David Stern: N.B.A. Superstars, Growth and Lockouts: The David Stern Years

After playing minor league baseball for a season, the pull of basketball lured Jordan back.

The 1998 Lockout (1998)The good feelings from the 1983 collective bargaining agreement could only last so long.

“You’ve got to give David Stern a lot of credit,” said Will Perdue in an oral history of the lockout.

“He did a good job of dividing players, dividing agents, and dividing players from agents.

Fan interest in the game plummeted, and the early-to-mid 2000s were down years for the N.B.A.