Love this picture of Barkley as a Freshman at Auburn...

When the Naismith Hall of Fame announces this year’s potential inductees the list will most assuredly include Charles Barkley…The 6’4.5” 260 lb PF shot over 50 percent in each of his first nine NBA seasons, was selected for 11 All-Star Games (winning MVP honors in 1991) and earned all-league honors five times. He may be the best rebounder, inch for inch and pound for pound, ever. He spent 8 seasons with Philadelphia, 4 with Phoenix and 4 with Houston, averaging 22.1 points and 11.7 rebounds before retiring in 2000 as one of four NBA players who had 20,000 points, 10,000 rebounds and 4,000 assists. The others were Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain and Karl Malone. Barkley played on the U.S. Olympic "Dream" teams that won gold medals in 1992 and 1996 and was selected as one of the 50 greatest players in NBA history. At Auburn, Barkley averaged 14.1 points and 9.6 rebounds over three seasons and was the Southeastern Conference Player of the Year in 1984, leading the Tigers to their first NCAA Tournament berth. He set school records in field goal percentage and blocked shots and continues to be ranked among the Tigers' all-time leaders in rebounding and scoring ... Named SEC Player of the Decade for the 1980s by the Birmingham Post-Herald ... Had Auburn jersey retired in March, 2001. As an NBA rookie he started 60 of 82 games, he averaged 14 points and 8.6 rebounds, and made the league's all-rookie team. Barkley was perhaps the most unique physical talent in NBA history. He was too quick for taller players, too strong for quicker, thinner ones, too skilled as a passer to be constantly double-teamed, too good of a shooter to be left alone for the mid-range jumper, too tough and strong-willed to be stopped on his powerful drives to the basket. He will be remembered as one of the most vicious dunkers ever…In one three-year span (1988-90), he dunked 513 times, more than anyone in the league. In a game against the Mavericks he dunked so hard on Mavs 7’1” 300 lb centre James Donaldson that he knocked the 2,200 lb basket support six inches off line, forcing a the game to be delayed 10 minutes while the Stadium support crew moved it back.

With the Trade deadline only 6 days away the Knicks rumours are really heating up…best one I’ve heard is that the Knicks are going to trade Jamal Crawford and David Lee to the Magic for Steve Francis…please let this happen, I can’t wait to see Larry Brown’s head explode when he tries to get Steve Francis and Stephon Marbury to play the “right “ way…

Steve Nash scored 21 points and had eight assists and fellow All-Star Shawn Marion had 16 points and 12 rebounds, helping the Suns beat the Rockets 109-75 Thursday night for their fourth straight victory. ''Let's bottle it,'' D'Antoni said after one of the Suns' most lopsided wins of the season. ''I think it was one of our best defensive efforts of the season. Even the coaching staff was stunned.'' In fact, it was the Suns' finest defensive performance. The previous low for an opponent was 81 points, twice. Phoenix now is 57-0 all-time when holding an opponent under 80 points. It was 98-53 after three quarters…

Larry Brown is SO overrated…seriously with only 14 wins in their first 51 games, don’t you think that any of the Knicks' current assistant coaches, could get 14 wins as their head coach? Herb Williams certainly could. For a lot less than $11 million a year too…

The Darko Milicic era in Detroit is over…Milicic appeared in only 25 games for the Pistons this season playing an average of fewer than six minutes in those games. Each of the other six players who were among the first seven selections in the 2003 draft has started at least 50 games this season (LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade, Chris Kaman and Kirk Hinrich)…

My favourite quote about Milicic comes from former Pistons coach Larry Brown who said, "He wants to be Toni Kukoc, I want him to be Bill Russell, and he doesn't even know who Bill Russell is."

And by the way, why didn’t the Raptors make a pitch for Darko? Toronto has the biggest Serbian population in North America and could really use a mobile young centre…

Now that Indiana Hoosiers head coach Mike Davis has indicated that he will resign effective the end of the season, the question is: who will replace him? The Candidates will Iowa head coach Steve Alford and current Orlando Magic assistant Randy Wittman, both former Hoosier players, Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings and Marquette coach Tom Crean…

1) Luke Winn of Si.com reports on the resurgence of 80’s NCAA power Georgetown:

