As the search for a WNBA commissioner continued last year, more than one longtime WNBA figure says the answer could be someone out of the past: David Stern.
NEW YORK, NY - OCTOBER 19: Commissioner of the Big East Conference Val Ackerman accepts her BillieJean King Contribution Award from former commissioner of the National Basketball Association David Stern and Billie Jean King at the 37th Annual Salute To Women In Sports Gala at Cipriani Wall Street on October 19, 2016 in New York City. As the search for a WNBA commissioner continued last year, more than one longtime WNBA figure told me that the answer could be someone out of the past: David Stern.
That, for all the justifiable plaudits Stern received about his 30 years of growth leading the NBA, reflects just how respected he is in the world of women’s basketball, and why so many of the luminaries in the sport were moved to markIt is easy to think of moments in retrospect as preordained. But without Stern deciding that the 1996 Olympics could be a proper jumping-off point for the WNBA, there’s no guarantee that women’s basketball ever would have gotten a proper league in this country.
Stern, too, judged people well to lead the WNBA. The body of work by Adam Silver and Val Ackerman since they co-wrote the WNBA business plan stands on its own — Silver as Stern’s successor and the best commissioner in professional sports, Ackerman as the guiding force for the Big East Conference, zigging without football as the rest of Division I zags and doing it successfully.
This was Stern’s legacy, really: a big-picture view that allowed him to see the WNBA in generational terms, rather than a bottom line of a year or two.
That’s far bigger than just a business idea. And without David Stern, we might never have seen it happen.
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