DAVID STERN

We need a system where all of our teams have the opportunity to compete and to make a few dollars. That's not a bad desire for collective bargaining for a sports league, and it's great for our fans.

It was the Michael Jordan/Nike phenomenon that really let people see that athletes were OK, and black athletes were OK. Defying a previous wisdom - not only that black athletes wouldn't sell in white America, but that the NBA as a predominantly black sport could not sell in white America.

I've never found NBA owners to be deferential. I never considered them to be reliant. All that I do is knock myself out to represent their interests the best way I can and sometimes tell them, as part of my job, what they don't like to hear.

By nature, I'm a person who always says that whatever I've done, I could've done better. But I don't dwell on it because I'm waiting for the next time something happens and try to believe that my past experience will have helped to educate me in terms of how I deal with future ones.

Free speech is against governments, not against the NBA. So the players and coaches and indeed owners have been fined for their speech, which is costly rather than free. I sort of acknowledge that there is not free speech when you agree to work in the NBA.

I actually don't hope for a legacy. I think that it impedes your ability to make the hard decisions if you sit around saying, 'How will this affect my legacy?'

I believe that everyone should participate in democracy and enjoy doing it.

I grew up in an age where women's tennis did not have similar prizes to men, and they played in complete obscurity, really, compared to the men's game.

You will ultimately be defined by the sum total of your responses to circumstances, situations and events that you probably couldn't anticipate and indeed probably couldn't even imagine. So just keep your eyes on the course and be ready to move in different directions depending upon the crises and opportunities with which you are faced.

I'm not into politics.

You walk into the playgrounds in Shanghai and Beijing, and you see youngsters who are shorter, shaking and baking and having attitude. And Jeremy Lin is going to inspire all of them.

I regret the 1998 - 99 lockout. I regret that we didn't work harder to educate our players and our owners about what the damage would be. I never can quite come up with the answer on what else we should have done, but I always blame a part of the problem on us and some part on the players.

Everyone knows that if you can keep on making money, everyone's happy.

My own basketball background was ripping up my ACL in a lawyer's league.

All I can say is you don't know what's going to be on the front page of tomorrow's newspaper. So I take no joy in what happens to another sport, whether it's about a perfect game or an issue of conduct.

I think that players play, and they compete, and it's not about incentives.

I'm not big on looking back beyond the moment in which decisions and events occur. I'm always pushing forward.

I think anyone who doesn't say that they'd like people to think that they're doing the right thing is wrong. I mean, I'd like it to be that way, but I've never allowed it to influence my actions.

I would say the referees have the toughest game to call. I would say that there's a lot of officiating done by announcers, local announcers. Sometimes you should listen to a game from both feeds, and you'd think you were listening to completely different games.

I think it's... I don't want to become a social crusader on this issue, but I think sports, male sports, has traditionally not been an inviting environment for gay men to identify themselves. But eventually... we will get to a place where it is not an issue in sports.

I'm aware that the World Cup is probably the greatest spectacle in the world of sport, and that's despite the referees that have been found to have fixed games specifically.

We couldn't get enough Jeremy Lin material in the NBA store fast enough. And when we did, it was just gone in minutes.

We have a broad array of teams. And if somebody asked me whether a team is a good buy, my response is, 'You'd better hurry up, they're going like hot cakes, and they're going to be even more valuable when we get a system that is even more sustainable.'

Our officials want nothing more than to be at the top of their professional game and make the correct call. That's what they do; that's their living, that's their pride, that's their joy. They don't achieve that because they happen to be human.

I'm persuaded that sports is the one place where the rules are pretty well set out, where fans are equal. And if you got game or you're a good official, you make it here, whether you're white or you're black.