Under the son, Georgetown returns to elite

The most authentically Georgetownian mode of fan transportation? The school bus. And that is why I'm riding in the second row of this yellow boat through the streets of D.C. at 7:50 p.m. last Thursday. Nondescript save for the number "425" on the side, its seats are filled to capacity with one driver, one journalist (me) and row after row of GU students on their way to the MCI Center for a 9 p.m. tipoff against St. John's. The 20-minute trip, which begins alongside the tennis courts on Georgetown's hilltop campus and drops off outside the Washington Wizards', Capitals' and Hoyas' home in Chinatown, is required because GU has no suitable on-campus arena for Big East men's basketball. (The 2,500-seat McDonough Center would be paltry even in the Atlantic 10.) A No. 17 ranking and a 17-5 record -- the tangible evidence of second-year coach John Thompson III's astonishing turnaround -- wards off apathy that could easily thin the ranks that arrive on a fleet of these yellow rigs for each home game. In a season when Georgetown has already beaten two teams in the top 10 (Duke and Pittsburgh) at home, the kids are more than willing to endure the ride. Senior Nihal Shah, who is sitting across the aisle from me, says that on the buses' return voyage from the Jan. 21 upset of then-No. 1 Duke, "there were cars with Georgetown fans pulling up alongside us, just screaming along with the students." Tonight, however, the passengers are anything but rowdy; the Johnnies, at 13th place in the Big East, are hardly viewed as a threat. As our caravan crawls east, downhill on Prospect Street, then over to M Street and eventually Pennsylvania Avenue, leaving the picturesque district of Georgetown behind, conversations about internships and grad-school applications -- this is, mind you, also a top 25 academic university -- are more prevalent than hoops chatter. We roll to a stop near the MCI Center box office on F Street; Chinatown seems oblivious to the event at hand, the lone clue being scores of kids in "We Are Georgetown" shirts (and one neutral observer) pouring out of the bus. A homeless man accosts me for a "donation" but soon diverts his attention to a group of deboarding coeds. "Hey, it's Charlie's Angels," he says, and they do not look amused. In the final 20 minutes before game time, the riled-up Georgetown student section, Hoya Blue, is pointing toward the players' family section and chanting: "Jeff Green's Mom! Jeff Green's Mom!" It's no taunt; Felicia Akingube, the mother of the Hoyas' second-leading scorer, obliges the gray-shirted masses with few hearty waves and a wide grin. She is, one student explains, "a minor celebrity" at the MCI Center. This is due in part to the achievements of her 6-foot-9 son; the locally raised (in Hyattsville, Md.) Big East co-Freshman of the Year in 2004-05, Jeff guided Georgetown in the Duke upset with 18 points, seven assists and five rebounds. But Felicia's cult-celeb status is mostly something that she has earned: She is at every home game, wearing the same sea-blue, number 32 Hoyas jersey, with "Green" custom-stitched onto the back. She's an animated fan, and in Jeff's first year, she says, "I had my sign that said, 'No. 32, My Son, Jeff Green.' I started getting my props ever since then." Props, and her own song, an "underground" parody of the Fountains of Wayne hit "Stacy's Mom" written by a Hoya Blue member. The chorus: Jeff Green's mom has got it goin' on…Jeff's all we want and we've waited for so long…As anyone can see she's the Fan of the Game to me…I know it might be wrong but I'm in love with Jeff Green's mom. Kurt Muhlbauer has a far more extreme game-day uniform than Green's mom: He dons a blue wig and blue-and-silver facepaint. Muhlbauer, a junior from Long Island, is a front-row occupant of the Hoya Blue section and also the group's president; he had been at the arena for two hours by the time I arrived, distributing foam fingers and cheer sheets ("When Coach Thompson is introduced," tonight's reads, "Chant JT III and put up 3 fingers"). Muhlbauer had the idea, last season, to put the giant Roman numeral III on the back of the section's T-shirts, which in Thompson's 19-12 debut season featured the slogan, "Some have forgotten. We will remind them." This year the shirts were updated to "Respect is back, fear is next." Muhlbauer arrived as a freshman in '03-04, Craig Esherick's miserable final season, a 13-15 campaign that was the school's worst in 30 years. Muhlbauer says that back then, "we were having trouble filling the lower bowl [at the tri-level MCI Center]. It's completely changed since JT III got here. The excitement is back." The butts are back in the seats, as the students fill the sections behind both baskets against St. John's, but the game is a bore -- a 64-41 Hoyas win in which junior guard Brandon Bowman and sophomore center Roy Hibbert combine to shoot 12-of-16 from the field for 30 points while GU's long-armed, mostly matchup-zone defense holds the Red Storm to just 32.7 percent from the field. Muhlbauer e-mails me the next day and apologizes for the snoozer; this was not a concern of mine, as I was amused enough by Hoya Blue's reaction to the arrival of four GW Colonial Army members -- three of them sporting the yellow foam hats, and one carrying a sign that said, "GW No. 8: What Are You Ranked?" -- who were there exclusively to flaunt their success in Hoya fans' faces. With the game in hand in the second half, the incensed Georgetown students behind my seat in press row turn their full attention to the invaders from Foggy Bottom (see Part I), chanting, at various breaks in the action, "over-rated," "safety school," "Georgetown wait list," "wussy schedule," "N.C. State [GW's lone loss]," and "We beat Duke." The Colonials' Pops Mensah-Bonsu and Danilo Pinnock are also at the game, purely as spectators, not instigators, and do not draw similar wrath, but their peers from GW are loving every minute of the firestorm they ignited. George Washington and Georgetown have not met since December 1981; the two teams have an 83-game history, but the series was put to a halt by then-coach John Thompson Jr. because of, as he explained to the Washington Post in '83, "resentment for cheap shots being thrown at us [by GW]." My two-day trek to D.C. is coming full-circle; the two teams may not play this year, but the battle for District supremacy, among fans, is clearly heated. As for Muhlbauer, he doesn't think it's much of a fight. "Obviously, I'm a little biased, but we're legitimately D.C.'s program," he says. "GW is having a nice little run, but I would not put them up there." The man who axed the GW rivalry -- and, much more importantly, the man who lifted Georgetown to its greatest heights, including 20 trips to the NCAA tournament and the 1984 national championship -- is still very much tied to the program. Thompson Jr. is now a member of the media (on TNT and SportsTalk 980 in D.C.) and is sitting against the back wall during his son's postgame press conference in the bowels of the MCI Center. The elder Thompson, in a full Georgetown warmup suit (sans shoulder towel), is still an imposing figure who commands respect; as the Hoyas' team and staff pass by him in the hall later, they all raise their heads to meet his 6-foot-10 gaze and offer a reverent chorus of "Hi, Coach"-es. Thompson Jr. is also still gruff, as was his reputation during his coaching days; after a reporter asks Thompson III if it was good to have an easy game like St. John's in the middle of the Big East schedule, his father wisecracks, "Losing helps." "The game got like that because of how well the [Hoyas] played," Thompson Jr. tells me later in the hallway. "Would they be better off if they had lost? The question didn't make sense." Thompson Jr. keeps a fatherly eye on his 39-year-old son of late because Thompson III's wife, Monica, was diagnosed with breast cancer in November. Thompson III has taken on the added responsibility of caring for her, all the while opting not to take a leave of absence from the team he's guiding toward its first NCAA tournament berth since 2001. "I still believe [he should take a leave], which is why I watch him closely," Thompson Jr. told the Washington Post this week. "If he is strong, his family will be OK. ... If he goes down, his family's got a major problem. So I watch him as closely as I can. The irony is he thinks he's taking care of me, too." Father, now 65, a Hall of Famer with 596 wins at Georgetown to his name, stands in the hall, punching buttons to call the freight elevator near the locker rooms, on his way home for the evening. "I'm definitely proud of [what my son has accomplished this season]," Thompson Jr. says of the Hoyas' return to the the national radar, "but I was proud of him before this happened. Certainly there are emotions attached to it, because I worked here, and he grew up here. But that's my child. I'm proud of him even if he's not successful." Near midnight last Thursday, Thompson III is making his way out of the MCI Center; to accommodate ESPN2, the game didn't begin until 9 p.m. The Second Thompson Era at Georgetown -- with 36 wins in slightly more than one and a half seasons -- is off to a successful start, but III's team does not resemble Jr.'s: The '05-06 Hoyas run the Princeton offense that III first learned as a Tigers player under Pete Carrill (and later employed as their coach) and play a matchup zone defense. Also, the air about the son is more humble and cordial than the Hoya Paranoia that defined his father's years. He laughs when the subject of more than a thousand students wearing "III" on the backs of their T-shirts is brought up. "I'm not behind that," he says, "not at all" -- but he has resigned himself to the fact that they've become part of the student-section dress code, almost as much as the dress suits his players wear to and from games. "I've got so much else to worry about," he says, "that I can't worry about a shirt." Nor can he worry about the Hoyas' growing popularity in the District; he has the rest of the Big East schedule to contend with, including games against likely NCAA-bound teams Marquette, Villanova and Syracuse in the next two weeks. "We don't have the mentality, 'Rah-rah, we're going to be D.C.'s team,'" he says. "The more success we have, the more that will take care of itself." Two days in the District. Two highly ranked teams. Two successful young coaches. Two small yet energized student bodies. Separated by just a 25-minute walk. And yet, without a head-to-head meeting, one can only speculate where the Colonials and Hoyas stand in respect to one another. As I exit through a service gate into the February chill, I'm thinking of the cell phone call I took at 5:30 on Thursday, well before I hiked to Georgetown. It was a 202 area code: D.C. city council member Jack Evans, returning my inquiry to discuss Georgetown and George Washington. Specifically, his proposition (made via his Web site in January) that the Hoyas and Colonials resume their rivalry and play annually for what he'd call the Ward 2 trophy, with the benefits going to D.C. public schools. Only recently -- with the Hoyas (ranked No. 17) and Colonials (No. 7) separated by only 10 spots in the AP poll -- has there been clamoring for the return of the battle of the Georges. Evans, inspired by attending the Hoyas' upset of Duke, "issued an invitation" on the Net the next week and sent letters to the presidents of both schools. "I don't think I could legally make them play each other," he says. "Creating public pressure -- amongst alums and students of both schools -- is the best I can do." Politics, apropos for D.C., have planted the seed. A burgeoning hoops hotbed needs to be united. And there is, of course, one way to expedite the return of the District duel: Have K Street lobby the NCAA tournament selection committee.

