The National Basketball Association had virtually no relationship with FIBA when Mr. Stankovic requested a meeting with the N.B.A.’s commissioner at the time, David Stern, in the mid-1980s, during the latter years of the Cold War. “His goal was very much to unify the world of basketball,” Russ Granik, a former N.B.A. deputy commissioner, said of Mr. Stankovic in a phone interview.
Tag: Russ Granik
Mr. Stankovic told N.B.A. officials …
Mr. Stankovic told N.B.A. officials about his vision of having the best players in the world participate in major FIBA events, Mr. Granik said. “It wasn’t ready to happen yet,” he said, “but he wanted to start working toward that.” He added, “We were kind of surprised by all this, coming from him, because we’d always been told that they don’t want N.B.A. players in their events — they want to keep their world separate.”
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.’”