Page 6 February 6, 2014 Sports Photos by Jon SooHoo/LA Dodgers The National Hockey League (NHL®), Anaheim Ducks and Los Angeles Kings unveiled their donation to Anaheim and Los Angeles area elementary schools on January 14, as a legacy of the 2014 NHL Stadium Series™ Los Angeles outdoor game at Dodger Stadium on January 25. The announcement was made at the Graham Elementary School in Los Angeles, one of the 50 schools to receive street hockey equipment as part of the NHL’s, Kings’ and Ducks’ commitment to growing the sport of hockey in Southern California, combating obesity and promoting a healthy, active lifestyle. The NHL Stadium Series™ Los Angeles Legacy Initiative also marks an expansion of NHL Street™, the League-wide grassroots hockey program, in Southern California. For more than 20 years, NHL Street has introduced the sport to approximately 250,000 boys and girls each year in more than 1,600 schools and community centers across North America. To celebrate the NHL Stadium Series™ Los Angeles Legacy Initiative and street hockey’s popularity in California, NHL Street participants from the Anaheim and Los Angeles areas played pick-up games on a street hockey rink alongside their NHL counterparts at Dodger Stadium throughout the Jan. 25 Kings-Ducks game. The NHL’s Legacy Initiative is an on-going philanthropic endeavor in which the NHL, the local NHL teams and NHL partners support community organizations in the host city as a legacy of an NHL event. The Los Angeles event marked a series of firsts for the NHL and its fans as the Jan. 25 game was the first outdoor regular season NHL game played in the U.S. west of the Mississippi River, the southern-most outdoor NHL game in history, and the first-ever outdoor NHL game in California. In its 51 year history, the venerable Dodger Stadium has hosted eight World Series and close to 4,000 regular-season games, but never a hockey game – marking another first for this NHL Stadium Series event. Information provided by L.A. Kings.• A Stern Exit By Adam Serrao For 30 straight years now, David Stern has been the commissioner of the National Basketball Association. That means that he has been around since the Magic Johnson and Larry Bird days, the Michael Jordan days, straight on through to Kobe Bryant and now LeBron James. Stern has made the NBA famous by promoting its greatest players and using them as a face for his league. As he officially stepped down last Saturday at the age of 71, Stern passed the torch to his protégé, Adam Silver. There is still much to be learned about Silver, as little is known about the man who has been preparing to succeed Stern for at least the last seven years, but it is certain that Stern has left the league in good shape for his successor. As Stern walks away from the league that he has pretty much built with his own hands, he leaves it in excellent shape economically and otherwise and has quickly created a great reputation for an association that at one point had players in the stands throwing haymakers at their fans. Under Stern’s tenure, the league has become bigger than ever, as it is now more popular and more profitable than it has ever been before. All of that can be attributed to Stern and his brilliance as an NBA executive. There are more than a couple of ways to evaluate David Stern’s tenure as the commissioner of the NBA. Perhaps the greatest way, however, is to measure the growth of the league as a whole. Under Stern, the league expanded from only 23 teams to 30. Revenues grew from $165 million in 1984 to $5.5 billion today. The sport itself is televised in 215 countries and in 47 different languages, making it the most televised sport in the world after soccer. Perhaps some of those statistics would have been accomplished solely through the advancement of the game and changing times, but it’s clear that the league itself would not have been as purely successful as it is today were it not for Stern’s keen business acumen. “It’s been a great run,” Stern said of his tenure as NBA commissioner. “The league is in, I think, terrific condition. I’d like to think I did an adequate job.” For every few things Stern has succeeded at, however, there have also been certain failures. For instance, Vancouver, Charlotte, New Jersey and Seattle have all suffered through watching their basketball teams leave during Stern’s tenure while Sacramento came uncomfortably close. For reasons like these, Stern will be looked down upon by some. No one ever wants to see franchise relocation, as that instability is neither good for the city that calls that team its own nor the commissioner who couldn’t find the stability to keep the team in place. Yet for every small setback, Stern has found a way to create an advantage. Even the value of franchises has soared during Stern’s tenure. For instance, when Stern took over in the NBA, teams were being sold in the $20 million range. When the Golden State Warriors were sold in 2010, the price was $450 million. In a league that was struggling to get much of any fame or credit in the 1980s when Stern took over and games were being televised on tape-delay, he now quietly walks away from a league that pays its players more than any other sporting league in the world. He recreated the way that players dressed and portrayed themselves while in the public eye, established the WNBA, grew the NBA to a worldwide brand and even took Metta World Peace under his wing after the latter was seen as one of the main instigators in what was surely the ugliest moment of Stern’s tenure. Despite all of what he did right for the league and its stance in the world today, there may only be one thing that Stern will be remembered for here in Los Angeles. Back before they were one of the worst teams in the league, the Lakers were competing for championships and pulled off a trade that would have kept them from becoming what they have now become. Chris Paul was a Los Angeles Laker and was almost on his way to play alongside Kobe Bryant in the Lakers’ backcourt. Stern came in and vetoed the trade in the 11th hour for what he stated were “basketball reasons.” No other explanation was ever given and the Lakers were left twiddling their thumbs, wondering what went wrong. It was perhaps one of the biggest miscues of Stern’s career and will surely be remembered here in Los Angeles for at least as long as Paul remains across the way as a Clipper. Sports columnist Bill Simmons may have said it best when he explained that the league “intentionally jeopardized its own credibility.” Truly, that day will go down as one of the worst in the history of the Lakers’ franchise and certainly does it job to tarnish Stern’s credibility. Despite all of the debate as to whether Stern was a perfect commissioner or not, it is clear that he did his job to bring the NBA to new levels. No one person will ever be perfect, especially when given the job of maintaining a multibillion dollar industry like the NBA and that is something that basketball fans everywhere should keep in mind as Adam Silver takes Stern’s place. All in all, Stern did wonders for the NBA and walks away wiping his hands clean. A commissioner who may go down as the greatest of any sport in the history of competitive games spent 30 years bettering what has now become one of the world’s most popular sports. Whether you like him or not, his work must be respected and appreciated. David Stern may not be the most popular person in the world, but as he walks away from the NBA, the state of the league speaks for itself when it says that he was undoubtedly an extremely successful businessman. • 2014 NHL Stadium Series Los Angeles Legacy Initiative “For more than 20 years, NHL Street has introduced the sport to approximately 250,000 boys and girls each year in more than 1,600 schools and community centers across North America.”
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