2) John Hollinger of ESPN.com reviews the Soph performance to date:

Be like Dwight? For most sophs, no

Here's the tricky thing about the NBA draft: What matters isn't the player you have on draft day, but the player you have a couple of years down the road. Numerous players have bounced back from uninspiring performances as rookies to become superstars later on -- even four-year collegians like John Stockton, Steve Nash and Michael Redd. Thus, one of the most important things teams want to see in a young player is progress. With the rare exception of a Tim Duncan or, this year, Chris Paul, most rookies struggle. More often than not, it's the ability to learn and adapt from their struggles that separates the Karl Malones from the Kwame Browns. That's why this year's sophomore class has been such a disappointment. Yes, there are still plenty of talented players in the group, and it could still go down as the best crop of high-schoolers ever to enter the league. But the group hasn't done much to build on the promise of a year ago. Six rookies who started a year ago find themselves on the bench (Tony Allen, Sebastian Telfair, Chris Duhon, Shaun Livingston, Rafael Araujo and J.R. Smith), while several others have regressed after promising rookie seasons. With the rookie-sophomore game kicking off All-Star weekend, now seems like a good time to evaluate how much progress the class has made from a year ago. With each player, I've included his PERs from last year and this year to help track his performance. As you'll see, a few players have made strides, but in general, the news isn't pretty. I'll start with the bad news:

Taking a step back…These guys showed us tons of promise a year ago, but have broken our hearts a year later.

Emeka Okafor, Charlotte Bobcats (16.35 PER in 2004-05, down to 15.18 in 2005-06) The 2004-05 Rookie of the Year has seen his sophomore campaign swallowed up by injuries. Thankfully they aren't back problems, which was the greatest area of concern when the Bobcats picked him, but lasting only 26 games isn't a feather in his cap either way. Besides, he also looked slower when he was on the court and had a lot of trouble finishing inside.

Trevor Ariza, New York Knicks (13.24 to 10.35) As part of Larry Brown's Confidence Reduction Program (TM), Ariza began the year with the humiliation of becoming Matt Barnes' backup and saw things quickly degenerate from there. Despite having the second-worst record in the league, New York appears more interested in giving Ariza's minutes to 33-year-old Jalen Rose. In fact, the athletic 20-year-old swingman could be on a flight to Orlando or Denver by the time you read this.

Tony Allen, Celtics (14.68 to 7.65) Allen has missed most of the season with a stubborn knee injury and has played only 21 games thus far. Even when he's been on the court, he's been a shadow of the explosive leaper and strong defender that had the Celtics so excited a year ago. He's had off-court troubles, too, as he was charged with aggravated battery when an offseason bar fight in Chicago escalated into a shooting.

Shaun Livingston, Clippers (10.32 to 8.69) A year ago, Livingston tantalized with his talent in his first year out of high school, but some were concerned about his frequent injuries and his poor shooting. A year later, he's frequently injured and can't shoot (37.2%). Until at least one of those things changes, his development will be stunted.

Josh Smith, Hawks (15.43 to 13.45) Smith electrified the NBA with his amazing leaping as a rookie, but has yet to develop other positives beyond "Man, can he jump." He can't handle the ball and isn't strong enough to post up, so developing a consistent mid-range jumper would go a long way to establish him as a long-term starter. He did rip the Lakers for 21 and 15 in the last game before the break, however.

David Harrison, Pacers (12.77 to 9.84) Harrison held down the fort inside when the Pacers suffered their rash of injuries a year ago, but apparently he forgot how to shoot over the summer. His field-goal mark is down from 57.6 percent to 47.8 percent, and from the line he's gone from a shaky 57.1 percent to a ghastly 38.4 percent. Can the Hack-a-Harrison strategy be far behind? For the optimists, Harrison's 16-point game against Milwaukee on Wednesday at least offers hope.

Anderson Varejao, Cavs (16.95 to 12.11) Varejao suffered a shoulder injury playing in his native Brazil last summer that kept him out for half the season. Upon his return he hasn't quite picked up the energy and timing that made him such a force off the bench a year ago, and like Harrison his field-goal percentage has sank like a stone. He's at least had the good sense not to get a haircut.

See you in Yakima - These guys didn't do anything last year to get our hopes up . . . and haven't done anything this year either.

Rafael Araujo, Raptors (6.87 to 4.28) Having proved to everyone's satisfaction that he was a wasted lottery pick, the Raptors finally abandoned the pretense of starting Araujo once Rob Babcock was fired. He has no chance of getting the job back and could even be bought out after the season.

Luke Jackson, Cavaliers (16.26 to 7.44) The Cavs have been desperate for a wing player to come in and take advantage of all the open shots that LeBron James creates, but Jackson has failed to deliver. After his missing nearly all his rookie year with a back problem, Jackson's shot has been as hard to find as his razor. The stubbly soph is shooting only 34.2 percent while suffering savage beatings on defense.

Sasha Vujacic, Lakers (8.85 to 8.76) The slender Slovene is getting plenty of minutes in L.A.'s paper-thin backcourt, even starting four games, but he's shooting only 34.2 percent. Granted, that's an improvement on last year's 28.2 percent, but it's far short of what the Lakers had been expecting.

Careers on hold - We won't know much about these guys until they get a chance to play.

Kris Humphries, Jazz (9.40 to 11.83) It's tough getting minutes in a frontcourt with Carlos Boozer, Mehmet Okur, Jarron Collins and Andrei Kirilenko. Then again, that hasn't stopped Greg Ostertag from seeing the floor. It probably doesn't help that Humphries never met a shot he didn't like but is only making 38.2 percent of them.

Pavel Podkolzine, Mavericks (N/A) Podkolzine has played 10 minutes his entire career. The 7-5 Siberian giant is still only 21 but his near-total lack of game experience means he could take a long time to develop.

Beno Udrih, Spurs (14.24 to 17.25) Udrih has hardly played this year as his job was given to veteran Nick Van Exel in the wake of Udrih's dreadful performance in the NBA Finals. This may be one of those rare times where the Spurs' wisdom deserves to be questioned, as Udrih has played extremely well in his limited chances and was better than Van Exel a year ago as well.

Andris Biedrins, Warriors (14.69 to 12.72) Buried on the bench for most of his first two seasons, Biedrins has seen more minutes of late and the Latvian teenager has been solid, if unspectacular. He's one to keep an eye on for the future, though. Unlike a lot of other Euros, he already has an NBA body, and his 63.5 percent career shooting mark is worth noting.

Dorell Wright, Heat (5.10 to -2.44) While the other high schoolers from this draft went to bad teams and got to play right away, Wright ended up on a contending team and has only played 93 career minutes thus far.

Treading water - Rookies are supposed to get better in their second season. So when they give the same performance, we're inevitably disappointed.

Andre Iguodala, Sixers (13.49 to 14.34) Philly's defensive stopper hasn't done enough stopping to keep the Sixers from being one of the league's worst defensive teams, and he's still had trouble converting his incredible athleticism into a reliable offensive weapon. He has improved his 3-point stroke, however, hitting 40.0 percent this year.

Josh Childress, Hawks (15.20 to 16.03) Childress got off to a very slow start for a second straight season, but finally gained traction around the holidays and has done well since. Childress's Shawn Marion-esque jumper has found the net much more this year, as he ranks second in the NBA in true-shooting percentage, but his other numbers are down.

