Former NBA commissioner David Stern has died at 77 years old.

Stern died Wednesday, the league announced, after suffering a brain hemorrhage on Dec. 12 that required emergency surgery.

A titan of sports leadership, Stern took over as NBA commissioner in 1984 and oversaw the growth of the league from a struggling entity to an international powerhouse. When Stern took office, NBA playoff games were regularly broadcast on tape delay on CBS.

By the time he handed the reins to his deputy Adam Silver in 2014, 30 years to the day after he took over, NBA basketball as a spectator sport was an international powerhouse with fans across the globe.

Stern’s tenure coincided with the rise of the Larry Bird-Magic Johnson rivalry that saw the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers win a combined eight championships behind their two superstars from 1980 to 1988.

Stern took office the same year the Chicago Bulls drafted Michael Jordan, who would take over from Bird and Johnson as the face of the league and become a global icon as he won six NBA championships.

NBA expansion under Stern

Stern’s NBA seized on the popularity of those outsized players and personalities, expanding from 23 teams to 30 under his watch. The late 1980s saw the league expand into four new markets, with the Miami Heat and Charlotte Hornets joining the NBA in 1988 and the Orlando Magic and Minnesota Timberwolves coming into existence in 1989.

By the time Stern retired, the Memphis Grizzlies, Toronto Raptors and New Orleans Pelicans had also spawned through expansion and franchise movement.

David Stern died after suffering a brain hemorrhage. (AP Photo/Richard Drew) More

A global league

As the NBA grew domestically under Stern, the league set footprints around the world with offices in Hong Kong, Johannesburg, Beijing, Mumbai and London among other international cities.

Stern aided the global growth of the league by helping organize the assembly of the Dream Team, the 1992 USA Basketball team led by Jordan, Bird and Johnson that took the Olympics by storm and became an international sensation.

The United States voted against allowing professionals to play in the Olympics in 1989. But when the international community overwhelmingly approved the shift from amateurs, Stern and the NBA embraced it.

“I think the point was that the world of basketball invited the NBA to join it, and we said yes,” Stern told GQ in 2012. “And they have profited greatly from it, as have we — as has the overall sport of basketball.”

As the league looked outward, international players like Hakeem Olajuwon, Dirk Nowitzki and Yao Ming became stars in the NBA, further cementing its status as a global league.

Birth of the draft lottery

Before Stern set his sights on global growth, he had big ideas about how teams should be built. During Stern’s second year in office, the league implemented one of the most exciting and controversial systems in sports — the draft lottery.

In an effort to deter tanking, Stern’s NBA set up a literal lottery to determine which teams would receive the top selections in the draft.

The initial year of the lottery in 1985 gave birth to one of the greatest conspiracies in American sports when the New York Knicks won the right to draft Georgetown center Patrick Ewing, who would go on to play for the Dream Team and become a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

That the center-desperate Knicks won the lottery in the NBA’s largest market birthed conspiracies that Stern rigged the game in New York’s favor. In some circles that conspiracy lives on more than three decades later.

Difficulties under Stern

Stern also oversaw difficult times, genuine controversy and tragedy during his tenure.

Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose in 1986, days after the Boston Celtics made him the No. 2 pick in the draft out of Maryland.

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