David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…So Stern had to lobby them? Hey, this is going to be really good for the sport, you should let us do this? Totally. It was great for the sport and like that 1992 Dream Team, it was a big focus of The Last Dance, a big part of Michael's career, and everybody involved. That was huge. I remember watching that on TV. It was the biggest event of 1992—professional players finally being allowed to play in the Olympics—and this is the greatest team ever assembled. That was all Stern. On the back of that, the NBA opened up offices in (I think) 14 countries around the world to start essentially two functions. Talent development and recruitment, and (of course) we would see that. We'll talk much more about that in a minute with the modern NBA, and international players, but also just selling the product, and that's when the NBA itself and not just basketball really start to become a global phenomenon. The fourth thing that Stern does is after the next Olympics in 1996, the women had a big Olympics here led by Rebecca Lobo at the time. There had been talked around the NBA and plans on the back burner for launching a Women's League. After the 1996 Olympics, Stern really champions, you know we need to make this happen. He pushes through launching the WNBA in I believe it was 1997 (I think) when it launched. I didn't realize this either for the first eight years of the WNBA's life. It was wholly owned by the NBA. Oh, so what? They weren't individual team owners?…

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