David Stern — who spent three decades as the most successful commissioner in NBA history — underwent emergency surgery Thursday for a brain hemorrhage, according to a statement from the league.
Stern collapsed at the Brasserie 8 ¹/₂ Restaurant on West 57th Street in Manhattan at roughly 2 p.m., according to ABC. After the FDNY responded to a 911 call for a cardiac arrest at the restaurant, Stern was rushed to Mount Sinai St. Luke’s Hospital.
The 77-year-old Stern was admitted and underwent surgery.
One man who claimed to be working in the same building as the restaurant took to social media to say that Stern had taken ill and that it “doesn’t look good.” He added that his boss used a defibrillator on Stern.
“The former commissioner of the NBA David Stern just had a heart attack at my job…doesn’t look good..��” Victor Tossas-Rivera tweeted.
“A brain hemorrhage is a type of stroke,” according to WebMD. “It’s caused by an artery in the brain bursting and causing localized bleeding in the surrounding tissues. This bleeding kills brain cells.”
The news of Stern suffering a brain hemorrhage was confirmed by the league he was so instrumental in building into a behemoth.
Stern is the longest-tenured commissioner in NBA history, serving exactly 30 years before being replaced by current commissioner Adam Silver on Feb. 1, 2014.
“As commissioner, Mr. Stern built the model for professional sports in league operations, public service, global marketing, television distribution and digital technology,” Stern’s bio read on the NBA website.
“He oversaw the NBA’s extraordinary growth with seven new franchises, a more than 30-fold increase in revenues, a dramatic expansion of national television exposure and the launch of two leagues, the Women’s National Basketball Association and the NBA Development League. He negotiated the first anti-drug agreement in professional sports and introduced the salary cap system and revenue sharing to the NBA.”
A member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, Stern — worth an estimated $135 million — is married to Dianne Bock Stern and has two sons.
Born in New York City and raised in Teaneck, N.J., Stern graduated from Rutgers University and Columbia Law School. He has served on the Board of Overseers at Rutgers and is a chair emeritus of the Board of Trustees at Columbia.
