David Stern Laughing at Bulls’ Pick?

That’s what some people on twitter are thinking about Commissioner David Stern, given the way he announced Chicago’s selection of French Guiana player Kevin Seraphin in the first round of the NBA Draft. Other people think Stern was laughing because he thought he would mispronounce Seraphin’s name. For instance, FantasyDaddy said on twitter “My Loser of the day is NBA Commish David Stern, for coming off as a jackass for laughing about the Bulls pick.” In contrast, Peggy Kusinski said “Bulls draft Kevin Seraphin of France. NBA commish David Stern must be loving the pronunciations, mic caught him say “listen to this.” So was Stern laughing at the pick of the obscure player, or was he chuckling because he knew he would butcher the pronunciation? Let’s listen to the audio clip to make the decision:

Stern saying “listen to this” sure came off badly, as did him laughing as he was saying Seraphin’s name, but I have to believe he wouldn’t intentionally disrespect one of his players on national TV. It was unprofessional and questionable, but I’ll give Stern the benefit of the doubt and say he was just laughing at the difficult pronunciation of Ke-VEEN Se-RAW-fawn. By the way, Seraphin will likely be traded to the Wizards as part of the Kirk Hinrich deal.

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