By Fraser P. Seitel
Let’s say you live in Miami, and you’re taking your son to the big basketball game – the one game all year when the mighty San Antonio Spurs, led by three famous All Stars, come to town to do battle with the world champion Miami Heat.
You plunk down your $300 clams for the ducats, park for $30 bucks and spend another $50 on a program and refreshments. You take your seats by the court, look out at the Spurs and see no sign of the three stars you came to see.
Why?
Because Spurs coach Greg Popovich gave Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili the night off on Thursday and sent ‘em back to San Antonio. Instead, you get Tiago Splitter, Patrick Mills and the ever-popular Nando De Colo.
You’d be plenty ticked off and wonder if anybody in the billion dollar enterprise that is the National Basketball Association is looking out for the best interests of the very people the league’s success depends on – the fans.
Not to worry: David Stern is in charge.
It took the most decisive commissioner in professional sports exactly one day to apologize to NBA fans and fine the Spurs a not-too-shabby $250,000 “for conduct disrespecting the game and its fans.”
And while whining sympathizers for the arrogant Popovich defend the coach’s right to rest his players for the long season ahead, I say “bully for Commissioner Stern.” A CEO is responsible for the product he puts on the shelves, in the showroom, or on the field. Whenever that product is inferior, it reflects on the reputation of the organization, in this case the NBA.
And as CEO of the NBA, Stern’s job is to be decisive when someone tampers with the quality of the product for which he is responsible.
In an earlier day, when Indiana Pacer Ron Artest instigated a fight that spilled into the stands and immediately drew a suspension of one year, which amounted to a loss of $5M in salary. Stern was asked what the vote of his Board of Governors was to enlist such categorical punishment on the player.
Famously answered the take-no-prisoners commissioner, “It was unanimous; one to nothing!”
The point is a chief executive is supposed to be tough, make decisions, stand for something. And David Stern is an outstanding CEO. Compare his decisiveness with what’s going on now in Washington, as the “CEOs” there stumble and bumble toward the Fiscal Cliff.
• President Obama, adjudged by 57 million Americans as a “mediocre, hopefully one-term President,” has started his second go-round in hot pursuit of becoming the most “mediocre two-term President” in history.
Rather than beginning the Fiscal Cliff dialogue by bending a bit on taxing the nation’s $200,000----aires, Obama remains inflexible. Rather than sitting down to battle, mano-a-mano, with adversarial Republicans, Obama visits Virginia toy stores to “rally the public.” Given a mandate to rule decisively, to use the “bully pulpit” to hold the other side to task, the President tiptoes back to the campaign trail, timidly urging the people who elected him to “write their Congressmen.”
How embarrassing.
• Meanwhile, the CEO of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, distinguishes himself as being every bit as mediocre as the President he abhors.
Boehner demurs from proposing specific expenditure cuts or explaining how, specifically, he intends to “compromise” on raising revenues. Instead, the House Speaker publicly postures, pretending to be constructive , mouthing platitudes about “wanting to work together,” while preparing, one suspects, for the usual 11th-hour, “let’s punt” brinksmanship that habitually characterizes these sophomoric charades.
How disheartening.
• And in the Senate, the CEO is Harry Reid. Nuff said.
The fact of the matter is that our nation’s political leadership, from the President on down, is, at the same time, tragic and laughable – incapable of telling the truth to the public or making the tough decisions that may hurt everyone a little but help the nation a lot.
As a consequence of the inferior leadership of Obama, Boehner, Reid and their pitiable Washington cronies, the nation suffers.
If only David Stern were President of the United States.
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