The Sports Guy

I'm not sure how many of you read The Sports Guy at espn.com, but he had a great article today. It was an interview that he had with NBA commissioner David Stern. I will syndicate a little of it here, and link to it at the bottom:

Bill Simmons: You know I've advocated you for the presidency, right?

David Stern: I know, I know. Thank you very much.

BS: You're not into it?

DS : [Smiling] I'm not into politics.

BS: The people that know you say you love being the commissioner, you're always going to be the commissioner …

DS: I think you judge that on a day-to-day basis. The job and the opportunities have so changed over the years that I find it continually challenging and stimulating … when you recognize what the untapped potential is for sports, [like] North and South Korea talking about a single team and marching under a single flag in the Beijing Olympics, where but in sports? The other part that we're doing -- the section that deals with digital entertainment, the digital ecosystem, when you think about what's coming in that part of the technology world, where there are going to be 3 billion cell phones by the year 2010, and even they and their successors, which will be just called handheld devices, will be video-enabled, music-enabled, voice-enabled and Internet-enabled … that has enormous implications for everything we do, both as a society and with the NBA. It's in a vacuum, changing day by day. So we've got the technological changes occurring, we have globalization occurring, and we have enormous needs for corporate/social responsibility, so there's really a great opportunity to do well and do good at the same time.

BS: How would you compare that to 1983, when you were taking over?
DS: Look what's happened since 1983. We've gone from three networks or maybe four … I mean, the first network deal I made for cable, which I either fortunately or unfortunately made, was in 1979 (with a network that eventually became USA) for $400,000. In the intervening 20 years or so, we went from 4 million subscribers on cable to 90 million on cable and satellite … we went from five networks to 500 networks. That was the most enormous growth and we rode that growth. That was a river that came running by our door -- actually, it was more like an ocean.
Another thing happened: Right now, the only building in our league that isn't new or rebuilt since 1984 is the Meadowlands, and that's planned for replacement in a couple of years. All of the sudden, we have 30 teams playing in buildings with club seats, suites, video boards, sound systems, I mean, it is almost unfair to compare the experience. And by the way, the TV thing is significant in another way. Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain labored in relative anonymity. I just read some place that Greg Oden has already appeared in two ESPN games.
The third is Michael Jordan, but for a different reason than you might think. Michael Jordan and Nike made sports marketing a consumer product business as well, where teams put their marks on everything from apparel to furniture to hard goods …
BS: But you guys had a little bit to do with that, in terms of marketing players and games? You guys were the first ones that did it, right?

DS: You know, interestingly enough, when I became commissioner, everything I knew I copied from either Major League Baseball promotions or NFL Properties. They were very generous with their time, Bowie Kuhn and Pete Rozelle … the NFL had NFL Films, baseball had MLB productions and MLB Promotions, the NFL had NFL Properties, so it was sort of, "OK, we have all these people doing things in a pretty good way, what could we learn from them?" But 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. And then sponsors became interested. So all these things came together at the same time.

I mean, in 1985, we invited the Chinese national team -- actually, we didn't really invite them, we just said, "Some day, we hope you'll be here," and we got a telex saying, "we accept your invitation" [laughs] -- and I remember thinking, "Where are we gonna raise the $250,000 to cover this tour?" And while they were on the plane, Kaliber, the nonalcoholic beverage for Guinness, agreed to a deal with us that allowed us to cover the expenses. It wasn't always that we had a blue chip [sponsor] lined up … sponsors began looking at sports, or at least looking at us. So those three things, the marketing, the arena and the television were huge, because I refuse to say that Player X of today is better than Elgin, Wilt, Willis, Bill Russell, Havlicek, Harry Gallatin …

BS: The Horse! That was your guy, right?
DS: Yeah, that was my guy.
BS: When you took over, the number one problem was drugs, in terms of the perception of what was going on, as well as the fighting …
DS: By the way, people screw up the timing -- remember, I didn't become commissioner until 1984. The best thing that happened to us was that in April of 1983, we made a collective bargaining agreement with the players, and we came up with the salary cap for the first time. And there was more of a notion of a partnership between the owners and players. And separately, we came up with the anti-drug plan. Back then, people really appreciated the fact that the players and the owners were addressing both the financial issues and the drugs issues. It wasn't so much that we cleaned it up, because it wasn't as bad as everyone said it was, it was that we addressed it. At the time, everyone said, "Oh, it's the NBA, too much money, players making $250,000, that's ridiculous, they're black … "
BS: The drug thing was pretty bad though. You guys had a lot of good guys wiped out. Spencer Haywood, Micheal Ray [Richardson], Bernard King, David Thompson …
DS: Everyone was saying it was only us -- it was in the schools, in the prisons, the hospitals, the law firms, it was an item of public and foreign policy. I mean, America was in the grip of something, we were sort of the harbinger of what what happening, that young men were engaged in using drugs. No question. And our guys, we happened to have a young age base, our demographic fit it. So as a result, we have one of the earliest employee-assistance programs on the subject. It ultimately got outvoted, but at the time, it was the first attempt to deal honestly with the problem.
BS: So, looking at the problems since you took over -- the fighting and the drugs -- that got settled, the games got a little too chippy in the late-'80s, you fixed that …
DS: If we did one thing wrong, and we did a lot wrong, but we should have moved on the game itself, [how physical] it got, and honestly, how slow it got.
BS: You tried to do some things, some of them didn't work, like the 3-point line was too close.
DS: Yeah, the notion there was, "Well it's all about the coaches, and there's nothing we can do," and then we said that couldn't be the answer, so …
BS: And then in the early-'90s, the biggest problem was these guys coming right in and making $40 [million] or $50 million, there's like a whole lost generation of guys where the incentive was removed for them right away.
DS: I don't buy the incentive issue …
BS: Really?
DS: I never bought the public's view. I think that players play, and they compete, and it's not about incentives. More important was that it became a game -- the contract negotiations, what agent could do better for his player than somebody else's, and the economic model turned to such craziness, that you couldn't look with a straight face at anyone who wanted to invest [in a team]. And that was an issue.

