The Hardening of Easy Dave

David Stern was not always fully sold on going the distance as the entrepreneurial shepherd of professional basketball, as the commissioner of the N.B.A.

In the ascendant days of Magic, Larry and Michael — not coincidently the prime of Stern’s career — the telephone would ring a couple of times each year and someone would pose a question that began: Would you consider? But the feelers, while flattering, were never too tempting. Stern, the son of a New York delicatessen owner, could not pull himself away from a sport that felt all-encompassing, increasingly consuming.

To explain its hold on him, Stern in a recent interview recalled the title of a book that his predecessor, Larry O’Brien, had written about his time as a strategist for the Democratic Party: “No Final Victories.” For Stern, who originally aspired to a long career in law and had a keen interest in politics, basketball became the best of all competitive, and occasionally cutthroat, worlds.

“The beauty of the business is that there has always been something else to do, and there will be when I’m no longer commissioner,” he said. “I’m comfortable with the notion that the time will come to step away. But there are a few more things to be done before that.”

The first of which is to somehow keep his career-defining sculpture from being scarred beyond recognition.

The league’s second in-season lockout in 13 years has created a chasm between management and labor and produced resentments within the warring sides themselves. Given the chaotic nature of the negotiations, Stern’s ultimatum to the players to accept management’s current offer by late Wednesday afternoon or face a more punitive deal carries a real risk. His move could save the season, or set loose the forces of chaos that will wreck it.

In effect, the outcome of the lockout could actually represent Stern’s final victory — at least as some owners will see it. Or in the event of a lost season, his most devastating defeat — and who knows what after that.

Either way, at 69, a time in life more conducive to embarking on a path to patriarchal disengagement, Stern has become more publicly embroiled and embattled than ever. One can almost imagine him on the roof of the league’s Fifth Avenue headquarters, commissioner-turned-Kong, swatting at attackers from all sides — including his back.

Is Stern a menace to the players? Is he misunderstood? Is the problem more with the new environment he inhabits?

“Ownership has changed, the players have changed, the media has changed — the whole landscape has changed,” said Jerry Colangelo, the former Phoenix Suns owner and a longtime Stern ally. “And in the past five to seven years, I’ve also seen some changes in David. He is a survivor and a competitor, but put it this way: some of the stuff has worn on him.”

However hardened and hardheaded, Stern’s pain over having the N.B.A. shut down in the wake of its most compelling season in years has been obvious to those who have known him a long time. They are not fooled by the combative persona, the lawyer prosecuting his case in pursuit of a more balanced and profitable league.