Sebastian Telfair, Trail Blazers (9.59 to 11.22) Telfair lost his job to Steve Blake, but he probably shouldn't have been starting in the first place. He was unready when the Blazers threw him into the fire a year ago, and it was naïve to think he'd grow into the job in less than a year's time. Telfair has made some improvements -- he's really cut his turnovers, for instance -- but unless he gets a jumper he's just a quicker version of Kevin Ollie.

Matt Bonner, Raptors (14.64 to 13.69) Big Red made a splash in his rookie season by shooting 53.3 percent from the floor, but hasn't been able to sustain that stellar marksmanship in his second season. Nonetheless, he's done just enough to stay in the rotation in spite of his defensive shortcomings.

Al Jefferson, Celtics (16.59 to 17.76) Jefferson's production numbers are fine. It's the other end of the court that's killing him. Jefferson has been painfully slow in rotating at the defensive end, and is picking up so many fouls trying (one every 6.7 minutes, to be exact) that it's been difficult to keep him on the court. A series of ankle sprains has also stifled his progress.

Ben Gordon, Bulls (14.80 to 13.93) Gordon won the Sixth Man award a year ago thanks to a series of electric fourth quarters, but has had trouble finding the range this season. Despite a recent stretch of three straight 30-point games, Gordon's points per minute are well down from a year ago and he's earning fewer free-throw attempts.

Showing signs - These guys might not be setting hearts aflutter, but their slow, steady progress could make them quite desirable in another year or two

Viktor Khryapa, Trail Blazers (8.90 to 11.62) The new Ryan Bowen, Khryapa is not the most gifted offensive player on the planet but earned a starting job in Portland with his defense and hustle. Unfortunately, the 6-9 forward is probably headed back to the bench now that Darius Miles is healthy.

J.R. Smith, Hornets (10.84 to 13.55) Don't read too much into Smith's benching. Yes, his defense and shot selection both need work, but he still was playing much better than he had as a rookie. The real problem was that the Hornets unexpectedly found themselves in a playoff race and couldn't afford to waste any more minutes on Smith's development.

Carlos Delfino, Pistons (8.54 to 11.72) Delfino hurt his knee as a rookie and never earned Larry Brown's trust, but has cracked the Pistons' rotation in his second season. He's been slow to turn the corner offensively, however, and with his years of European seasoning was expected to have a faster learning curve than most. And in a major upset, nobody has attempted to nickname him "Mike" yet.

Luol Deng, Bulls (14.16 to 15.68) Chicago's smooth forward couldn't do any offseason work after injuring his wrist at the end of last season, so it was a surprise to see him begin the year without skipping a beat. While some would like to see him get more aggressive offensively, Deng is only 20 years old and remains among the most promising players in the game.

Chris Duhon, Bulls (9.80 to 13.03) Duhon lost his starting job just after New Year's, but he's become a much more reliable offensive player than he was a year ago. He's more than doubled his fre-throw attempts thanks to a greater willingness to put it on the floor, without making more turnovers.

Leaping forward - Now we get to the good stuff. While most of the rookies have shown halting progress, we still have a few gems from this year's sophomore class. The envelopes, please:

Delonte West, Celtics (12.27 to 15.42) Coming into this year, West had to prove two things -- that he could stay healthy and that he could play the point. Score both in his favor. While West doesn't have any assist titles in his future, he stretches defenses with his shooting and doesn't turn it over. As an added plus, he may be the best shot-blocking point guard I've ever seen.

Jameer Nelson, Magic (14.47 to 18.59) All those folks who hollered when former college player of the year Nelson lasted until the 20th pick a year ago had a point. Orlando appears to have the steal of the 2004 draft in the pint-sized point guard, who had badly outplayed the more heralded Steve Francis before hurting his foot last month.

Dwight Howard, Magic (17.23 to 19.26) It's possible the Magic got the two best players from this draft. (And yet they still stink. That's what you get for trading T-Mac.) In Howard's case, it's no big surprise. At the ripe old age of 20, the top overall pick a year ago is leading the NBA in rebounding while shooting 51.2 percent from the floor. If he ever gets a post game, watch out.

Kirk Snyder, Hornets (8.48 to 15.66) Unwanted in Utah after behaving badly and playing worse, the Jazz essentially traded Snyder for Greg Ostertag. Think they might want a do-over on that one? Snyder's sudden development has been an underrated reason beyhind the Hornets' overnight turnaround, as he's displayed the shooting and ballhandling skills that had made him so coveted coming out of college.

Kevin Martin, Kings (8.67 to 15.44) The "other" K-Mart, this Martin got a chance with Bonzi Wells's injury and ran with it, injecting much needed athleticism to the Kings' attack. He's also been surprisingly consistent with an awkward jumper that provides basketball's answer to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. In fact, Martin's .633 True Shooting Percentage leads the NBA

Robert Swift, Sonics (4.95 to 13.90) After drafting Swift out of high school, the Sonics threw him in a meat locker for a year and a half before dragging him out when Bob Weiss was fired. Lo and behold, it turns out he can play. Swift is shooting 52.6 percent from the floor and despite a slender build has proved to be quite effective on the glass.

Devin Harris, Mavericks (14.70 to 17.83) He's still stuck behind Jason Terry in Dallas, but that could change in a big way a year from now. With his quick first step and improved game management, Harris has played so well that the Mavs have to strongly consider letting Terry walk as a free agent this summer and using the money to shore up their frontcourt.

Bill Simmons of ESPN.com’s Page 2 with a terrific Pre-All-Star Weekend Q&A with the Commish

Last week, I trekked to New York City to interview David Stern and write a magazine column about the experience. Since I tape-recorded the conversation, we thought we would run the transcript as a special edition of "The Curious Guy." There were a couple of sections edited for space, and Stern's demeanor during the interview doesn't come through at times -- he was always in good spirits, and if there are parts where he seems sarcastic, it was always tongue-in-cheek (same for me) -- but overall, you can get a pretty good sense of what he's like. You'll also notice that he loosens up as the interview goes along, probably because I was leaking low levels of carbon monoxide into the office from a device I had purchased at Brookstone before the meeting. Just kidding. Here's the transcript …

Bill Simmons: You know I've advocated you for the presidency, right?

David Stern: I know, I know. Thank you very much.

BS: You're not into it?

DS : [Smiling] I'm not into politics.

BS: The people that know you say you love being the commissioner, you're always going to be the commissioner …

DS: I think you judge that on a day-to-day basis. The job and the opportunities have so changed over the years that I find it continually challenging and stimulating … when you recognize what the untapped potential is for sports, [like] North and South Korea talking about a single team and marching under a single flag in the Beijing Olympics, where but in sports? The other part that we're doing -- the section that deals with digital entertainment, the digital ecosystem, when you think about what's coming in that part of the technology world, where there are going to be 3 billion cell phones by the year 2010, and even they and their successors, which will be just called handheld devices, will be video-enabled, music-enabled, voice-enabled and Internet-enabled … that has enormous implications for everything we do, both as a society and with the NBA. It's in a vacuum, changing day by day. So we've got the technological changes occurring, we have globalization occurring, and we have enormous needs for corporate/social responsibility, so there's really a great opportunity to do well and do good at the same time.

BS: How would you compare that to 1983, when you were taking over?

