Top 27 Quotes by David Stern

You will ultimately be defined by the sum total of your responses to circumstances, situations and events that you probably couldn't anticipate and indeed probably couldn't even imagine. So just keep your eyes on the course and be ready to move in different directions depending upon the crises and opportunities with which you are faced.

I think it's... I don't want to become a social crusader on this issue, but I think sports, male sports, has traditionally not been an inviting environment for gay men to identify themselves. But eventually... we will get to a place where it is not an issue in sports.

We have a broad array of teams. And if somebody asked me whether a team is a good buy, my response is, 'You'd better hurry up, they're going like hot cakes, and they're going to be even more valuable when we get a system that is even more sustainable.'

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.

By nature, I'm a person who always says that whatever I've done, I could've done better. But I don't dwell on it because I'm waiting for the next time something happens and try to believe that my past experience will have helped to educate me in terms of how I deal with future ones.

All I can say is you don't know what's going to be on the front page of tomorrow's newspaper. So I take no joy in what happens to another sport, whether it's about a perfect game or an issue of conduct.