Pete Rozelle was the better Commissioner IMO. David Stern #2. Stern became Commissioner the same year Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, John Stockton entered the NBA. It was the high point of the Magic vs. Bird rivalry era. Stern smartly for the sake of his league started marketing the individual star players to height the league's popularity. However, I think the NBA is no where near as popular as the NFL and that is because of the work of Rozelle who successfully handled the AFL-NFL merger, created the Super Bowl, created the salary cap to make parity possible, somehow survived Al Davis. I think the NBA has done a good job since Lebron has gone off but the stretch from 1994-1996 and 1998-2007 featured a lot of bad basketball and the referee Tom Donaghy scandal really got the NBA off lightly. I think the NBA has dabbled a little into pro wrestling when it assigned refs like Dick Bevetta to critical games. I think the Sacramento Kings were ABSOLUTELY ROBBED of a title in 2002 by the referees and I am sure the NBA didn't tell them to do it, but it didn't hurt to have the big market LA team in the Finals. So I would go 1. Pete Rozelle 2. David Stern 3. evil Jim Delany.
