David Stern declined comment yesterday on commentator Bryant Gumbel’s assertion that the NBA commissioner has come off like a “modern plantation overseer” during the lockout.
Using racially tinged remarks, Gumbel said on his HBO show Monday night that Stern is “a modern plantation overseer treating NBA men as if they were his boys.”
Stern was a former board member of the NAACP in the 1990s, and during his tenure, the NBA has been given high marks for its minority hiring practices and minority ownership.
The attack on Stern also may not have helped the Players Association in the labor battle, because Gumbel’s remarks could be turning Stern into a more sympathetic figure.
“Stern’s version of what has been going on behind closed doors has of course been disputed, but his efforts were typical of a commissioner who has always seemed eager to be viewed as some kind of modern plantation overseer, treating NBA men as if they were his boys,” Gumbel said on his show “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel. “It’s part of Stern’s M.O., like his past self-serving edicts on dress code and the questioning of officials. His moves were intended to do little more than show how he’s the one keeping the hired hands in their place.”
Gumbel, 63, admitted his remarks would cause a negative reaction but said he didn’t care.
This isn’t the first time Gumbel used racial rhetoric in his sports commentary. In 2006, he warned incoming NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, “Before he clears out his office, have Paul Tagliabue show you where he keeps [union director] Gene Upshaw’s leash.”
During the 2006 Winter Olympics, Gumbel said, “Try not to laugh when someone says these are the world’s greatest athletes despite the paucity of blacks that make the World Games look like a GOP convention.”
Lastly, Gumbel prefaced a question to the president of the National Urban League in a 1994 interview about race relations, “In the wake of the somewhat new hostilities bred in the Reagan ’80s . . .”
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Amar’e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony are expected to be part of a barnstorming tour of NBA all-stars starting next month in London and China.