In the days since the death of former NBA commissioner David Stern, tributes have been pouring in as the sports world remembers the man who transformed the NBA into the powerful international presence it is today.
Stern died Wednesday as a result of a brain hemorrhage.
His impact on the sporting world extends far beyond the basketball court. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman joined Lead Off on Friday morning and shared his thoughts on his longtime friend and mentor.
“David’s loss is profound, it’s tragic. In addition to being my mentor, he was a good friend for four decades. It’s almost incomprehensible,” said Bettman, whose career as a sports executive began in the NBA under Stern.
Bettman, who issued a statement via the NHL upon the news of Stern’s passing on Wednesday, said Stern’s legacy is one of great vision and immense growth throughout the sports landscape.
“I think his legacy is someone who was enormously intelligent, had great vision, had incredible energy, and transformed the way that the sports industry — and particularly sports leagues — conducted themselves both in terms of how to accentuate their strengths, how to make sure that the business and the game were performing as they should, trying to grow, and making sure that fans were connecting with the sport that they rooted for in the best possible way,” he said.
Under Stern, the NBA ushered in a new era of super stars, social activism, expansion and international success and set a new standard for how leagues operate.
“David was a perfectionist and whatever he did, he did everything across the board and did things that nobody had ever thought of, whether it was the health of the game or the marketing of the game, whether it was international expansion, whether or not it was social activism. He was the leader in all of those things, going back to the early ’80s,” Bettman said. “But he was a perfectionist and I guarantee you, as he looked back, he always saw things that he thought he could do better. One of his mantras was, you don’t just do what you did, you don’t get into a routine. What you do is you try to improve every day on everything you’ve done — and that’s how he functioned. It was never just one thing, it was everything mattered — execution and detail, the small things mattered, and he always was committed to doing more and more to get it righter and righter.”
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