Photo Credit: Screenshot/ESPN

David Stern Tried To Stop LeBron James’ ‘The Decision’ Broadcast

On July 8, 2010, ESPN had its infamous live-broadcast of LeBron James’ decision, where he eventually announced that he would sign with the Miami Heat.

“In this fall… this is very tough… in this fall I’m going to take my talents to South Beach and join the Miami Heat. I feel like it’s going to give me the best opportunity to win and to win for multiple years, and not only just to win in the regular season or just to win five games in a row or three games in a row, I want to be able to win championships. And I feel like I can compete down there.”

While the broadcast drew insanely high ratings for something like that, with an average of 9.948 million people watching the show in the United States, and 13.1 million watching at the time of James’ announcement, LeBron had to face a lot of criticism for the prolonged wait until his actual decision, as well as the show itself. The broadcast also caused Cleveland fans to burn jerseys and other LeBron James branded things as well as Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert to write a now-infamous letter expressing negative opinions toward James.

Zach Lowe now spoke with author (“The Soul of Basketball” ) Ian Thomsen on his podcast “The Lowe Post” about how former commissioner David Stern was not a fan of The Decision, and even tried to stop it before it started.

“It was terrible,” Stern would say. “It was terrible on its own. It is fair to say that we knew it was going to be terrible, and we tried very hard for it not to happen.”