Chicago • As news of NBA commissioner emeritus David Stern’s death spread on New Year’s Day, tributes began to pour in for the man who, above all others, helped shape the modern league into what it is today.
His legacy includes the stabilization of a previously financially shaky enterprise, the popularization of a sport whose championship series had previously been relegated to tape-delay viewing, and the globalization of a game owing largely to the worldwide interest gained via the participation of the Dream Team in the 1992 Olympic Summer Games.
It also included unparalleled domestic expansion and relocation — something the New Orleans/Utah Jazz franchise knows a little something about.