![]() I left that meeting thinking I’d better come up with another idea because that was going nowhere. I went ahead and spoke to Stern and said, "What if.we created an old timers’ game of great former NBA players and have a Slam Dunk Contest to create a second day of events?" He really thought the idea had some merit.Įventually, he and I trotted down to Commissioner (Larry) O’Brien’s office, and to say the reception to the idea was a little underwhelming was an overstatement. It was a wake-up call trying to talk NBA to corporations who had very little, if any, interest in associating with what the NBA was at that time. My job was to be the first person to go out and try to find corporations to invest marketing dollars into the NBA. I’d only been with the NBA for a year-and-a-half. We had limited video archives and very little archival material of our sport. Part of what he was talking about was getting back in touch with the rich history of our game. A very big subplot was Stern taking office the day after this event took place. The NBA Board of Governors had already elected David Stern to become commissioner at the end of All-Star weekend. Rick Welts (former NBA director of national promotions): In 1984, we were going to Denver for the All-Star Game. We just finally concluded that we had to do something unique. But we didn’t have the markets or the television contract or ownership stability.The All-Star Game was scheduled to be played in Denver (that year). Carl Scheer MARY ANN CHASTAIN/Associated Press/Associated PressĬarl Scheer (former Denver Nuggets team president and general manager, 1974-84): You really can’t talk about the All-Star Game or Slam Dunk Contest without talking about its origins in the ABA in 1976. We were sitting around a room one day, in Virginia I think, asking how we can best represent what we thought were better players than they had in the NBA.
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