader on this issue, but I think sports, male sports, has traditionally not been an inviting environment for gay men to identify themselves. But eventually ... we will get to a place where it is not an issue in sports.

David Stern

#32. I would say the referees have the toughest game to call. I would say that there's a lot of officiating done by announcers, local announcers. Sometimes you should listen to a game from both feeds, and you'd think you were listening to completely different games.

David Stern

#33. I'm aware that the World Cup is probably the greatest spectacle in the world of sport, and that's despite the referees that have been found to have fixed games specifically.

David Stern

#34. I'm not into politics.

David Stern

#35. I've never found NBA owners to be deferential. I never considered them to be reliant. All that I do is knock myself out to represent their interests the best way I can and sometimes tell them, as part of my job, what they don't like to hear.

David Stern

#36. Smart drafting is a wonderful thing. A smart free-agent signing is a wonderful thing. Smart trades are a wonderful thing, and that's a function of management.

David Stern

#37. Everyone knows that if you can keep on making money, everyone's happy.

David Stern

#38. I think anyone who doesn't say that they'd like people to think that they're doing the right thing is wrong. I mean, I'd like it to be that way, but I've never allowed it to influence my actions.

David Stern

#39. I grew up in an age where women's tennis did not have similar prizes to men, and they played in complete obscurity, really, compared to the men's game.

David Stern

#40. By nature, I'm a person who always says that whatever I've done, I could've done better. But I don't dwell on it because I'm waiting for the next time something happens and try to believe that my past experience will have helped to educate me in terms of how I deal with future ones.

David Stern

#41. My own basketball background was ripping up my ACL in a lawyer's league.

David Stern

#42. We need a system where all of our teams have the opportunity to compete and to make a few dollars. That's not a bad desire for collective bargaining for a sports league, and it's great for our fans.

David Stern

#43. All I can say is you don't know what's going to be on the front page of tomorrow's newspaper. So I take no joy in what happens to another sport, whether it's about a perfect game or an issue of conduct.

David Stern

#44. I'm working hard to see whether there can be basketball next year.

David Stern

#45. Try to let what is unfair teach you ... what is unfair can be a stern but invaluable teacher ... you can be shaped, or you can be broken. There is not much in between. Try to learn. Be coachable. Try to learn from everybody, especially those who fail. This is hard.

David Foster Wallace

#46. Free speech is against governments, not against the NBA. So the players and coaches and indeed owners have been fined for their speech, which is costly rather than free. I sort of acknowledge that there is not free speech when you agree to work in the NBA.

David Stern