David Stern swung by Costas Tonight (on the NBC Sports Network) to do an interview that felt like old times — Bob Costas and Stern talking was a regular thing back in the NBA on NBC days. As you would expect, it’s a good interview.
They covered everything from Jeremy Lin to the Hornets sale to 66 game schedule. Watch the video, here are a few highlights:
On Dwight Howard (echoing what he said at the All-Star Game):
“We have a system where we tell a player — that’s what we do when we draft him — where he is going to play. And we have an economic system that makes it very, very, very likely he will re-sign with this team, like Kevin Durant did, like Russell Westbrook did. And that team will have him for seven or eight years. As I said before, it’s an ecosystem not a prison. Free agency is what players bargained for a long time ago and I’m a believer in that.”
On the lockout:
“The day we made the deal, if we didn’t make it, I think we were going to spiral out of control.”
“The bloggers said it was (the small market owners that were the hardliners) but uniformly, without regard to market size, there was a unanimity we had to make a deal that had a new paradigm for us.” (How committed each owner was to dragging it out to get that new paradigm is another issue entirely if you ask me.)