DS: Look what's happened since 1983. We've gone from three networks or maybe four … I mean, the first network deal I made for cable, which I either fortunately or unfortunately made, was in 1979 (with a network that eventually became USA) for $400,000. In the intervening 20 years or so, we went from 4 million subscribers on cable to 90 million on cable and satellite … we went from five networks to 500 networks. That was the most enormous growth and we rode that growth. That was a river that came running by our door -- actually, it was more like an ocean. Another thing happened: Right now, the only building in our league that isn't new or rebuilt since 1984 is the Meadowlands, and that's planned for replacement in a couple of years. All of the sudden, we have 30 teams playing in buildings with club seats, suites, video boards, sound systems, I mean, it is almost unfair to compare the experience. And by the way, the TV thing is significant in another way. Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain labored in relative anonymity. I just read some place that Greg Oden has already appeared in two ESPN games. The third is Michael Jordan, but for a different reason than you might think. Michael Jordan and Nike made sports marketing a consumer product business as well, where teams put their marks on everything from apparel to furniture to hard goods …

BS: But you guys had a little bit to do with that, in terms of marketing players and games? You guys were the first ones that did it, right?

DS: You know, interestingly enough, when I became commissioner, everything I knew I copied from either Major League Baseball promotions or NFL Properties. They were very generous with their time, Bowie Kuhn and Pete Rozelle … the NFL had NFL Films, baseball had MLB productions and MLB Promotions, the NFL had NFL Properties, so it was sort of, "OK, we have all these people doing things in a pretty good way, what could we learn from them?" But it was the Michael Jordan/Nike phenomenon that really let people see that athletes were OK, and black athletes were OK. Defying a previous wisdom -- not only that black athletes wouldn't sell in white America, but that the NBA as a predominantly black sport could not sell in white America. And then sponsors became interested. So all these things came together at the same time. I mean, in 1985, we invited the Chinese national team -- actually, we didn't really invite them, we just said, "Some day, we hope you'll be here," and we got a telex saying, "we accept your invitation" [laughs] -- and I remember thinking, "Where are we gonna raise the $250,000 to cover this tour?" And while they were on the plane, Kaliber, the nonalcoholic beverage for Guinness, agreed to a deal with us that allowed us to cover the expenses. It wasn't always that we had a blue chip [sponsor] lined up … sponsors began looking at sports, or at least looking at us. So those three things, the marketing, the arena and the television were huge, because I refuse to say that Player X of today is better than Elgin, Wilt, Willis, Bill Russell, Havlicek, Harry Gallatin …

BS: The Horse! That was your guy, right?

DS: Yeah, that was my guy.

BS: When you took over, the number one problem was drugs, in terms of the perception of what was going on, as well as the fighting …

DS: By the way, people screw up the timing -- remember, I didn't become commissioner until 1984. The best thing that happened to us was that in April of 1983, we made a collective bargaining agreement with the players, and we came up with the salary cap for the first time. And there was more of a notion of a partnership between the owners and players. And separately, we came up with the anti-drug plan. Back then, people really appreciated the fact that the players and the owners were addressing both the financial issues and the drugs issues. It wasn't so much that we cleaned it up, because it wasn't as bad as everyone said it was, it was that we addressed it. At the time, everyone said, "Oh, it's the NBA, too much money, players making $250,000, that's ridiculous, they're black … "

BS: The drug thing was pretty bad though. You guys had a lot of good guys wiped out. Spencer Haywood, Micheal Ray [Richardson], Bernard King, David Thompson …

DS: Everyone was saying it was only us -- it was in the schools, in the prisons, the hospitals, the law firms, it was an item of public and foreign policy. I mean, America was in the grip of something, we were sort of the harbinger of what what happening, that young men were engaged in using drugs. No question. And our guys, we happened to have a young age base, our demographic fit it. So as a result, we have one of the earliest employee-assistance programs on the subject. It ultimately got outvoted, but at the time, it was the first attempt to deal honestly with the problem.

BS: So, looking at the problems since you took over -- the fighting and the drugs -- that got settled, the games got a little too chippy in the late-'80s, you fixed that …

DS: If we did one thing wrong, and we did a lot wrong, but we should have moved on the game itself, [how physical] it got, and honestly, how slow it got.

BS: You tried to do some things, some of them didn't work, like the 3-point line was too close.

DS: Yeah, the notion there was, "Well it's all about the coaches, and there's nothing we can do," and then we said that couldn't be the answer, so …

BS: And then in the early-'90s, the biggest problem was these guys coming right in and making $40 [million] or $50 million, there's like a whole lost generation of guys where the incentive was removed for them right away.

DS: I don't buy the incentive issue …

BS: Really?

DS: I never bought the public's view. I think that players play, and they compete, and it's not about incentives. More important was that it became a game -- the contract negotiations, what agent could do better for his player than somebody else's, and the economic model turned to such craziness, that you couldn't look with a straight face at anyone who wanted to invest [in a team]. And that was an issue.

BS: Well, in my opinion, the biggest problem you have now is something like that Vince Carter thing last year, where a guy is getting paid a lot of money, doesn't like his situation and goes on cruise control until it changes.

DS: I'm gonna say something that doesn't deny what you're saying. It's been going on in sports since the beginning of time.

BS: Except in football.

DS: No, in football too. The quarterback gets benched, he says there's not room enough for both of us here, I'd rather go somewhere else. It happens all the time. And it happened before you were born, and it will happen after both you and I are gone. That's just the reality. … With that said, you're right. That attitude is corrosive. The idea that a player would imply or say that he wasn't giving his all to his team is anathema to everything that a sports league stands for.

BS: So how do you fix it?

DS: That's a good question. In a way that I'm not sure I would ever get the power, or that I have the desire to -- which is just, let's take that asset away from the team and say, "That guy's gone." And I'm not so sure that …

BS: You have the legal power?

DS: No, you could get the power. But be careful what you wish for. Guys are human, they say stuff, they do stuff, they behave, they pout, I mean, I understand that -- they're unhappy, they're trained to win, to excel, to be appreciated, and then, they hit a bump, and they respond in a way that they're not even proud of. And so, I don't believe in capital punishment in effect, so it's a problem. We did indicate to the players that we would start this year small, but we said to the players, "We gotta address this issue, we need something to do," and they said, "You have that power to do it." And I said, "What power is that?" And they said, "Conduct detrimental to basketball or something," and they said, "OK."

BS: What was the difference between what happened with Vin Baker and the Celtics [Baker sought treatment for a drinking problem but continued to be paid by the team] and what happened with Chris Andersen and the Hornets [Andersen failed a drug test and was kicked out for two years]? Why doesn't the CBA allow for a team to punish a guy who's drinking and not showing up for stuff?

DS: Actually, it should allow the team to suspend that player without pay until he shows up capable of playing -- in fact, the Celtics at the time, compassionate team that they are, actually sat with him, confronted him, worked with him, wanted him to play. They weren't trying to get out of the obligation, they were looking to help the player rehabilitate and be useful to himself as well as the team. What happens with the Chris Andersens of the world is that we have a system put in; you can't have a lot of discretion, it doesn't work, there's too much at stake. So we say OK, here's the rule, take a test, if you fail it, depending on what's in it and what it shows, you're gone. Or, you come forward and it's a whole different set of rules. In fact, the first time the team pays for [rehab].

