“You can’t be too nice a guy”
In 1986, just two years after his appointment as Commissioner, David Stern interviewed former basketball player Rod Thorne for the Vice President in charge of disciplinary affairs. “They say you’re a nice guy,” Stern said thoughtfully. “So, you can’t be too nice a guy at our job.” “There was nothing soft about him,” recalled Thorne, who was hired and served as vice president of the NBA for 14 years. “He expected you to do your job. And if not, he will not be slow to inform you about it. From time to time I listened to similar things, sometimes in very harsh terms. But in most cases [Стерн] turned out to be right. ” Stern loved to arrange mini-exams: to ask subordinates questions, the answers to which he knew, and if they were at a loss to answer, he gave them a blast.
One of the top managers of the NBA admitted that he left work many times with the thought of being fired. But at 22 o’clock, Stern’s call rang out, which told about new goals and how great it would be when they were achieved: “And I was ready to go through the walls for Stern.”
The permanent commissioner was forgiven a lot for his ability to ignite people, and for his ability to foresee the future of sports, and for the fact that he gushed with ideas. For example, in the 1990s. a subordinate gave him the idea to hold a press conference about a new deal with Coca-Cola, showing videos on video screens. Stern immediately ordered to figure out how to organize an event in the cinema: on a huge screen, the videos would look much better. “You go into his office, thinking that you have thought of everything,” the subordinate summed up. “And he’s talking about something that didn’t occur to you — and damn it, he’s right!”
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