I'll say this about David Stern. He sure can put a happy face on things when he wants to. The NBA Commissioner struck a defiant, almost testy tone with reporters this All Star weekend about the state of his league; a league in which not just a few, but many of the so-called "leading indicators" of entertainment are heading in the wrong direction.

Television ratings down 12% from last year, which were already historically low. League-wide attendance down 4% (although Stern jousted with a reporter from Detroit on this, and insisted that attendance is "flat" not "down") and that figure only counts tickets sold, not tickets used. If they kept a true turnstile count (like the NFL) you would see some eye-popping numbers that confirm what anybody who watches SportsCenter already knows: gaping expanses of good lower level seats unused for games. Two franchises are ready to bolt in Charlotte and Vancouver. Both are especially embarrassing for the league. Here's why.

Charlotte once led the NBA in attendance for nine straight years, with mostly marginal to outright awful teams. It is also in the very heart of basketball country in North Carolina. Now, they have a pretty good team, that has won 50 or more games for three straight years, and will likely be playoff bound again. Where once they drew 24,000-plus like clockwork, now it's 13,500 on a good night, as the upper bowl of the stadium is curtained off out of embarrassment.

The Charlotte Coliseum is a spanking nice place to watch a game, it's just that they only built a half dozen, very small luxury suites for corporate fat cats. It is also (gasp!) 15 minutes from the heart of downtown. The push is for a new arena downtown, with of course, lots of money-making suites. Once hailed as one of Stern's brilliant moves, the Hornets now need a stadium "buzzer beater" to avoid elimination in Charlotte.

But Vancouver takes the cake, although good luck getting Stern to come close admitting this blunder. Picked as an expansion city in 1995, it represented the NBA's hubris in the glow of the Magic-Larry-Michael run of hot dice at the pro sports craps table. Stern, wanting to further "globalize" the game, sought another north of the border team, and fell in love with Canada's version of Seattle.

At the time, the feeling was that the NBA brand was so powerful, it could melt away all the pitfalls with Canadian franchises in American sports leagues. Things like exchange rates which fluctuate wildly, taxation on salaries far beyond even the top American brackets, cultural issues and the plain fact that, excuse me, it's Canada!! No offense to our friendly neighbors to the north and their otherwise fine country, but this much is evident: even though David Stern is thinking globally, young men who dunk basketballs are most definitely not! I bet if you asked players to pinpoint Vancouver on a blank map of North America, they would have a scatter pattern all the way from Montana to the Bering Straits. And people were shocked when Steve Francis called the Grizzlies' bluff and refused to report?

But two teams getting ready to move does not a crisis make, since even the mighty NFL has that problem. What is really staring David Stern in the face is the possibility that his "business model" for the league from the '80s and '90s might be obsolete in the new millennium.

It was once pretty easy to "sell the stars" and watch ratings soar. Now, it's more complicated. The new "stars" are struggling to earn their stripes. They are coming to the league out of high school, with some very rough edges. The racial and cultural divide between players and ticket-paying customers is quickly becoming a gulf.

Most African-Americans (and anyone 22 or younger) I think, can tell the difference between hip-hop and gangster rap. Most of white "middle America" over 35, I am betting, can't. And with the cost of NBA tickets now averaging more per game than any of the four "major" sports, the most likely ticket buyer to an NBA game is still old and white, not young and black.