C'mon David Stern. Paper Train It Before You Take It For a Walk in the Meadowlark

The NBA has it made. They have the smallest rosters, the easiest to maintain playing surface, the cheapest uniforms and equipment. And, most importantly, Chinese people love the game and according to Forbes magazine, watch it by the millions on mobile devices, which may one day translate into a Baztrillion dollar TV deal. Ok, I made up "baztrillion", but an American guy made up Almond Chicken, so we're even. I think.
But I loathe the NBA's version of basketball, culture and pecking order. This hasn't always been the case. Like many rowdy Detroit kids, I identified with the Bad Boys and followed Dennis Rodman's career even when he was playing for the despised Chicago Bulls. Rodman was like Clyde Drexler and Darby Crash had a kid with Evel Knievel and PT Barnum.
Now you couldn't get me to sit down and watch an NBA contest unless Julie Benz was a Laker Girl and was sending me jello shots in the second row with the T-shirt gun.

I don't have any idea why the average dunk makes the Top Ten on Sportscenter anymore. They happen 30 times a game and they count for the same amount of points as an uncontested layup when the defender is too winded from shooting his Mega-Ade commercial the night before and a regular season post-game press conference is more like a runway show for Italian haberdashers.
The aforementioned Dennis Rodman drew attention to himself to be sure, but it was not an act. I saw Dennis out at clubs with no entourage, no cameras (I realize that's impossible now), no fanfare (especially the ones that were of questionable standing with the Michigan Liquor Control Commission). And he was the NBA Defensive Player of the Year. The hard working "Selke" guy, not the glamor guy launching threes from everywhere in the arena.
Now the people who play the game are bigger than their team, bigger than the game, in some cases even bigger the the entire city and state that launched their career. Yes, I'm talking to you, Simon LeBron.

They aren't athletes, per se, anymore. They're brands. And while that can be said of a handful of athletes in all the other sports combined, it's what fuels the NBA. And the NBA is looking to wring even more money out of these bipedal billboards. The latest ? Creating jerseys with player nicknames on the back.You can read more about that if you care to here.
I happen to think if you're one of the tens of millions of kids around the world who play organized basketball who actually make it to the biggest, most lucrative stage, you'd like to honor the name of your mother or father or grandparents that helped you make it to being one of the approximately 370 guys to achieve that plateau. Not some name bestowed upon you in a movie by Spike Lee (Ray Allen is gonna wear J. Shuttleworth after the character he played in He Got Game). That's what imdb is for, Ray. The league is already plenty playground enough, except in the last five minutes when there are more timeouts than a month at the Duggar's house.

                                                            They'd have a couple NBA teams 
                                                            if these kids were European.
 Does the NBA really need to go there? Maybe if they fixed the game first, and actually figured out a way to make more than four teams competitive every year. It's like a fistful of Globetrotters and a map full of Washington Generals right now.
And I can dig the Globetrotters having nicknames on their jerseys, because they are entertaining to begin with. Remember what it looked like the last time a competitive league tried the nickname gimmick? I do.