Somebody stop Stern before nobody can speak

Considering the shameful state of his league, NBA commissioner David Stern should be humble. He should be forgiving. He should be compassionate.

Instead he fined an owner of the Seattle Sonics $250,000 for speaking honestly about the team's future.

David Stern comes down hard on anyone who dares to stray from the NBA's party line. (Getty Images)

Stern doesn't experience that emotion, of course. He has no shame, and despite all his intelligence, he has no common sense. Nobody in Stern's shoes -- which at the moment are stuck in the manure of former official Tim Donaghy's point-shaving scandal -- should be acting tough or drawing unnecessary attention to himself, but Stern did both last week when he fined Sonics part owner Aubrey McClendon $250,000 because, well, because he could.

Stern smacked McClendon with one of the biggest fines in NBA history to remind everyone that this is still Stern's league. But we already knew that. The NBA, with its overpriced tickets and undereducated players and cheating officials and brawling fans, is David Stern's league. All the way.

Not so long ago that was a good thing. Stern was once seen as the best commissioner in sports, but those days are gone. Roger Goodell of the NFL is far and away the best, with Stern and that drooling idiot Bud Selig of baseball simply trying to stay ahead of the incompetent leadership of the dying National Hockey League.

Stern is a jackbooted czar who seems to have forgotten what country he lives in. This is still America, right? We can have independent thoughts? And express them, even?

Not in David Stern's America. In David Stern's America, sedition is whatever he says it is, and his subjects will remain loyal -- or they will pay the consequences. Stern can't lock up dissidents, so being the corporate bloodsucker he is, he does the harshest thing he can: He takes their money.

McClendon was fined for nothing. The lack of outrage over McClendon's $250,000 fine is an outrage unto itself, a sign that the public and media have become brainwashed or maybe just browbeaten into submission by the ham-fisted Stern.

This is crazy, this fine. In an interview with the Oklahoma City Journal Record, McClendon said his OKC-based ownership group led by Clay Bennett purchased the Sonics in 2006 with the goal of moving to Oklahoma. Shocking, I know.

In that Aug. 12 story, McClendon said: "We didn't buy the team to keep it in Seattle. We hoped to come here. We know it's a little more difficult financially here in Oklahoma City, but we think it's great for the community and if we could break even, we'd be thrilled. ...

"They've got 60 days (in Seattle) to make some decisions they haven't been willing to make in the past year, and if they make them in a way that satisfies Clay, then the team will stay there. If they don't meet the requirements he's laid out, the team will move and Clay has indicated they'll come to Oklahoma City."

That interview went over like rotten cheese in the Pacific Northwest, which from Day 1 had been skeptical of Bennett's insistence that he would try to keep the team in Seattle. McClendon's commentary was seen as confirmation. It was terrible news. I understand that.