By Jonah Sharf
On February 1, 1984, David Stern officially took over from Larry O’Brien as the commissioner of the NBA — he would step down from his post exactly 30 years later, on February 1, 2014. Stern was the longest-tenured NBA commissioner of all time, and received the Olympic Order in 2012, was inducted to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2014, and became a member of the FIBA Hall of Fame in 2016. Stern is widely credited with the increased global popularity of the NBA that came in the 1990s and 2000s.