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Before the emperor of the NBA leaves his Olympic Tower office, this is the holy war that those within the San Antonio Spurs' extended family expected David Stern to eventually wage on Gregg Popovich and his program's culture. The commissioner burped that terse, threatening statement promising "substantial sanctions" to the rogue state of his totalitarian nation on Thursday night. This has been a long time coming out of the commissioner's office.

And yet, once more, Stern's tossed a temper tantrum that left everyone around him embarrassed, humiliated and wondering why he insisted on staying until February of 2014. All these years, Stern and his underlings privately complained and moaned that no one wanted to watch the Spurs, that they destroyed his TV ratings, that they were uninteresting, unappealing and impossible to market to the masses.

And now, this act of condemnation for Popovich – which resulted in a $250,000 fine for San Antonio handed down by the league office Friday evening – would be bathed in the ultimate of twisted irony: Without the Spurs' stars, Stern was selling that the NBA logo had been desecrated, that a public trust had been betrayed.

Suddenly, Stern had to issue an apology to NBA fans because Popovich sent his stars home to San Antonio at the end of a long road trip. No one in Miami bought a ticket to watch Tim Duncan and Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili, because those players are relevant to no one in Miami. Mostly, they come to watch LeBron and D-Wade, or they don't come at all. Few people watch the Spurs on national television – unless they're playing the Heat or the Los Angeles Lakers – and that's because the Spurs never deliver the dysfunction and self-destructive bents that fuel the sport's storylines.

Stern once declared that his fantasy NBA Finals would be the Lakers vs. the Lakers, and no one laughed in San Antonio because they understood Stern was stone-cold serious. And well, if there was a little "Bleep You" out of Popovich toward Stern after shipping his players back to San Antonio after five games in seven nights, it was beyond understandable.

[Kelly Dwyer: David Stern ranting again about another minor misdeed]

Back in the Spurs' glory days, it was one disrespectful act after another out of Stern.

The Spurs don't forget how the NBA's vice president of operations, Stu Jackson, directly called Bruce Bowen to warn him about how he was playing defense and threaten him with future punishments. Jackson didn't show the respect of reaching out to Spurs officials before communicating with Bowen, but bypassed them and got into the heads of one of their most important players. Phil Jackson himself couldn't have orchestrated it better on behalf of the Lakers' Western Conference championship chances.

They don't forget how one of Stern's top public-relations officials went out of her way to try to dissuade an NBA team owner from hiring a well-regarded Spurs executive as general manager. And they don't forget that once that executive got the job, she went out of her way to try to undermine his operation.

They don't forget how Stern wanted to infiltrate the inner sanctum of the Spurs with TV cameras and microphones, with the kind of phony, superficial behind-the-scenes access that went against how the franchise conducted its basketball business and kept its edge. The Spurs have been a model of efficiency and innovation that has been an immense resource for the operations of small- and big-market franchises, but the commissioner can't leverage that on TNT with Ernie, Kenny and Charles.

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