Prerecorded Lies

On Wednesday May 16, 2007, NBA Commissioner David Stern answered questions from Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser on the daily espn show, Pardon the Interruption. Below is a truncated version of the seven and a half minute interview (which was recorded well before the broadcast, apparently to avoid a similar outburst from Stern as Dan Patrick received earlier in the day). Feel free to read along with my transcript. I will be coming back to this a bit later, as there are some curious statements made by Stern in this interview, which happened well before tip off of game five.



TK: Stu Jackson said earlier, he said, "It's not a matter of fairness, but of correctness. Is this decision fair to the Suns, in your opinion?

DS: Oh, absolutely.

TK: Even though Robert Horry would be correctly seen as the protagonist in this whole thing.

DS: Uh, yes.

MW: Is there any ability to take intent into account...any desire to do that on your part?

DS: Well, I think we'll discuss it with the owners if they'd like to consider a change, but, but we measure it almost, ummm, by, ya know, by looking at it and say, "Listen, you can't come off the bench, and if you go 20 feet down the line, and I don't know what, I, ya know, I've looked at the tape, obviously. Amare went running out there. In fact, the referee had to stop tending to the combatants to push him away, and finally, his own coaches eventually figured it out, went and grabbed him and pushed him back. And so it's left for me to decide what was in Amare's head when he went there?

TK: I understand when you say that you can't look into Amare's head to find...ya know, to determine why he did what he did, and I understand the fear of something combustible happening like that. But you are, essentially, the sole judge in this particular case. Was there ever a point where you said, "Maybe I should consider benefit of the doubt and apply the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law"?

DS: I think that what we said, quite simply, and really this is the spirit of the rule. That's the part where people have missed the point, here, in my point...in my...in my f...belief. The spirit and the letter of the law say, "Thou shalt not leave the bench...area...during an altercation." And in this case, two of the seven members of the Suns who were on the bench went running down the sideline, and were 20 or 25 feet from the bench. I don't know what the spirit...is different than the letter, here. They were not to be there. They knew it, their coaches knew it, and they violated it.

DS: Unfortunately for the Suns, they had two players that were not able to control themselves, and, and it, it cost them those two important players, and a very important game. And if you think this is a great result for the NBA, you're wrong. It's a terrible result for the NBA, but it's the result required by the rule and its enforcement.