By nishtha toshniwal | February 25, 2014 0 Comments

Net Worth: $135 Million

Career/Profession: NBA Commissioner

David Joel Stern is a professional Basketball commissioner and an American Lawyer who has a net worth of about $135 million. He is an eminent personality who is known for increasing the popularity of Basketball during the course of his career. He is basically known as National Basketball Association Commissioner. During his 30 year course he put his soul to convert basketball into a profit engine. He is responsible for making this game popular over the whole world and creating a global sensation amongst the people.

Life begins:

Stern belongs to a Jewish family and was born on September 2, 1942 in New York. He attended Teaneck High School in New Jersey. He was admitted tom Rutgers University for higher studies in History and there he became the member of fraternity Sigma Delta in 1960. Later on, he enrolled himself in Columbia Law School to practice and pursue law as his profession.

David Stern is married to Dianne Bock Stern. He has two sons and the family resides in Scarsdale, New York.

Back to Back Promotion:

He firstly started his career in Basketball as an outsider counsellor in 1960 in Proskauer Rose for National Basketball Association (NBA). He then became NBA’s General Counsel in 1978. Due to his talent and capability he got promoted to the position of Executive Vice-President of NBA in 1980. In mid 1980’s he was selected as the Commissioner of the NBA.

Appealing Decisions:

During his course of time two unexpected decisions regarding NBA players were taken:

• Firstly drug testing was made compulsory for all the team players periodically. When the team was headed by Larry many players were drug addicted and this addiction affected their gaming capabilities and decreases the graph of NBA’s popularity. This step taken by Stern showed the efforts they are putting to deal with the drug addiction problem.
• Secondly, he introduced salary cap that was basically undertaken to deal with salary inequalities among players and owners. He planned to distribute the team’s revenue among players and owners both.

These decisions helped him to solidify his position in the NBA Circles.

Expanding NBA:

In 1984, he finally attained the respectable position i.e. NBA Commissioner. The period of 1984-1985 was the most historical one as many other superstars of basketball such as Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon and John Stockton joined the league. The entry of Michael took the NBA to a new level and they joined hands with Nike which led team to get more attention. Till 2004, Stern expanded the league to Canada and also joined with 10 to 30 franchises. This was all due to the great management of the league. Stern is responsible for establishing the Women Basketball Association (WNBA). For expanding this game across the world various activities were undertaken like training camps, playing exhibition games or hiring international players. Stern helped NBA to set up 11 offices in several cities and this is televised in about 215 countries in different languages. Earlier there was no internet access so whole play was telecasted over the tape. David made $23 million during his course, as Commissioner of NBA. He holds this position till 1^st February, 2014.

In 1982, total revenue that NBA earned was $118 million. Instead of this league did not have labor peace as there were four NBA lockouts during his tenure i.e. 1995, 1996, 1998, and 2011. The league joined with seven world class franchises during Stern’s reign and they are The Hornets, Timberwolves, Heat, Grizzlies, Magic, Bobcats and Raptors. He also set up 16 online destinations in International market. During his tenure, the league played about 150 international preseason games and regular games outside North America. He launched several digital assets, several official websites like NBA.com,, WNBA.com etc and mobile applications too. These sites seemed to have millions of viewers each day.

Programs launched By Stern:

Stern’s is not only professional sportsperson rather he is a socially responsible man. Under his reign, the league launched various social programs and NBA care countries whose aim was to address various social issues across the United States and also across the other part of the world. NBA care centers supported various communities by launching a youth serving programs which tend to create awareness among youth, family development and focuses mainly on education and health, drugs usage, child labour, poverty or HIV/AIDA awareness.

Achievements:

The Stern was awarded with W.E.B Du Bois Medal in 2013 by Harvard University for maintaining the dignity of African and American culture. He was the recipient of the Yale Legend in Leadership Award for being a successful businessman and setting up ventures in different sectors. He is also amongst one of the trustees of Columbia University. He is also one of the members of committee of Foreign Relations.

Controversies:

The stern had always been the centre of multiple controversies. Recently in 2012, a heated controversy between Stern and host Jim Rome surprised the country where the question asked in his interview was regarding the lottery draft and the reply given by Stern was somewhat unexpected.

In 2011, an open meeting held for All-Star games in Los Angeles, which was between players and owners. At this meeting Stern made some unlikely statements which astonished all the members who were there in the meeting. This led to player lockout for five months.