Continue reading here. (Note: Login may be required after 60 days of this post).

Calling Out Mark Cuban

I've been meaning to blog about Mark Cuban for awhile, but finally got around to it tonight. Let me start off by saying that I respect Mark Cuban- he's a smart businessman who's done a hellava job turning arround the Dallas Mavericks. (Ed's Note: For the sake of sparing my readers, I'm not going to rehash Mark Cuban's life story here, but if you want to research it, click here).

For those of you who don't know, Mark runs his mouth and his blog at blogmaverick.com . Graphically, it's not a very pretty site to look at, but that's not the point. The point of that blog (as well as this blog for that matter) is for Mark to run his mouth about anything and everything he wants to talk about. At face value, I don't have a problem with that, as I do the same thing. But Mark goes out of his way to take cheap shots at the leaders of specific companies, specifically, CEO Patrick Byrne of Overstock.com.

Now, I'm not going to get into the specifics of why he argues the way he does against Byrne, however, I will say that when it's Mark Cuban who's writing analysis on why or why not people should buy a specific stock, or if they should short a specific stock, and it's Mark Cuban the billionaire who not only influences the markets when he moves money but he also influences the money moving decisions of hundreds, if not thousands of loyal fans and blog readers.

Mark is fairly blunt about that he's short 20,000 shares of OSTK. He goes out of his way to place Overstock.com and Patrick Byrne in an unfriendly light. However, when he mentions that several times over the course of a few months about how many shares he's short and why people shouldn't invest in Overstock.com and considering the clout that he obviously has over his fans and the investing community at large, should this be an violation of SEC rules?

Some of Mark's thoughts are rational, however most of them are only spilled on his blog to serve some self-serving interest that he has (such as his rants about HDTV, his movie theaters, his movie production company, etc).

Mark's only opinion is that his opinion is right and he is never wrong (trust me, I know first-hand after trading emails with him a couple of times). Part of what's good and decent about anyone is the ability to recognize when they are wrong. Unfortunately for Mark, he has NEVER been able to do this.

Update to Monday's Post

We interrupt this broadcast to let you know that Dick Cheney is now responsible for causing his hunting companion to suffer a heart attack after he shot him on Saturday. What happens if this guy ends up dying? Does Cheney go up on involantary manslaughter charges?

John Battelle's Blog

I'm not sure how many of you actually read my blog, but at the very least, be sure to check out John Battelle's blog. As some of you may have read in my other blog, I met John at a conference in Santa Barbara a few months ago and just finished reading his book "The Search".

In any case, John recently blogged about what Google, Yahoo, MSN et al. are doing in China. It's definitely worth the read. Check it out here.

We goin' Wabbit Huntin'..

Obviously, the big story over the weekend was the fact that VP Dick Cheney accidently shot lawyer and friend Harry Whittington in the face in a hunting trip over the weekend.

What may emerge in the coming days as the bigger story over the next two days is exactly when the White House decided to admit that there was an incident to report. MSNBC.com is reporting that the shooting occurred Saturday night, however, the information was not replaced to the public until Sunday.

Two things at issue here, first the Vice President of the United States shooting someone, and second, the speed of which the news was released to the press. I'll address the second issue first.

In an era where we have blackberry's, cellular phones (let alone landline phones), laptops, fax machines, overnight express package delivery, and high speed Web access, it's kinda hard to believe that this news wasn't reported earlier then 12 hours after the fact. Hell, I probably could have distributed a little yellow sticky quicker than the White House telling press about this situation. It's really ridiculous and quite frankley, unprofessional.

Second, the VP of the United States shot somebody! This is huuugggeee news. Granted it was an accident, and it was on a hunting trip, but it isn't every day that the second (or third) most powerful man in the World can shoot someone and get away with it. I recall logging onto MSNBC.com yesterday to see the headline "VP Cheney Shoots Someone!" The first thought that entered my mind is that he finally had had enough of people giving him crap about Iraq so he whipped out one of his Security Detail's 9mm and shut him up.

