NBA Commissioner David Stern apologized to fans and supporters for failing to get a win for LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers
David Stern talking to reporters after failing to engineer a LeBron/Kobe Finals.
yesterday in their game 6 loss to the Orlando Magic in the Eastern Conference Finals.
“I take the blame for this loss. I drew up a game-plan for my refs that I thought was an effective way to neutralize the Magic defense and present problems for their many offensive weapons, but it wasn’t enough to get the win. We have the best player in the world playing at the peak of his abilities, and his surrounding cast just didn’t step up with enough bad calls to get him into the next round.”
Stern felt that the main reason for the Cavs’ failure to advance was “the refs inability to get Dwight Howard to foul out fast enough.” He continued, “I thought that foul that was called on Howard at the end of game 3, when he clearly had a clean block on LeBron’s desperation three-pointer, was a great clutch moment for the refs. I thought that would be enough to give that game to the Cavs and break the will of the Magic, but unfortunately the refs couldn’t come up with enough plays like that in this series.”
When asked how he felt about the Magic reaching the Finals, Stern said, “You know, you work all year to get your team to the Finals, and when you fall short, well… there’s just not much you can say. I wish there was something I could take from this experience, but at this point we’re just kind of exhausted and out of ideas for getting LeBron into the Finals. I just feel sorry for all the fans who had to watch all of those terrible Kobe and LeBron puppet commercials and don’t even get the consolation of seeing them play each other for the title. When you try your hardest to reach a goal and still fall short, well that’s hard to take. The refs are taking this one hard. I just want to say that they should hold their heads high knowing that they did all they could to try to win this one for LeBron and the Cavs.”
Stern concluded the press conference by vowing to start planning immediately for a Kobe/LeBron Finals in 2010. “I don’t know how we’re going to do a better job of trying to get LeBron and Kobe into the Finals than we did this year, but trust me, we’re gonna put our best men on this and we’ll make it happen.”
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