10 Most Important Ways David Stern Changed The NBA

1. The Draft Lottery

Arguably Stern’s most pivotal and ground-breaking achievement, Stern was a central figure in what remains today as one of sports most impactful elements.

In 1984, one year into Stern’s tenure, it was to be his first NBA Draft. Prior to his insertion as commissioner the league had adopted a system whereby the worse a teams’ season record, the higher the draft pick they obtained. This was all fine, however entering the aforementioned Draft, so began what is widely referred to as the “tanking epidemic”. Knowing that the likes of Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley, and one Michael Jordan (remember him?) were placing themselves amongst the crop, teams were taking drastic measures to deliberately embrace losing, thus affording themselves greater odds of landing such a star.

How to combat this? The NBA Draft Lottery.

Stern implemented a system whereby should your team be one of the league’s two worst records, you would have a coin flip to determine number one pick. This was groundbreaking for its time, and set David Stern apart as a forward thinking, progressive Commissioner in a period that had been dominated by stagnant and outdated peers of his in other sports.

The process has undergone many alterations over the decades, but it can not be understated the positive impact it has had. This is before we highlight the fact that using his foresight, Stern was able to predict that “tanking” would soon become a somewhat viable (if not controversial) approach for teams, and so constantly strived to eradicate the problem year upon year. What a guy.. And no, we won’t mention how his system miraculously screwed a certain writer’s Boston Celtics out of Tim Duncan in ‘97. We won’t do that.