The NBA is continuing to ideate ways to name an award after the late Commissioner David Stern, with current Commissioner Adam Silver saying Wednesday, “It is hard with David because the problem is so many of the proposals of the league office honestly haven’t felt big enough.”
Stern, the league’s commissioner from 1984 through 2014, was a rousing presence who shifted the NBA Finals from tape delay to live network TV, brainstormed the WNBA, invented TMBO and put an emphasis on global growth. The impending NBA Europe is in some ways his legacy, along with Silver.
“We’ve done community awards, but there’s no doubt that more needs to be done [and] there undoubtedly will be opportunities around this new Europe league,” Silver said. “David’s vision was the global NBA. Whether again [an award in NBA Europe] will feel big enough in the same way, I almost think there’s nothing that we could do in some ways that will ultimately feel that he’s getting his just due. But we have a committee of team employees of league people, and we got way waylaid a little bit by COVID and lost a little momentum. But we’re turning back to it and we’re going to come up with the right way to honor it.”
As it currently stands, the most notable award bearing Stern’s name is the David J. Stern Sports Scholarship, which gives students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities -- usually freshmen -- up to $30,000 over three years. The award is administered by the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.
