Columnist Dean Juipe: NBA's Stern not unlike Rome's Nero

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at [email protected] or 259-4084.

Nero fiddling as Rome burned has had a metaphoric shelf life of more than 2,050 years.

It has always been a picture that's easily understood. There's Nero, arrogant to an extreme, playful and giddy if not passionately immersed in his own little world as everything around him deteriorates in flame and destruction.

Despite his position of authority, he's so removed from reality that he fails to react to the crisis outside his door and is apparently indifferent to its actual gravity. From his secluded perspective, he's having a good time and that's all that matters.

If the National Basketball Association lockout isn't resolved by Thursday's deadline and the season is canceled, future generations will have a companion tale that can forever be linked to the bumbling Nero. And in the role of pompous emperor will be none other than NBA commissioner David Stern.

While Nero had his violin, Stern had his skis.

He's finally back in his New York office, but for the previous two weeks Stern was skiing in Aspen at a time when resolving the dispute should have occupied his every waking minute. Even now with the drop-dead date only hours away, he comes across as detached and somewhat unconcerned.

If there is no resolution, Stern -- unbeknownst to him, as it was with Nero -- will leave a sorry legacy. He failed to see the obvious at the defining moment of his professional career.

While others are attempting to inch the envelope toward an effective compromise, Stern is preparing a speech to the league's 29 team owners in which he adamantly calls for the cancellation of what remains of the season. He'll tack on a vague outline about where the NBA goes from here.

Like Stern on the slopes or even in his career, it'll be all downhill for the NBA if it permanently closes the book on the 1998-99 season. An industry that produces $2 billion a year in revenue will lose its hold on the public and cease to be the money machine it has for most of its 52 years.

The legal entanglements are almost unimaginable should the NBA suspend operations and then attempt to reopen for a 1999-00 season with players not tied to the NBA Players Association. The dollar figure on the multiple lawsuits will be in the billions, with everyone from ball boys to TV networks looking for a slice of compensation.

Likewise, a cancellation of the season will have the players studying a handful of almost absurd options. These not only include the simple, like decertifying the union or calling for a rank-and-file vote on the issues, but also the complex, such as making themselves available should a new league emerge that has the wherewithal to support some 350 players at a good $1 million a pop.

Callously, Stern plays his figurative fiddle as the commotion builds around him.

"Will the NBA survive?" he rhetorically replied to a USA Today inquiry on the subject of canceling the season. "Yes. It may not have the same players, the same ticket prices or the same TV deal. But it will be a league and it will recoup."

Nero probably said something similar to his aides about Rome as it was being torched and ruined. And while the great city did recover, history has never forgotten the man who lost track of his priorities when the stakes were the highest.

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