Here's the rest of the transcript from NBA commissioner David Stern's Thursday press conference at Staples Center, preceding Game 1 of the 2009 NBA FInals:

Q. Do any of those issues now in the economic environment we're in impact teams where a worst case scenario, decisions might be made about relocation?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: Well, I think teams will have decisions to make. In some cases, I think quite appropriately, they've decided when revenues fall from attendance or sponsorships, they should make some payroll related decisions. I don't think that's a dereliction of duty, I think that's a sensible statement of intelligent business operations so the team can stay where it is.
But I have no doubt that in times like this, issues of relocation will surface, but there's nothing hot right this minute, but I think that's a possibility. But that's too easy an answer. I mean, the question is how does the team do, how does it relate to the community, groups, day of game, season tickets, sponsorships, things like that, and our teams are working at it harder than they have ever worked before. I mean, there are meetings that we have, best case practices, shared web, where we have a site that as soon as a promotion goes up, how it does, it gets shared with 30 teams. So I think it's making us leaner, but it's also making us better.
And the good news for our teams is that our great partners, and they've been great this year, at Disney and at Turner, are just finishing up the first year of an eight year deal, with seven years to run, with three percent built in raises for the next seven years, and the average length of time of our regional sports network deals is probably about ten years and probably averages $17 million.
Our teams are going to be faced with the necessity to get out and sell tickets and sponsorships, and some, quite frankly, do it better than others, and some are hobbled by their record and by a particular economy in their state. But everything is different. But our owners are mindful of those differences and they're happy and willing to talk about that with their partners, and that's why we'll be scheduling an executive session this summer. But I don't expect any immediate actions, and I don't see any needs.

Q. There was a lot of conversation in the past years about bringing some NBA franchises to Europe, to add some franchises in Europe. Did you put it on hold a little bit or is there still some progress?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: I think there's nothing that let me say this: Everything seems to be on hold these days waiting to see how the economy does. When Angela Merkel was criticizing the Central Bank and the Spanish real estate market is going down and the English banking system is in trouble, prudence says let's wait and watch and do things slowly. For us those things include an exhibition game in October at the O2 Arena, which is owned and operated by the same people who operate this building, AEG our partners in China for building arenas. And we'll be playing the Jazz against the Bulls in London, and then the Jazz will be playing Real Madrid in Madrid. We very much want to keep testing the European markets and we've opened up offices now in Milan and Madrid and Istanbul to go with our Paris and London offices, but we're not going to be making any bold projections or predictions about the location of franchises in Europe at this time.

Q. It's been some time since the Donaghy scandal has elapsed and the league has been moving towards transparency. We've had a lot of flagrant fouls and technical and overruled and a play in Dallas where a play called was determined to be incorrect. Can you tell us both positively how it's progressed and then how the transparency needs to go a bit faster and hasn't progressed enough?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: I'm not sure it needs to go faster. I think the transparency has some negatives because as it relates to flagrants and technicals, in any game on average we get about 92 percent or thereabouts right. With the benefit of slow motion replay and eight additional cameras, you can do a lot after the fact. But all that we do is focus. We do a lot, we do every play for purposes of our own development system. But with respect to technicals and flagrants, which have an impact beyond the game because of the accretion of points and the like and the disqualification of players, we review those and then you get comments like, it's all very nebulous or ambiguous, and I'd like to invite everyone here to referee training camp next season and tell me and I hear it's always a judgment issue. Yes. Did he make it to the spot ahead of the offensive player? Is it a block? Is it a charge? Indeed it is a judgment based upon as many years and as much development as we can get.
But as we open that up and discuss it, it has its downside where it engenders more debate, but we've steeled ourselves for that and we're moving. I don't see any great necessary moves forward, but on each occasion, life is made up of 100 different actions, and when we see an activity that we think we should go public with because it seems like a good idea at the time, we do it. That's our pledge of our transparency. That's why we have invited the media to referee training camp. That's why in many cases we invited media to the sessions that go on with our referees visiting with teams when they're in market.
We hope to soon actually be putting on line soon is a relative term a video rule book that we are developing first for the teams and as we vet it for the public and the media, so that we can at least attend to continue to demystify what ideal our referees are striving for, knowing that it's an ideal that can never fully be reached.