BS: I know the players' union would throw their bodies in front of this, but couldn't you just solve the problem by emulating the NFL and having non-guaranteed contracts with big signing bonuses? You just look at the [NBA's] trade landscape now and every team is trying to move these big contracts back and forth.

DS: I would say yes, but the NFL, in every given year, when you include bonuses and the contracts for that year, the NFL is probably 60 percent there, anyway.

BS: For that year, but not for an extended period of time, right?

DS: No, because the signing bonus picks up in some cases more than 50 percent of the contract. We tried to reach that in a different way. We shortened the contracts …

BS: That was good, I liked that one.

DS: And we've given teams a look with rookies' contracts -- the team has the option after two years to see if they want to extend it. So we worked around the edges, it's called "accommodation" rather than "work stoppage." And frankly, I think what we're gonna demonstrate through this deal is that the better players who are playing well are helped by the shorter contracts. Right now it's five [for a new free-agent contract] and six [for someone re-signing with his own team]. It used to be six and seven … maybe five and four isn't a terrible idea.

BS: So you're taking baby steps.

DS: Completely.

BS: In '99 [with the lockout], you grew a beard, you dug in your heels, you were ready to cancel the season … it was almost like poker. You were hoping they would fold, you knew these guys had their money spread all these different ways, right? What was the mind-set heading into the lockout?

DS: We didn't have a business model that worked. And if we didn't make a change then, we would never make a change. The players couldn't afford it, but quite frankly, many of the owners couldn't afford it. Right now we have a system that has a cap, an individual player's cap, a rookie cap, an escrow, and a tax. And by the way, I always believed that the hard cap works for the NFL, but it doesn't work for a league with smaller rosters. [Imagine in the '80s, if teams were saying], when their contracts expired, "All right, who we gonna get rid of, Parish, McHale or Bird?" or, "Who we gonna get rid of, Kareem, Magic or Worthy?" It just didn't make sense. We always wanted a softer cap that allowed teams to retain their own free agents, but we needed to come up with a system that said, "Yes, but you can only pay them a certain amount by the years of service."

BS: I still can't believe the agents agreed to that.

DS: You know, they're smart, they're smart. This was a system that was going to pay the players more … it was about the system. The salary cap keeps going up, the average salary keeps going up. It's really about distribution, to the extent that one player doesn't take out a disproportionate amount so it remains there for the other players.

BS: The only thing you and I really disagreed on over the years, not that we knew each other …

DS: Oh, I think we disagreed on more than one thing …

BS: Well, this is the big one: what you did with the 19-year-old age limit. I just don't like it, I feel like you're the rich parents shipping the kids off to boarding school because you just don't want to deal with them.

DS: This was not a social program, this was a business issue. There was a serious sense that this was hurting our game. Having an 18-year-old player not playing, sitting on the bench, is not good for basketball. If we could have these kids develop for another year, either (A) they'd see that they weren't so good, and we'd see that they weren't so good, or (B) they would get better, and when they came, they would be able to make a contribution. And that would improve the status of basketball. … For us, the opportunity to make them older and to assign players to other leagues so they could get minutes was a good thing. The other thing was that draft picks are very valuable. And the opportunity to see Darko Milicic, Martell Webster, Gerald Green, Kwame Brown, you name it, any high draft pick, for one more year, will in some cases move players up in the draft and in some cases move them down. And that's a good business issue, and ultimately leads to having better basketball players on the roster to make the basketball better. Is it potentially unfair to a player who could have come in right away? Yup. We can go both ways on it. Actually, if it winds up helping the colleges, that isn't a terrible thing.

BS: You also might have the guy going to college, starting to date someone on campus and thinking, "Eh, maybe I'll stay for one more year," and all of a sudden he's in college for two years.

DS: You know what? From a business perspective, the fact that he ends up being more experienced, picks up another move or two, gets to be known because he took his team to the NCAA -- I mean, Carmelo Anthony "The High School Senior" compared to Carmelo Anthony "The College Freshman" was a huge difference, we had an NCAA champion … and people were killing us for it, they were saying, "Oh, the basketball's terrible because the players are too young, they don't have the requisite skills, they don't have this, they don't have that." Actually, some do, some don't, a year later they're going to be better, [plus] the opportunity to send them down, like a Gerald Green, to get minutes so the team could say, "You know what, he looked good. He got his rhythm back, he got his confidence back, he got to play a few minutes." That was the whole idea. This last collective bargaining agreement was about basketball and about player reputation. It wasn't about the money.

BS: What's the next one gonna be about?

DS: I would say the next one is going to be about the same thing. We're OK.

BS: Well, it seems like you're going to have a lot of money coming in over the next five years …
DS : [Deadpans] Why thank you.

BS: From avenues that you didn't know you were going to have.

DS: Who knows? Could we pick up a percentage point or two so teams could be more profitable than they already are? That's a good old-fashioned money negotiation -- that's a nice negotiation to have. Everyone knows that if you can keep on making money, everyone's happy.

BS: You were a big Knicks fan growing up.

DS: I was a big Knicks fan.

BS: You could have gone either way breaking in [as a lawyer during the '60s] -- players' union or the NBA route, right?

DS: Actually, I used to make that argument. You'll laugh about this: I represented the NBA at a relatively young age, and we would be in fights with lawyers from the Players Association, and I would tell them, "Hey look guys, I understand the passion for your argument. But just remember one thing -- if the NBA had knocked on your door before the Players Association did, and the Players Association had knocked on my door before the NBA, we'd be on opposite sides here. So let's not get carried away here."

BS: So you always saw that side because you were a fan.

DS: I understand their side. I understand.

BS: Now, how do you shut off that switch? You reach a certain point here and you can't root for a certain team, you have to be impartial at games, just kinda sit there …

DS: It is ridiculous to sit there. I have a new mantra at games. I watch the game management, I watch the referees, I watch the coaches meeting, I watch the courtside signage, I watch the security for fans and players alike. I root that the game should not be marred by a fight, should not be marred by a bad injury to a player, should not be marred by a critical incorrect call determining the outcome of a game. If you can leave with all of that, you can go home happy.

BS: As a leader, are you one of those guys who has to make every decision, or do you delegate trust to like six or seven people? Because it's usually one of the two.

DS: I would answer that I delegate, and then I episodically micromanage.

BS: Interesting.

DS: That is to say, there's so much going on in this place that I have great confidence in the people that we have.

BS: So were you watching when the Artest melee happened?

DS: I actually was.

BS: What was your first reaction? Pick up the phone or just stare in shock?

DS: I said, "Holy [mouths a swear word]." And then I called [assistant commissioner] Russ [Granik] and said, "Are you watching our 'blank' game?" He said no, I said, "Well turn our blank game on, you're not gonna believe it." It was Friday night, 10:45 or thereabouts [sighs] …

BS: What time did you go to bed that night?

DS: I went to bed relatively early. Like 12:30, 1. The tape was at my door at 6 o'clock [the following morning].

BS: Was that the biggest thing that happened since you became commissioner? Or would you say Magic?