However, after reading the story I learned that the VP was on a hunting trip and misfired his weapon in the direction of a lawyer. I find it really interesting that this hasn't been a bigger story. In any case, it should be great late night TV fodder for weeks.

Another Quirky Bushism

President Bush today dropped a bomb (figuratively, everybody, figuratively) when he announced that Al Qaeda was planning a major operation post 9/11 inside the United States back in 2002.

Today he released details of the report. Some of those details purport that hijackers from a SouthEastern Asian country were going to storm an email and were going to use shoe bombs to blow up the cockpit door, take control of the plane and then crash the plane into the then called Liberty Tower.

President Bush then conveniently tied everything together by implying that the the case was cracked by his outstanding domestic spying efforts (my words, not his).

As you can imagine, I have quite the opinion of this and lots of questions:

-If the domestic spying was so effective, who were these alleged hijackers? Have they been captured? Is the CIA sitting outside there door?

-Was anybody (of non-need to know importance) informed of this? If not, why not? Interestingly, even the MAYOR of Los Angeles was not informed of this plot! You're telling me that nobody bothered to pick up a phone, drop an email, or paste a little yellow sticky on the mayors computer, letting him know what the hell was going on?!

-Why wasn't this brought up sooner, say before the New York Times article about this adminstrations domestic spying program? Surely, since it's been a couple years since this event was to occur, it would be okay to let us know about the evil plot.

I would challenge the administration to the point to say that I believe their hiding more than their telling us. By doing this, they could be possibly be putting the country in greater danger than it is already in.

Freedom of Speech

Earlier this week, Denmark decided to get the Islamic world all riled up by allowing a cartoon character representing the sacred Muslim Prophet Muhammad. Ever since then, Muslims in Islamic countries from the Far East to the Mid East have been protesting (some violently) the release of the cartoons. Iran, has even gone so far as to cut of trade and economic ties with Denmark.

The whole issue boils down to freedom of speech and where do people need to draw the line. Obviously, in the great country of the USA, we can go pretty far when it comes to speech (except when it comes to yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater, as my high-school Civics teacher used to say). But, is it right to poke fun at, or make jokes of something or someone that some ethnicities revere?

I'm not going to go on a rant on what should or shouldn't be said in any situation. As far as speech goes, I'm pretty convservative (that is to say, I'm happy with the 1st ammendment and the way it was written). But I think there's a little thing called tact and diplomacy that one should keep in mind when they are speaking, or in this case drawing.

Considering the fact that most of the Western World is in a "global conflict" with Terror, and given the fact that the most recent participants who are causing this so-called Terror happen to be of the the Islamic faith, it's probably not a good idea to give them reason to continue their perpetuate their distorted views of the world. By releasing this cartoon, Denmark sparked an increased outcry in the Muslim World. Muslims hold Muhammad to be a very, important, revered, and sacred person. To publicly make light of him (let alone to display his image which Islam frowns upon) only adds fuel to an already hot fire.

I understand that the artist of the cartoon and the editor of the newspaper were simply trying to exercise their right at free speech, which is fine. But given the plight that the Western world currently finds itself, I find this release a little untimely and very unsensitive.

Trouble at eBay?

There was an intersting story in the NY Times (The article in the Times was so poorly written, I won't even link to it. Such a rarity for the Times as it is such a great paper. I digress.) this week about eBay being sued by Tiffany's alledging that eBay is allowing fake Tiffany Merchandise on their website. The lawsuit is alleging that eBay is essentially turning a blind eye the the fake merchandise and taking in a pretty sum off of the conterfeit sales.

Now, I'm not going to take sides, but I'll lay my cards on the table. I used to work at eBay. I worked their for four years. I know the ins, the outs and all the in betweens. eBay's cop-out and what I perceive as their defense to this lawsuit is simply "Hey, we don't police our site." My answer to that is: hogwash.

eBay goes to great lengths to police their site-ever try to look at pornographic pictures on the core site? You won't find any. This is because their are constant searches done on the site (either automatic or manual) that go through and basically look for all the 'illegal' auctions.

eBay also claims that Tiffany is working through eBay's VeRO program (Verified Rights and Owners). This program simply helps high end manufacturers of goods maintain the dignified brand name when their merchandise is sold through secondary avenues such as eBay.

When I was at eBay, they had three shifts of fifteen people who worked to enforce the rules of VeRO, and constantly looked for items on the site that violated eBay's VeRO policy. Now, obviously it's hard to police every corner of the eBay site, just by the sheer magnitude of the number of items that are sold, it's nearly impossible to find every nefarious auction. However, eBay's blanket statement of 'We don't police our site' is plain and simple BS.

Even with all the policing that eBay does, there is still a large amount of fake material sold on their site. In specific regards to Tiffany's, I would say anywhere between 80-90% of the items are fake.

I would be very, very surprised to see this case actually go to trial. However, if eBay decides to settle, it can expect a whole onslaught of lawsuits similar to this one.