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David Stern: “We’re About To Go Into The Nuclear Winter Of The NBA”

Earlier today, the NBA players association announced it had rejected the owners’ latest offer to settle the league’s labor impasse and end the lockout, and would file for decertification. An anti-trust lawsuit against the NBA will follow, and the 2011-12 season is in more serious jeopardy than ever. And you know what that means: time for NBA commissioner David Stern to hit SportsCenter and enter the all-spin zone.

Sure enough, not an hour after the union’s announcement became official, there was Stern with Chris McKendry. He explained how that dastardly players union foiled everything. He said how the owners’ proposal never got a fair shake (while the players have been the side that’s actually made concessions), that characterizing it as an “ultimatum” was unfair (though they said their offer would get much worse if it wasn’t accepted). It was a vintage David Stern performance…and then, with the line that closes out the clip below, it became one for the ages:

Nuclear winter. Is it just us, or does Stern have to hold back a smile (or evil maniacal laugh, perhaps) while he’s saying it, like he can barely hide his glee at having come up with this one? And it is a great, evocative line: what could more effectively prepare us to go without the NBA for the foreseeable future? We think “nuclear winter,” we think of a landscape utterly without hope, or even signs of life, so thinking of the NBA’s nuclear winter…well, we’re not expecting basketball for a while. And it looks like that’s exactly what we’ll get. Hey, no one said Stern doesn’t have a way with words.