APNBA Commissioner David Stern used to be a lawyer. On Monday, he dusted off a common tactic utilized at depositions.
Stern instructed the witness not to answer a question.
At a press conference regarding the purchase of the New Orleans Hornets by New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson, ESPN’s Ed Werder tried to ask about the football team’s bounty situation and its contractual contractual stalemate with quarterback Drew Brees.
“I’m not going to allow Mr. Benson to answer that,” Stern said. (There’s no word on whether Stern then wagged his finger Mutumbo style while saying, “I’m in your head, Werder.”)
Stern justified playing defense for Benson by explaining that the press conference had nothing to do with his football team. “This is an NBA thing,” Stern said. “And if ESPN has a problem with that, they can call me at the office.”
Benson did talk about his ability to operate two franchises, and the first order of business seems to be finding a new name for one of them.
“I like would all of you to help me with this, too,” Benson said. “We want to change the name from the Hornets to something that means New Orleans or Louisiana. You know, the Hornets don’t mean anything.”
Feel free to make some suggestions in the comments.
Channel Finder
The New Orleans Bounties.
Stern owned Werder/ESPN like a bauce.
The New Orleans Beignets – because Tom Benson’s face looks like a big hunk of fried dough…
The New Orleans Jambalaya!
Ed Werder- what an idiot. Have you ever heard of that old saying “there is a time and a place”. Guess what NOT THE TIME- NOT THE PLACE! Ed your the idiot in the media that the other media talks bad about. Maybe you couldn’t distinguish the difference between an NBA news conference and a NFL news conference. With dumbass questions like that your next jobs questions will be “would you like fries with that?”
They should be called the New Orleans headhunters
How about the “Bayou Bounties”
How about the “Bounty Boys”?
New Orleans Crawfish
New Orleans HeadHunters
New Orleans Mercenaries
Sinners! Get it?
Louisiana Bountiful’s. Oh that’s right Bountiful is in Utah…..
I like the idea that they’ll be changing the team’s nickname.
As far as the Saints’ bounties stuff, Stern did the right thing. It was an NBA presser and besides, what else is there to ask Benson about Bountygate at this point?
David Stern’s Jock
Ha! Great to see someone put these twits at ESPN in their place. And I didn’t realize that Ed Werder did anything for ESPN other than cover the Cowgirls.
New Orleans Jazz
Oh wait…
Hitmen?
I’d suggest Jazz, but then the team might evenutally move to some place that has absolutely no association with jazz so you’d wind up with some ridiculously named team like the Utah Jazz … oh wait …
Crawfish Crybabies
How about; the NEW ORLEANS WHO DAT
David rebuked the reporters. Sternly.
New Orleans Hurricanes
New Orleans Neanderthals. Bree’s Bountys I don’t care
how about the new Orleans brawlers
Perpetrators. Or “Perps” for short.
Babyhorse, you da’ man!
NOLA GRAS….
N.O TEMPO
New Orleans bounty hunters
New Orleans Asterisks.
New Orleans floods
The N.O explanations
N.O. GOOD.
Humor is great but most of these nicknames are so stupid, yes stupid, they don’t even deserve scoff.
sagnam…clever. That’s a great name…too bad it’ll likely never happen. +1.
I kind of like David Stern. Sometimes he does some pretty heavy handed stuff for the NBA, but one thing I’ll give him props for is that he doesn’t put up with much nonsense and he’s got a pretty good BS detector.
He comes off as one of the more straight-forward “suits” in professional sports. It’s no wonder he and Mark Cuban don’t get along – they’re cut from the same cloth in that regard.
The New Orleans Headhunters. Yeah, that sounds about right.
New Orleans Breeze (They’re the Brees knees, oops, bee….oh forget it)
New Orleans Explanations (Close 2nd for Drew)
N.O. Beads?
The New Orleans Booby Flashers
Only one question needed to be asked: Will he institute the same enforcement payout system for the Basketball Team as he had in NFL?
Once they think of a new name in the big easy, then maybe we can change the Charlotte Bobcats back to the Hornets. It means something here.
New Orleans Vieux Carre’
New Orleans Pirates
New Orleans Nuns
How about the Taints*…..oh wait, that’s already taken.
Name the team the Quicker Picker Uppers.
The Big Sleazy.
I suggest the Jango’s, Boba’s, Fett’s, or Your New Orleans Dog the Bounty Hunters.
Lawyered!
N.O. Head up their a$$
let’s see …………
Papillones
Raconteurs
Rapporteura
Furtivement
Poisson
It’s the NBA, who cares?
Nola frelons. Hornets in french
New Orleans Swamp
The New Orleans Mormons!!!
Benson, who wanted to move the saints?
How about the Benedict Arnold’s?
Meh, who cares anyway? They’ll still suck.
Ed Werder is the biggest idiot in the media. They should have revoked his right to cover these such events after a stupid question like that. What kind of response did he actually think he was going to get? He must think he is Barbra Walters or Diane Sawyer or something,,,,,,,, you know, the journalist who asks the “tough questions” and demands an answer for the “people”. What a D-Bag,,,,,, a true, legitimate D-Bag.
New Orleans Sentinels. A reference to the War of 1812. Without N.O. we might be british
New Orleans Mutiny
Hey Ed, shouldn’t you be shining Jerrahs shoes or preparing some fluff piece on the cowgirls?
New Orleans Cheetahs
“Feel free to make some suggestions in the comments.” When I red that I went into overload… but here I go any way:
1. Bayou Bounties
2. N.O. Knee-capers
Manbearpig says: Apr 16, 2012 10:46 PM
New Orleans Asterisks.
—————————-
Give it a rest.
Yeah. I just thought I’d point out that there are more comments on this one thread than there are comments posted on every ProBasketballTalk article from last week. Nobody cares about the NBA anymore. Have you tried watching an NBA game lately? Ugh.
However Since we are supposed to be poking fun at the scandal I’ll say the Bourbon Street Urinals. I don’t actually remember seeing any urinals or port-a-johns, but the smell of urine was overpowering!
New Orleans Voodoo.
The Louisiana Swamp rats!!!
9er you got it. I do not remember any urinals either but there is a lot of stuff I can not remember from my last trip to N.O.
N.O. Hangovers
How about the New Orleans “Clippers” oops thats already a team haha
Either the New Orleans or Louisiana Pelicans or Honey Bees these are state related bird and insect. I like the swarming defense of the New Orleans Honey Bees!
The NBA is more corrupt than the NFL!
New Orleans Rhythm
New Orleans Fightin’ Nutria.
Maybe if Ed Werder wants to be a real journalist – rather than just playing one on TV – he could ask a few pointed questions to Roger Goodell about the bounty story, rather than Tom Benson and David Stern:
1- Where are the 50,000 pages?
2- Where are the three years of illegal hits?
3- Where are the three years of cart offs (other than the Saints’ own Reggie Bush)?
Of course, if he asked those, maybe he would not be invited to next year’s free Super Bowl buffet.
How about a 3 team name trade?
New Orleans Jazz
Charlotte Hornets
Utah Bobcats
Oh wait, that would make too much sense.
THE NEW ORLEANS VOODOO
VooDoo or Blues, already took Jazz which would of been my first pick..