ESPN isn't always so solicitous. Not long after ABC/ESPN inked a six-year, $400 million deal in 2002 for broadcast rights to the NBA, David Stern and Shapiro began butting heads, as chronicled in Those Guys Have All the Fun. One issue was ESPN's indifference to the WNBA, which Shapiro thought would never draw ratings. He wanted the league off ESPN entirely, but to compromise with Stern he wound up shunting it off to the hinterlands of ESPN2.
Stern was a tireless kibitzer in those early days, at times taking his complaints directly to Disney's brass. Every aspect of ESPN's coverage was scrutinized, even the camera angles. (The NBA wanted tighter shots and fewer wide-angle views.) The league was also unhappy with Shapiro's pick of Brad Nessler, a college hoops veteran who was relatively new to the pro game, as the lead NBA play-by-play guy. (The NBA preferred Marv Albert, as it should have.)
And then there was Stephen A. Smith, who in those days was making the transition from well-sourced NBA reporter to screaming shit-stirrer, at Shapiro's urging. Stern wasn't a fan, and he let it be known. In Those Guys, he's diplomatic: "With Stephen A. we simply wanted clarification. We thought we had two different personalities—the Stephen A. on CNN, and the Stephen A. from his column. I call Stephen A. a friend—he is smart and articulate—and all I said to him was 'There's somebody who is trying to program you in a way that is not you.'"
Stern did a lot more than that, however. According to a source, the commissioner had someone make a sort of lowlight reel of Stephen A.'s television appearances, whereupon he personally delivered the videotape to then-ESPN president George Bodenheimer. Bodenheimer was apparently unmoved.
Sometimes, Stern's approach was more akin to working the refs. During the 2008 NBA draft, as Kansas power forward Darrell Arthur plummeted down the board, ESPN's Ric Bucher, citing three front-office sources, reported that an "undisclosed kidney issue" was sandbagging Arthur's prospects. (His agent would later explain that rumor was based on a pre-draft blood test indicating abnormally high levels of creatine; followup bloodwork, however, had determined Arthur's kidneys were "completely normal.")
Arthur was still on the board when Bucher broke into the draft broadcast with his report. The forward fell to the 27th pick, and then got traded three times over the next few hours, eventually winding up in Memphis. Stern was furious with ESPN, according to a source. The network's reporting was affecting the course of a live event it was televising. The commissioner pulled aside a producer and said as much, their discussion stretching on so long that the announcement of the Boston Celtics' pick at the end of the round was delayed—inexplicably, to viewers at home.
Stern had reason to believe his bawling out ESPN would work. "Bottom line is that Stern usually got his way," Shapiro said in Those Guys. "He'd scream and scream and we'd cave."
A year ago, former Orlando Magic coach Stan Van Gundy—who'd once called David Stern the biggest dick in sports—was up for an analyst job on ESPN's NBA Countdown. In Van Gundy's telling, he'd reached an agreement with Bristol, only to have ESPN renege.
Van Gundy saw Stern's hand at work. "What I find fascinating … you have to give David Stern and the NBA a lot of credit," he said on Dan LeBatard's radio show. "ESPN pays the league, and then the league tells them what to do."
What cost him his job was the same thing that cost Frontline a high-profile partner in its NFL head-injury investigation. It was the basic absurdity of a mongrel business like ESPN's. "You gotta have no balls whatsoever to pay someone hundreds of millions of dollars," Van Gundy said, "and let them run your business."