DS: In retrospect, [Artest] was big because it showed some fundamental flaws in fans, and the risks that are attached to a game. But it was pretty cut and dry, I think, in what we had to do. Magic was a situation in which our league was put at risk in a big way. This one [Artest] was like, how many thousands of times can you watch the same footage? In some ways, it was like the perfect storm. The hassling wasn't broken up fast enough, the players were misbehaving, there was a player lying on the scorer's table getting a tummy rub, there's a fan who may or may not have belonged there tossing a beer and just happened to hit the guy, and then he goes there and wasn't stopped by anybody. But in some ways, what turned my stomach more was the sight of fans standing at the vomitorium feeling free to pour their libations on our players. Oh, criminal activity -- a guy tossing a chair? I mean, that was inexcusable. But to me, it was a quick lapse of judgment, a wild, uncontrollable melee, and some very bad behavior by fans who thought that some force had been unleashed and they could avoid any civilized norm. Honestly, it was like, "OK, we're gonna deal with it. You can't do this, that's why security is there, we're gonna deal with the [responsible] fans, we're gonna fine the fans … we're gonna define in a better way what behavior is going to be, we're gonna define exactly where security should be posted, and we're going to examine the issue of alcohol to the extent that it may have played its part."

BS: So all that stuff was cut and dry.

DS: Yeah, as far as I was concerned.

BS: Where the Magic thing had a few wrinkles to it.

DS: Exactly. Before Magic announced that he was HIV-positive, there was a young kid in Indiana named Ryan White who wasn't allowed to go to school because he was HIV-positive, so this was a country that was very much attuned to a bad reaction. So long story short, as far as I'm concerned with Magic Johnson, because HIV was now attached to the face of a beloved athlete, it changed the face of AIDS in this country. Remember, we said he was going to play. We didn't say that lightly, we went out and hired the best doctors and medical people we could find, we spent every night here in the office, it was not an easy situation. But if Magic wasn't allowed to be play, did that mean we therefore had to test everybody, so then we would have to get rid of all the players who were HIV-positive?

BS: Was that the saddest day you've had on the job when you found out?

DS: Yeah, yeah. Because we didn't know …

BS: Because at the time, you're thinking, "God, he's got like 2-3 years left … "

DS: And I had just been with him in Paris! The Lakers played in the McDonald's championship in 1991, I think it was … and we came back from Paris during the exhibition season, and the next thing I know, we had a decision to make. I was on my way to Utah to announce the All-Star Game, and people look back on it now and they forget what it was like back then, HIV was a huge thing … and so we decided that I was going to L.A. and standing next to Magic because he was our Magic, and it was sort of like, "That's it."

BS: What was the moment in the first 10 years when you realized that the ceiling for the league was much higher than you imagined? Just in terms of the global potential and the financial potential?

DS: Actually, it's a funny story -- just before I became commissioner [in 1983], that was the year we were reduced to four regular-season games on CBS. There was a consent decree that said networks are not allowed to sell games internationally that they didn't produce themselves -- when CBS cut back to four, it meant that the international market was suddenly starved for regular-season games. So some very nice gentleman knocks on my door from Italy one day and says, "I'm here." And I said, "What do you want?" And he says, "I want to buy games. I used to buy them from CBS." So I said, "You want to buy our games?" So he says, "How much are they?" I said, "How much did you pay before?" He said, "$5,000."
So I said, "$5,000 a game?" He said, "Absolutely." So I said, "That's our price, too!" [Laughs] So we were suddenly in the international distribution business -- and it just sort of began over a period of time to sink in.

BS: What about what's going on with the Knicks right now?

DS: What about it?

BS: Well, they're the signature team in the league. They were your favorite team growing up. You have to deal with Knicks fans all the time here, just on a day-to-day basis …

DS: Separate issue. Everybody, I can't go anywhere in New York without someone saying, "Commissioner, can you do us a favor?" And I say, "Don't ask, I know what the question is." But that's great, it shows that people care about the Knicks. They're an important franchise because all of our franchises are important. But our league went through its greatest period of growth when the Celtics, the Lakers, the Pistons and the Bulls were all doing great. The Knicks were doing better compared to right now, but we've had some down days in New York as well.

BS: So you're not going to invoke the Ted Stepien Clause and give them draft picks [to make up for the damage]?

DS: [Trying not to laugh] No, no, absolutely not, nothing. [Editor's note: Stepien nearly ran the Cavs into the ground in the late-'70s and early-'80s.]

BS: How bad did somebody have to be as an owner that you had to give his team compensatory draft picks?

DS: No no no … to induce someone to buy the team [from Stepien], which had been denuded by certain trades of its assets, I think we slotted them a draft pick. That was a league decision, the board voted on it.

BS: That was always the watershed moment for bad management.

DS: And we put in a rule: Every trade has to be approved. And that is still a rule.

BS: Really? So if you thought the [recent] Jalen Rose trade was ridiculous, you would have said, "No, you can't do that"?

DS: No, no … I mean, Ted was just trading away the future of the franchise …

BS: For lousy guys.

DS: Well, I don't want to say that, but for undervalue.

BS: What do you think of the new breed of owner that came in over the last few years? These guys come in, they put themselves at the forefront, they market themselves, they overspend for the teams, they're always coming up with stuff, they're chartering planes …

DS: You need a lesson in history. What would you call Ted Turner? Was he a new breed or an old breed? Remember, we had him in 1977 -- there was no one as swashbuckling and quirky and great as him. What about Jerry Buss? Our owners have always been wealthy -- the thing you're focusing on more is the new breed that becomes the face of the franchise.

BS: Well, I don't remember that happening before recently, not even with Ted Turner.

DS: But you know what? It depends. In some cases, if you go back historically, Ben Kerner was the face of the Atlanta Hawks. Walter Brown was the face of the Celtics. But by and large, I think it's a good thing when fans go to sleep at night thinking that there's an owner who's worrying about some combination of the entertainment experience and the team's well-being.

BS: Yeah, Paul Gaston owned the Celtics for many years and I never felt like he was emotionally committed to the team, whereas I really like Wyc [Grousbeck]. I feel like he lives and dies with each game.

DS: That's right, and that's important. It could be the coach, the general manager, the owner, it's always good for the fans to know that there's someone who's engaged, someone who cares a lot about the team.

BS: OK, you know I love joking about conspiracy theories …

DS : [Smiling] It's a crime!

BS: I know it bothers you.

DS: It's a crime!

BS: But you know I'm having fun with it.

DS: That's OK, be my guest.

BS: The '85 lottery, Patrick Ewing …

DS: Oh, you mean the freeze-dry lottery?

BS: What was it, you carbon-freezed the Knicks' envelope so you knew which one would get the first pick. Is that your favorite conspiracy theory?

DS: I suppose so.

BS: That was a pretty good one whoever came up with it. When you pulled the envelope out, you must have been happy that it was the Knicks, from an economic standpoint.

DS : [Fighting off a smile] I have no comment. Fifth Amendment. If our teams are happy, I'm happy.

BS: What about when you told MJ that he had to retire for 18 months because of his gambling?

DS: In my living room.

BS: I believe that one, by the way. I don't believe the frozen envelope, but I believe the MJ one.

DS: In my living room. My wife wants to know where she was that day.

BS: I never heard the living room part.

DS: Oh, yeah! Go back to when it started. My wife says, "Where was I?"

BS: So you didn't do that?

DS: No. I promise.

BS: But you were excited when he came back?

DS: I was surprised.

BS: Were you really?

DS: Yeah, I really was. I was on a skiing vacation in March and someone said Michael was coming back, I was like, "Get out of here." He called me when he retired but he didn't call me when he was coming back.

