Does David Stern Have Any Ulterior Motives in Lobbying for Olympics Age Limit?
If you had your TV tuned in to ABC during halftime of Game 3 of the NBA Finals between the Miami Heat and the Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday night, you probably caught commissioner David Stern, his scent aflutter with "Eau de Smug," talking about the "deliciousness" and "delightfulness" of conspiracies.
All without giving Michael Wilbon the Jim Rome treatment.
At one point in the interview (skip to 4:30 in the video below), Stern addressed an issue that he broached with ESPN's Colin Cowherd back in May—an age limit on NBA players participating in the Olympics:
Stern's argument (here, at least) for restricting Olympic participation to players aged 23 years or younger is two-pronged:
1. The NBA has already accomplished its goal of globalizing basketball that drove the assembly of the Dream Team in 1992, and needn't concern itself with using the Summer Games as a showcase anymore.
2. The additional stress that comes with competing internationally manifests itself as an issue of player safety and well-being, as "best" exemplified by the mounting costs of keeping Zydrunas Ilgauskas healthy in Lithuania.
Right. Because a guy who nearly locked the players out for an entire season to squeeze their salaries is suddenly concerned about their well-being for its own sake.
All the while, Stern adeptly sidestepped another factor that would seem to be the greater motivator and at which Wilbon hinted by mentioning "pushback domestically:"
The NBA's owners, whose interests Stern is paid to look after.
More specifically, the wealthy men who pay the salaries of the rich men who partake in international play (for free, mind you) don't want to see their precious investments eroded, particularly in competitions that don't directly fatten their own wallets.
Which, distrust of the "One Percent" aside, is rather justifiable. International basketball doesn't have nearly the same impact on the world of hoops that international soccer has on its own; the best basketball players don't build their brands on the global stage, and NBA owners don't reap any residual rewards by "buying" players who do.
Though fans of Ricky Rubio and the Minnesota Timberwolves might beg to differ.
In any case, for Stern and his constituents, the Olympics nowadays represent little more than another opportunity for their players to injure themselves or expend energy that might otherwise be spent improving the fortunes of their NBA clubs. It's bad enough that franchise cornerstones like Derrick Rose and Dwight Howard can be incapacitated by domestic play. Why bother putting them at further risk abroad, where the bottom line remains thousands of miles away?
What's more, sending established superstars like Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Chris Paul to the Olympics does little to expand their respective footprints—and, by extension, that of the NBA—among the worldwide audience that the league is always trying to reach.
Sending young, up-and-coming stars to do the dirty work internationally, though, might prove more advantageous for The Association as a whole. Just look back at the American squad that won gold at the 2010 FIBA World Championship in Turkey. That edition of Team USA featured Kevin Durant, the one-time scoring champ; Derrick Rose, the not-yet MVP; and Kevin Love and Russell Westbrook, the not-yet-All-Stars.
Of course, succeeding overseas wasn't the only factor that led these guys to bigger and better things back home, though that first taste of the spotlight overseas might reasonably have given each of them an extra shot of confidence to hasten the rise to domestic superstardom that was just around the corner.
All the while giving the rest of the planet a glimpse at the new faces they should tune in to see play in the NBA, where their employers would better be able to realize the value of their dollars spent.
In a way, then, Stern's latest Olympic aspirations are related to player welfare, albeit indirectly. His job is to grow the NBA, as both a sports league and a commercial enterprise. To do so, he'd want to minimize risk to his league's most valuable assets (the star players), at least with regard to participation in non-NBA games, while promoting the next generation and expanding his organization's global reach.
And, if the league's popularity grows and revenues improve as a result, then the salary cap will rise and all of the NBA's players will realize the benefits on the first and the 15th of each month.
At least, that's the sort of trickle-down economic model that Stern and company might push behind closed doors, while offering another set of justifications to FIBA and the International Olympic Committee.
Like Stern, long the master manipulator, did while talking with Wilbon. Because, unlike the players he oversees, Stern doesn't do "pro bono" work.
