With the issue of NBA players heading overseas in the news again, what better time to bring back comments David Stern made on this topic during his state of the league address during the NBA Finals?
Not surprisingly, Stern dismissed the matter as a non-issue, calling Tiago Splitter "a rogue criminal." Uh, just kidding. But he did dismiss the issue and sidestep it pretty effectively. I'd be curious to hear what he has to say now, but for the time being, here are the applicable questions and answers from his news conference prior to Game 2 of the Finals:
Q. I wonder if you could talk about with the rookie salary cap and players coming from Europe, we're kind of hitting a new situation where players can actually make more in Europe than they can under the rookie salary cap in the States, and it seems to be preventing some teams from getting players that they've drafted over here. Is that a worry for the league?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: No, I don't think so. In most cases that is not accurate.
Q. Well, we had a situation just with Tiago Splitter obviously, for example.
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: Sometimes it's hard to know with our team whether they're not just as happy to have a player complete his contract, develop until exactly the right time. I've seen Mr. Splitter play in the European Final Four. He's a heck of a player. I'm sure he currently he's under contract for another year, isn't he? He signed a new contract.
You know, there are plenty of players who have decided that it would be, Frederic Weis comes to mind, that it would be better to stay, play a shorter season and do what they're going to do. So I think your generalization of that is not exactly accurate. But we're not concerned about that. If players actually stay in Europe because they can earn more, that's fine. We think that European basketball, which we try to support, might be the better for it, and that's good.