10 Questions for David Stern

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How has being the commissioner of the NBA affected your personal life? —Raphael Katz, New York City
Early on, it affected my ride on the train, because everyone had a solution that they wanted to propose to me. Over the years, it's effected my ability to go places privately. It's very intense, it takes away form other aspects. It is difficult, to a certain measure, for kids and spouses to deal with celebrity, in terms of the demands it makes on you and the absence of privacy.

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The Seattle Sonics are probably going to move to Oklahoma City. You appear to be sending the message that communities need to shoulder enormous financial burdens to build arenas (which some think are unnecessary), while you let team owners make enormous profits. We are losing confidence in you and the league. How do you respond? —Tim DeJong, Cleveland
I welcome the criticism. I would say that a good number of our franchises are not profitable. So there are many owners who would raise their eyebrows at the charge that they are making enormous profits. I think that the ideal partnership is a private/public corporate partnership, and in Seattle, basically, the City Council said, "No." In fact, it engineered legislation that would make it difficult if not impossible for them to give any aid to the building of a new arena. And the state legislature said, "No." So we never got to the debate as to what the fair shouldering of responsibility should be, because we never were engaged in it. So that's my answer there. And, in an interesting kind of way, it's OK if somebody says they don't want to spend the money, they don't want to do the legislation, they don't want to have a referendum.

Do you feel the NBA has lost ground in popularity to other sports because it has become too synonymous with hip-hop ostentation? —Jens Jensen, Chicago
I don't think so. I think one watches the Grammys, one watches the fashion shows, and the reality is that sports, music, fashion — they're global trends. I knew that to be the fact when I saw Lee Iacocca appear in a Chrysler ad with Snoop Dogg. Or when water was being advertised by 50 Cent. You know, c'mon guys. We don't court it, we don't overly promote it. Charles Barkley took me to task for having Big & Rich at the Denver All-Star Game (in 2005) because they weren't hip-hop. I'm waiting to be criticized for having Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr. as half-time entertainment [at the 2008 All-Star game] in New Orleans because it wasn't hip enough. We go with the flow, and do not have a hip-hop agenda.

What steps have you undertaken to minimize incidents or allegations of game fixing by the referees? —J. Raphael Licauco, Manila, Philippines
We're putting in new and more sophisticated computer programming and screens, to see what irregularities pop out. We're doing new background checks, in a deeper way, on a more continual basis. We're cutting off pre-game information for the referees, once they go into the locker room. We're in the process of setting up hotlines to receive particular types of information. And we're looking into a greater group of activities, some of which I would rather not publicize, but really go to insuring our game against betting irregularities.

How come the NBA is not targeting African countries like Sudan for prospective players? —Tarig Abdalla, Khartoum, Sudan
Actually, we have players from Africa. We've conducted our Basketball Without Borders program there — this will be our fourth year in South Africa. We have players from the Sudan, we have players from Senegal, we've had players from Nigeria. We actually have more games available in Africa over the air, both terrestrially and by satellite, than we do in India. We just made a deal with a telephone company so that folks in Africa can see the NBA on their cell phones when they're not watching it on TV. I think Africa is going to be the hidden gem for us.