The Stern-o-meter

I am a man on a mission. I am absolutely convinced that we are going to see the absolute worst of David Stern this season as he manipulates the players and rallies the owners for the Collective Bargaining Agreement talks. In fact, Stern's latest comments to the media indicate that the just-begun season of actual basketball is of secondary importance to him.

Before the first tipoff took place at the Staple Center in L.A., Stern said that the league would lose "hundreds of millions of dollars" this season regardless of how "epic" the coming season might be or how the league rebounds from the recession.

Last season one of the RoF regulars set up a fanpost that was to run the entire season. It compared Okafor's performance to Chandler's and the goal was to evaluate the worthiness of the trade. I'm setting up a recurrant fanpost of my own this season.

Introducing, "The Stern-o-meter."

After endless seconds of consideration, research, and some trial and error, I have developed this amazing new gadget. It doesn't dice, it doesn't slice, and it won't make mounds of cole slaw. What this one-of-a-kind wonder WILL do however, is accurately gauge the truth, stupidity, and the manipulative strength of David Stern's comments to the media. It works on a 1-to-100 scale using scientific and utterly subjective methodology. A simple and true statement made by Stern such as, "Basketball is a sport" will garner a score of 1. A more common statement such as, "In order to save money, we're going to close 6 NBA franchises" however, would score at least in the upper 90's. Luckily enough, The Stern-o-meter also provides a translation and interpretation of any comment fed into it, so we aren't left in the dark. Today I fed into it the following quote from Der Fuehrer:

"The spirit of (the crackdown) is that our players don't do that in elementary school, in junior high, in high school, in college, and then they get their master's in complaining when they get to the NBA."

This was in regard to the need for the new technical foul rules. It scored:

56

The reason behind the score is that anyone that has ever been to a basketball game - whether it be high school, grammar school, college, or just a bunch of guys playing pickup, knows that this statement is an outright lie. Players cheer, jeer, punch the air, and complain loudly about bad calls/no calls constantly. Although I could find no medical journal recording the research, I'd bet a fair amount that this sort of thing might go back to infancy or even the womb. Stern is just trying to justify the rules modifications without exposing the truth; The changes were made to piss off the players and create another issue for the player's union to complain about during CBA talks. The trick works like this:

Come up with a bunch of things that ownership could care less about, but are important to the workers. If it costs the workers some money, so much the better. When negotiating with the union, management caves in quickly on these fairly meaningless matters. This makes them appear flexible. Then, when the meat and potatoes of the agreement are being debated, management can refuse to bend while at the same time pointing to how much they "gave up" to the players already.

Last night, as Stern walked to center court, he received what the LA press called, "a smattering of boos" from the crowd. My goal is to use the Stern-o-meter throughout the season to ensure that anywhere Stern makes a public appearance, those boos are loud enough to drown out whatever nonsense spills from his lips.

Oh, and Mr. Stern? Don't even try. I keep this gadget well hidden and the secret location changes randomly, and often. Even if you do find it, the protective security - including retina scans, finger print scans, and voice recognition technology - will prevent you from ever being able to destroy it.

Cue the Mission Impossible music. I'm out.