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On the day of the Early Bird Rights hearing in New York, NBA commissioner
David Stern went on ESPN New York 98.7 FM to talk about the NBA playoffs --
but he was obviously asked about the league's case against the players'
association.


Stern hinted that the union, meaning the Knicks as well, will not win its
appeal, which is attempting to secure Early Bird Rights for players with the
team that acquired them during the season. In the Knicks' situation, those
two players are Jeremy Lin and Steve Novak.


"The reality here is that it doesn't really affect the Knicks as against
Jeremy Lin," Stern said. "It just means that the union is trying to say, 'We
want to win this, even though the words of the agreement don't support it,
because we'd like the Knicks to have some more money to spend on players.'
And that's always been a contention between the NBA and the players. We try
to spend what we agreed to spend, and the union says, 'Yeah, but we think you
agreed to spend more,' and then we litigate about it.'"


Stern said he doesn't see why the Knicks would need more salary-cap space for
another key acquisition, when, in his opinion, they're already stacked.


"I mean, on top of Jeremy and on top of Amare [Stoudemire] and on top of
Carmelo [Anthony] and on top of [Tyson] Chandler and on top of [Iman]
Shumpert and on top of ...," he said. "I mean, the Knicks are loaded."


Regarding Lin, Stern said he expects him to be a "really good" player for the
Knicks.


"Clearly, I have never in all of my number of years seen a phenomena like
Jeremy Lin, which I thought was spectacular for Jeremy and for the Knicks and
for the league," Stern said. "And he was playing at an extraordinary high
level, one that I think most NBA teams didn't expect him to do it. Hopefully
he's healthy again -- I saw him recently and he said he is -- and so the
Knicks are going to have a high-performing point guard. That's great. That's
great for the league and it's great for the Knicks."




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