HBO’s Bryant Gumbel Paints NBA Comish Stern as Racist

The NBA lockout is an ugly thing.  David Stern has been the NBA commissioner since 1984 and has been credited with increasing the popularity of the league, but one thing he has never been accused of is being a racist.  HBO's Bryant Gumbel tried to do that is his Tuesday editorial on his show Real Sports.

The NBA players association and owners have been meeting nonstop this week.  They met for 16 on Tuesday, a meeting that didn't end until very early in the morning Wednesday, the two sides picked things right back up Wednesday at 10am.  The sides had met for a total of 24 hours in a 32 hour span, yet no news on progress yet.  David Stern has held strong on his and the owners side, while the players are also reluctant to move.

On Tuesday night Bryant Gumbel did his little editorial at the end of his show Real Sports on HBO.  In that editorial he made some comments that basically painted the NBA commissioner as a racist "plantation owner".  He is now coming under fire for the remarks by fellow journalists Michael Wilbon and Stephen A. Smith.  Both of them are of African African decent and have worked closely with the NBA over the years.  They both agree that the comments were inaccurate since Stern has done so much for the league.  Both of them also agreed that they know where Gumbel is coming from with the undertones of the statement, but as Stephen A. Smith said on the Scott Van Pelt show, the comments were highly inappropriate.