BS: When he retired, did you try to talk him out of it?

DS : [Making a face] Noooo. I may look dumb, but I'm not crazy.

BS: What would be bad about you saying, "Are you sure you want to do this? You're in the prime of your career … " I mean, you have a relationship with him, right?

DS: Because I felt one way and one way alone when he retired: "Hey, if that's what you want, you earned it, great! You should have the right to do whatever you want to do. Whether our business hurts our not, you've made your contribution." And then he went to play baseball and I said, "Great! You want to try do that, that's terrific, too." And then he wanted to come back, so, "OK, why not?"

BS: The other thing you're not happy with me about …

DS: I'm happy with everything!

BS: Well, you don't like my WNBA jokes. Although I did write about it very fairly I thought.

DS: You know what? I believe that I'm gonna watch, as you have aspirations for your daughter, that your new-age sensitive side is ultimately going to emerge, so that I have not given up on your soul yet. And the one thing I do know is that, if you see it from our perspective, you'll at least understand it from our side. We have as a sport the best of all worlds -- more young women and more men play basketball than any other team sport. And we thought that having women play and staying in as participants and having female role models would make them more likely to follow basketball. Men and women. And an interesting thing has happened since the WNBA came into effect. You would never have seen Diana Taurasi with Emeka Okafor on the cover of Sports Illustrated. You never used to see USA Today talk about letters of intent with high school girls. You never saw top-25 high school girls teams. And you never saw the diversity of college players. … The basketball being played in the WNBA is much better than it was 10 years ago. John Wooden says it's the best basketball on the planet. … It's probably the last and best shot for a successful women's professional sports league.

BS: So you're sticking with it?

DS: We're celebrating our 10-year anniversary this year. And we're opening up a team in Chicago, and we're in negotiations for others.

BS: My only problem with the WNBA is that I feel like it's being shoved down my throat a little bit.

DS: It's being assisted. That's a fair point. But it does have our name on it -- the WNBA. The National Basketball Association. So it's our product. And it's the best women's basketball in the world, just as the NBA is the best men's basketball in the world. And from a business perspective, it gives us an opportunity to grow our audience for the NBA in a way that baseball, football and hockey don't have as it gets women. And it's also the right thing to do, but I won't get into that, I'll keep it as a business matter because the idea that young women like your daughter would have strong role models rather than be relegated to wearing little blue suits to play only field hockey because that's a girl's game and they shouldn't sweat the way the boys do. So it's an interesting development for our time as well.

BS: The only part I don't understand about that is why you wouldn't gear the teams toward cities with established women's basketball traditions. Like why wouldn't Tennessee have a team?

DS: We're getting smarter. The reality was, we started it to get off the ground with NBA franchises. What we're doing now is moving it out of the NBA model, so that now, there's independent ownership in Washington, Connecticut and Chicago. And that's sort of the model.

BS: Let's talk about the referees in the NBA: This is my least favorite thing about the league right now. I just don't feel they're good enough.

DS: Well, we scrub the college ranks and the high school, we bring people in -- even a guy like Dick Bavetta worked in the CBA for 11 years, guys can't even come to be referees until they're in their 30s. Now we have the summer leagues, the development leagues and the WNBA all working with three-person rotations, together with the college experience as well, to watch all of our applicants with game experience. When they get in the NBA, it's rare for a guy in his first few years to be ranked well by the coaches. Or anybody. We make sure they're in physical shape. We make sure they're trained. And for purposes of their development, they are the most watched and viewed metro-sized work force in America. That is to say, every call, judgments are made whether it was correct or not, whether they were in the right position, whether they're working well in teams, and then they're ranked not only by us and by our referee department and our basketball offices, but by the coaches and the general managers. At a certain point, we're dealing with human beings in nonstop action places, and the camera usually doesn't lie … and with the vision of hindsight, they were wrong. And that's not a pleasing event, OK? All you can do is try by all of the above and then review it with them, try to lower the number of those incorrect goals, and work to the goal where you could have a pool where it wouldn't matter who you sent out of the pool, the game was called the same. But that's just a goal. It's an ongoing issue. And each one of our officials wants to be perfect. So if there's a failure, it's a collective failure -- the absence of perfection, and our absence to devise a system where there is perfection.

BS: The biggest difference since when I was a kid going to the games, and you knew [guys] like Earl Strom and Darrell Garretson, it seemed like just the way they dealt with the players was more personal, there was more leeway and stuff like that. Now it's like they're all coming out of a factory, they're all in fantastic shape …

DS: Here's the problem -- you're right. Up to a point. We did go through a period where we didn't deal with the players as well as we could have personally, and we're moving back to that in terms of communicating. But listen to what I said before -- we want to come to a place where, no matter who you send, you get the same game. So when a referee becomes a personality who's bigger than the game, who's gonna call it his way and have a certain level of rough justice that he administers, that's absolutely the opposite of what you have to want if you are running a bunch of referees. So what do you say? We want you to be in great shape. We want you to look professionally and carry yourself in a certain way. We want you to deal with the players and coaches in a professional manner. We want you to be in the right place at the right time. And of course, we would like you to make the right call. And if they do that even 94 percent of the time, that means that six out of 100 calls or non-calls or missed calls are going to be there every night. [Bangs desk] And believe, we've had several this year where games were decided on the basis of wrong calls. [Bangs desk again] OK? And believe me, I hear it from the owners.

BS: Well, at least you got passed by football finally. All right, here's my biggest question of the day … well, other than wondering when you're going to grow back facial hair. I really want you to do it one more time.

DS: I used to do it every summer just for kicks depending on the length of my vacation.

BS: It brings so much joy to my life. Anyway, where do you go in the back room in the [NBA] draft? What's back there?

DS: Food!

BS: What does it look like?

DS: We'll invite you back there. Because we do it in the old Garden, there's a room downstairs where the lawyers are, where Marty Blake is, the phones are operating, they're talking, it's like a boiler room. There's a guy on top getting ready for the next pick that he has to drop into the board. There's a producer with his headset on talking to the truck. We've got two or three television sets on, one is at the arena, one has got the footage, one has got something else. And then there's a bunch of couches and seats where we sit around, we bring in sponsors or moms of the players who I know …

BS: So you're doing a lot of handshaking.

DS: A lot of handshaking.

BS: So you're not just sitting there watching TV with some butler bringing you stuff?

DS: No no no, we're hustling, we are hustling -- it's an important day for sponsors.

BS: Does that day set the record for most hands you shake in a day?

DS: No -- All-Star Week. We're warming up on my schedule right now. Starting on Wednesday, I go from the Houston Chronicle to the Jam Session for several hours, and that's the light day, dinner dates on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then on Thursday, gone. It's wall-to-wall from Thursday at 8 to Sunday at 10 p.m. …

BS: Planned out by the minute almost?

DS: By the 15-minute. To the point where the only question is, "Make sure that I have a fresh shirt so that, in the afternoon, I can change for the game." Very major decision.

BS: Plus, you could get like mustard on your shirt …

DS: Regularly. That's why I don't eat at these events, because, usually, if I were gonna eat, what I would do first is just walk into a room and just dip my tie into the mustard because, invariably, that's what I do. So it's like, for that period of time, I really try to say, "OK, David, let's at least keep the tie and the shirt looking OK."