David Stern was having a quiet evening …

David Stern was having a quiet evening at home, his sweet tooth calling him into the kitchen to get his second dessert for the night, when he saw something that nearly made the then-NBA commissioner drop his plate. The wildest scene the league had ever seen — beer coming from the stands, players decking fans and pure bedlam ensuing all over the Palace of Auburn Hills — was being broadcast live on national TV, to his dismay. Stern scurried over to his phone and called deputy commissioner Russ Granik. “I said, ‘Holy Moses, Russ.’ I probably was a little more colorful than that,” Stern said in a recent telephone interview with The Athletic, “but I said, ‘Turn your TV on, you’re not going to believe what’s unfolding here.’”