(FORTUNE Magazine) – He has just passed perhaps the most crucial test of his career, so you expect to find David Stern, the amiable, 53-year-old commissioner of the National Basketball Association, bouncing off walls--or at least basking in some sort of celebratory glow. But he is instead noticeably subdued, like someone who has just survived a nasty car crash. "You know," he says, sitting in his big, cluttered Manhattan office, "we really could have screwed up this whole thing."

The NBA's future was indeed on the line this summer when a group of star players, including Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing, tried to decertify their own union to block a new contract. The rebels, egged on by their agents, resisted owners' efforts to close loopholes in the league's sacred salary cap--things like outsized contracts for rookies and balloon payments to veterans.

The rebellion also threatened Stern's reputation as the best inside player in sports management, as good around a negotiating table as Hakeem Olajuwon is in the paint. Wasn't it Stern who rescued the league in the early 1980s from drug-addled players and owners who merely acted that way? And wasn't it Stern who created the revenue-sharing deal that, for the first time in pro sports, gave both management and labor a tangible reason to push for growth?

True enough, but Jordan and company argued that times had changed, and aimed to undo that very revenue-sharing plan. Stern and his team helped beat back that effort by renegotiating, offering the players a cut of revenues derived from sources like parking, concessions, and international television rights. Then he persuaded balky team owners to ratify the six-year deal. As a result the NBA will soon begin its season without missing a game--or alienating increasingly prickly fans. With the labor strife over, Stern can now return to the position he savors: CEO of a billion-dollar entertainment brand, a key provider of content for all manner of media and corporate promotional efforts.

The NBA may be the only sports league with its own keiretsu, a group of "global partners" such as Coca-Cola, Miller Brewing, McDonald's, and IBM that attach themselves to this American game like barnacles to a ship, going everywhere the NBA does--fans in over 160 countries watched last year's championship series. One immediate goal is to continue the global press. Two new teams based in Canada start play this season. Elsewhere, the future of the game, says Stern, is tied to global technology: "You've got digital compression, satellite feeds, video dial tones, wireless cable, interactive delivery of statistics, high-definition TV. It's all happening--and we're gonna be there."

Stern's standing among his corporate colleagues has risen apace. "We have bought into all aspects of the NBA brand, the whole tool set, and that is largely due to David's efforts," says David Green, senior vice president at McDonald's. Dick Ebersol, president of NBC Sports, says Stern is unusually trustworthy: "He understands the concept of partnership better than anyone else in the sports business." Ebersol put his network's money where his mouth is, signing a $750 million contract to air the NBA through 1998.

If the NBA were a stock, its PE would be soaring. About 16 of the then 23 NBA teams were losing money in 1981; last year about 22 of 27 teams made a solid profit, and league-operating earnings reached about $115 million on revenues of $1.1 billion. Retail sales of NBA-licensed products--caps, T-shirts, posters--have jumped from $10 million in 1981-82 to about $3 billion last year. More telling, the price of a franchise has increased tenfold since 1980.

Stern works on an annual contract, reportedly for about $3.5 million per, barely enough to keep a decent power forward, much less a multinational CEO. Yet he doesn't plan to become a free agent. "There's so much more to do to make this brand what it can be," he says.

--Ken Labich