David Stern will have to work his magic with the players' union once again. Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

LOS ANGELES -- David Stern orchestrates a news conference with the skill and assurance of a conductor in front of a symphony orchestra. No, he does it better.

The conductor's job is to keep the known running smoothly; the NBA commissioner rarely knows what's coming but rarely, if ever, drops the baton. In fact, he likes it when you throw something unexpected at him. Ask Stern a tough question, he deflects it with humor. Ask him a question he really doesn't want to answer, he obfuscates with the skill of a trial lawyer, which he once was. Ask him something that gets his goat or he has a strong opinion about, and you can see his eyes narrow and his mind sharpen, and he'll answer with the conviction of a trial judge, which he could've been.

This is Stern's 20th year in the job, and long ago it was decreed that he will go into the pantheon of commissioners, right alongside football's Pete Rozelle and baseball's Kenesaw Mountain Landis. He presides over a league that draws constant criticism -- one of the horses I beat to death is America's willingness to forgive the sins of Major League Baseball and particularly the NFL and its determination to persecute the NBA -- yet Stern's personal approval rating is off the charts because he always seems to be a step ahead of the pack.

Case in point: Several years ago, Stern saw the growing influence of cable, so, after breaking long ties with NBC, which had offered a 33 percent cut for a new television package, The Commish moved more and more of his league's business to TNT and ESPN. While the older generation balked -- How can you have the All-Star Game and the conference finals on cable? -- Stern realized that the younger generation no longer distinguishes between the networks and cable. To the young fan, The National Geographic Channel is as network as NBC is. And, with saturation coverage, NBA ratings are up on both cable networks.

Ten years ago, I predicted that Stern would soon ride off into the sunset to write his memoirs. (Which would command millions by the way; I mean, Faye Vincent published a book.) Stern had helped rescue the league from financial ruin but, with the retirements of Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan (the first time), I was convinced he saw a train wreck in the distance. Perhaps he did, but he stayed at the controls. Now, at the age of 61, he seems more energized than ever.

It's a good thing, because there are some issues, beyond, of course, the public relations disaster that will ensue should Kobe Bryant be found guilty in an Eagle County courtroom this summer.

For one thing, the ratings for last year's Finals on ABC were an absolute disaster, a 6.5 compared with the 18s the league used to get in the salad days of Jordan. Even Stern couldn't figure out how to put a positive spin on that number. The same thing could happen this year with, say, a San Antonio Spurs-Indiana Pacers final.

 And there is the possibility of labor strife on the horizonlso. The collective bargaining doesn't expire until July 1, 2005, but both the NBA and the players' association say they want to hammer out a new deal before the start of the 2004-05 season. "It doesn't work very well when you try to negotiate during a season," said Billy Hunter, the union's executive director who shared the podium (for a few minutes) with Stern on Saturday. They will work on it in July and, after time off for the Olympics, get back at it in September.

Each side sees itself as having bargaining chips. In asking for concessions from the league, Hunter will point to an NBA in relatively sound financial shape. In asking to keep the status relatively quo, Stern will point to flat revenues and the desperate straits of its winter-sports brother, the NHL.

Hunter pounced on that. "The reality [of an NHL strike] is that it may be a windfall for the NBA because there is probably not going to be any other game in town," said Hunter.

Hunter also said: "I would anticipate that in the event we don't reach an agreement within the next year, there's a strong possibility that we might be locked out again."

You could almost see Stern wincing.

It was only five years ago that the NBA locked out its players in a dispute that wasn't settled until January. On Saturday, Stern called that '99 lockout his worst moment as a commissioner, and he knows how perilously close to disaster the league came. The league simply cannot risk any kind of labor turmoil, and it will be fascinating to see if, over the next seven or eight months, Stern can work his magic again.

I'm tempted to say it's his last big battle, but for all I know he'll still be in charge in 2014.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Jack McCallum covers the NBA for the magazine and is a regular contributor to SI.com.