David Stern didn’t like me. He didn’t know me; we had never spoken, but he didn’t like me – or at least my reporting – nonetheless.

This was 1994-95 when Stern was at his apex as commissioner of the National Basketball Association. He died last week at the age of 77 after suffering a brain hemorrhage.

It is impossible to question what Stern did as NBA commissioner. He rescued the league from threatened oblivion and turned it into a juggernaut and a global venture.

His position gave him authority that no other commissioner had, maybe not even Pete Rozelle of the more powerful and more prestigious National Football League.

Covering baseball for The New York Times, I had no involvement with Stern and the NBA. That is, until labor disputes drew me to the NBA.

With baseball players immersed in what would be a 234-day strike in 1994 and negotiations in abeyance, the sports editor asked me to jump into the NBA talks and cover that dispute.

I eagerly accepted the assignment. That dispute had a wrinkle to it that I had not experienced in baseball bargaining, and I was eager to explore it. Also, I believe I became the first reporter – and today may be the only reporter – to cover labor disputes in all four major professional sports.

The lockout was the first labor action in NBA history but the third in professional sports in less than a year. Baseball players struck Aug. 12, 1994, and the National Hockey League locked out its players Oct. 1, 1994.

Although I didn’t know the intricacies of the NBA talks, I had learned enough from coverage of baseball labor to pick up the NBA negotiations pretty easily. I just had to get to know the people involved.

Most sports writers would not welcome such an opportunity. They prefer the games on the field or the court. I, on the other hand, was enthusiastic about the idea, even if David Stern didn’t like my coverage.

Stern, I should say here, wasn’t the first commissioner who didn’t care for my coverage. In 1989, Toni Giamatti, wife of the baseball commissioner, Bart Giamatti, counted column inches of my coverage of the Pete Rose gambling scandal and found I had spent more column inches quoting Rose than Giamatti. She insisted that Giamatti have lunch with Times sports editor, Joe Vecchione, and lodge a complaint.

Too embarrassed to do it himself, Giamatti made his deputy, Fay Vincent, go in his place. A good lunch was had by all.

There was no lunch with Stern, not even a snack.

Stern, however, complained about my coverage and tried to tell the sports editor how I should be covering the labor dispute.

The lockout came July 1, 1995 at the end of a no-lockout, no-strike agreement under which the owners and players conducted the 1994-95 season. The agreement was extended once, but a civil war between players in the union scuttled a new six-year collective bargaining agreement and short-circuited any chance of a second extension.

The NBA union was divided, with a dissident segment of players opposing the established union. Less than one week before the lockout was announced, an antitrust class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of seven players, including Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing. The suit contended that the National Basketball Players Association no longer represented the players in collective bargaining.

I had never encountered that situation in baseball – there was never any dissent in Marvin Miller’s baseball – and, frankly, it was fascinating.

If I was going to do my job properly, I had to talk to the dissidents. How would it have looked had I ignored the dissidents and they had wound up overcoming the union?

Stern wanted me to ignore the dissident players and their lawyer, Jeffrey Kessler. How do you do that, though, when some of their names are Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing? Stern might have been a great commissioner and a great visionary, but he would have made a lousy reporter.

In his way of thinking, of course, Stern wasn’t thinking of fairness. In management-union confrontations, fairness is the last thing either side wants. If Stern could get the news media on his side, especially The New York Times, great for him. If not, try harder, using whatever ploy works.

At the end, though, David Stern was just too good. Stern dominated Simon Gourdine, the union leader, and completed a deal that by sleight of hand and the weight of his wizardry gave the owners what they wanted and left the players saying thank you for letting us play with your ball.

Stern crafted a strategy that tied the new labor contract to the dispute raging between the players. He used the dissident players lawsuit to get the agreement approved. Confident that the players would not vote to decertify the union and risk losing their fat-cat paychecks, he suggested that the union tie the fate of the agreement to the decertification vote.

The majority of the players feared a long shutdown and voted against the dissidents. As a result, the new labor agreement was put into effect and the lockout ended.

Arn Tellem, then a prominent agent and now a team executive, who was active in the decertification movement, credited Stern and his deputy, Russ Granik with running “a very effective campaign.”

“Their message was more powerful than the Willie Horton commercial,” Tellem said, alluding to the advertisement President Bush used so effectively in the 1988 Presidential campaign.

Gourdine didn’t treat his union members much better. Instead of responding to the concerns and questions of some players, he ignored them. He often appeared as if he were running for his professional life and trying to save his job instead of trying to get the best deal possible for his members.

When he informed the members of the details of the agreement, Gourdine did it as a salesman selling a product, not a union leader offering an analysis that said “here are the pros and cons, here is what is good about this provision, here is what is bad.”

It was a typical ploy in the most unusual labor conflict professional sports has seen, a conflict that had the league and the union working in concert instead of battling each other. But then, it was David Stern’s league, and that, by definition, made it different from any other.

NEIGHBORLY ADVICE

Mike McCarthy apparently is prepared to return to work after a one-year hiatus. The Green Bay Packers dismissed McCarthy a year ago after he had spent 13 years as their head coach, an unusually long tenure in these times.

McCarthy was let go not so much because the Packers found him wanting but because of a conflict with the team’s quarterback, Aaron Rodgers. It apparently is easier to find a new coach than a new quarterback.

I write about McCarthy rather than baseball because I am a McCarthy fan. How can I not be? I have been since I learned several years ago that we grew up in Pittsburgh in houses that are only three-tenths of a mile apart.

We were significantly apart in age, but geographically we were close.

We played baseball on the same fields, stepped in the same ruts.

McCarthy obviously is ready to return to coaching and has interviewed with four teams – the Giants, the Cowboys, the Browns and the Panthers. Considering his previous success, McCarthy should have his pick. I would encourage him to choose the Giants if they offer him their job. I’ve never had a good reason to root for the Giants.