Q. Do you anticipate perhaps additional instant replay in the rules? And would you ever entertain, or would the league benefit with a fourth official? Would that be a positive?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: You know, it's funny, that's a question were you here when we had two officials? I don't think so, okay, and that was a question. We went to three, and it was a big fight between me and the owners.
And then when we had a lock out one year and we went to two officials, wait, we'll keep it at two, but no, we like three. I don't think at this point an extra the third official we felt that an extra pair of eyes on the beat actually would cut down on some action off and away from the ball that wasn't being picked up. But in the proper rotation with the proper training and development, we think our three officials can cover the court well.
We're going to increase instant replay, but at least as we do it incrementally it's going to be on the agenda for October to deal with the 24 second clock because there have been a couple of occasions where it affected the outcome of a game at that moment, and the Competition Committee voted unanimously to recommend it to the Board, and we appointed a committee to say at the last Competition Committee to report back to say what else can we do short of making our games into four hour games that would enable us to assure our fans that we're trying to get it right on an ongoing basis.
I don't think we've seen the end of increased instant replay, but we're looking at it. I don't know, electronically you can have a control center with everything going and you can probably referee the game remotely someday, but I'm not pushing for that and I don't think that would be a particularly good idea.

Q. In some parts of the media and some parts of popular culture there's a belief that the outcome of playoff games are predetermined. How do you respond to that?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: Do you believe that?

Q. Absolutely not.
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: I don't believe it, and it doesn't happen that way. I don't know what else to say. It's easy to write about it because it's actually more fun, but we take our integrity and our compliance with the law, because the activity that you're suggesting would not be in compliance, very seriously.
And it actually takes away from the opportunity to say how great our players are, and what a terrific job they do competing with each other to get where they get to. And the idea that somehow the outcome is other than on the merits by these great players is not something that I think thinking people should subscribe to.

Q. You've had like 11 or 12 teams that had a need to tap into your line of credit that you extend league wide. I wanted to know would you give any consideration of just abolishing the luxury tax until the economy
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: No, they chose to. There's a difference between choosing to and having a need to. New Orleans is profitable, and they tapped in. I can understand, you tap in sometimes some teams do it to cover operating losses so owners don't dip into their own pockets. Some do it because it's a good idea. The money is inexpensive and the credit line is good and hard to get, so you take some money out the way landlords and buildings do. Other teams replace debt with less expensive debt and use it to renegotiate with lenders. No, there's no contemplation of eliminating or reducing luxury tax.

Q. I just wanted to ask you how you see Asia, and in particular India as a market, because from what we've seen earlier there have been players who visited Asia and India, so how are you looking at the growth of the NBA in India in particular?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: We are looking at it as a very important growth opportunity for the NBA. We know that our players have visited there. I have a particular in my mind a visit by Kevin Garnett where it was oversubscribed and crowds developed. We just made a new transaction to have an NBA website in India, both in English and in Hindi, and we're actually studying some very important initiatives. We had the Bollywood representatives at a Laker game. And what India tells us is that when you have a nation that is that large, that some small population percentage like 20 percent, which would be 200 million people, or maybe even 30 percent, 300 million, the same size as the U.S., offers an enormous opportunity, geographically diverse for us to do it. So we're very intent on development in India.
And thus far we're involved in grass roots. We had NBA programs, we had Robert Parish there, and we will continue to do it in both ways, television, grass roots, websites, retail sales and sponsorship opportunities.

Q. Does this also mean more infrastructure in terms of arenas?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: Yes. And when I said we've had some preliminary discussions, very preliminary, but they involve actually long term considerations of what arena infrastructure would look like in India and what kind possibly of a professional basketball league might look, because we're mindful of the IPL development and the great success of that. But we do recognize that the first sport in India is cricket, as is the second sport and the third sport and the fourth sport, a little bit like football or soccer in Europe. But there's enough room down the road for many other sports.
You know, just one other thing I wanted to mention because I don't want any of the media to miss an important game, Sunday's game starts at 8:00 o'clock Eastern, as we previously announced many months ago to no fanfare.

Q. The WNBA game?
COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN: No, the WNBA is at 2:30 Eastern on ABC, but I know you'll be there so you don't really care about the television aspect of it.
Thank you very much.

That's it, shameless WNBA plugs and all.
Back Friday with coverage from Lakers and Magic practices at Staples Center.