Lebron, Economic Impact and a Cleveland Casino
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m7d10-Lebron-economic-impacts-and-a--Cleveland-casino
By Evan Weiner
July 10, 2010
(New York, NY) -- The entire Lebron James free agency tale should make society reassess the importance of sports but society won't. People who should know better including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the owners of the two tabloid New York newspapers, Mort Zuckerman of the Daily News and Rupert Murdoch of the Post looked like fools throughout the entire process along with a whole host of others. Bloomberg was out in the front waving the city's pom poms begging Lebron James to sign with the New York Knicks and Zuckerman and Murdoch were not very far behind nor were some of the "beautiful people", the actors and others with money to spend on Knicks tickets. Murdoch had a minority share in Madison Square Garden between 1997 and 2005.
All of this was going on while Bloomberg was cutting municipal jobs and the New York State legislature continued being dysfunction with a lame duck governor, David Patterson, cutting state jobs.
Zuckerman and Murdoch's papers reacted like heartbroken teenagers on Friday morning. The love of their life, Lebron to the Knicks, spurned New York City and that was a public slap to the face.
After all, New York is where basketball really matters. It has the world’s most famous arena and the Knicks are the Knicks. The truth is, basketball takes a far seat behind the Yankees in New York, the Garden is an antiquated arena that was poorly designed in the mid-1960s. Basketball in New York on the college level hasn’t mattered in generations, the NCAA College tournaments play on regional stages which are much more important to kids playing basketball than the Garden and the last time the Knicks won a championship was 37 years ago. Patrick Ewing is more of a villain in New York than a basketball hero because he could not deliver a championship.
New York is not a top destination in the NBA for players.
Meanwhile the adulation behavior is obscene. Gushing over a 25-year-old basketball player who is nothing more than an entertainer who puts on a show maybe 100 times a year is ridiculous.
Lebron James’ one hour infomercial with the "family-friendly" Walt Disney Company's ESPN was a total disgrace but it was no different than other disgraceful TV offered by Disney like the bachelor or bachelorette shows on the Disney owned ABC-TV network. It was a new form of "reality" programming that was tightly controlled by Jim Gray and Lebron James' management team.
The Bloomberg’s administration claim that Lebron James’ signing with the New York Knicks would pump $58 million into the city's economy was as fraudulent as the early 1990s contention by then Major League Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent that a new baseball stadium in Cleveland would serve as an economic engine for that city.
If the Gateway Center was built, some 28,000 jobs would be created was the mantra. Cleveland voters said yes to building the ballpark with the $84 million in public financing coming from a "sin tax" or a tax on cigarettes and alcohol in Cuyahoga County.
A good Cleveland Indians team in the mid-1990s in a new baseball park probably gave life to some small businesses around the Gateway center where a new ballpark, a new arena and a football stadium were built along with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but overall Fay Vincent's plea to spend municipal dollars for the Cleveland Indians owners, the Jacobs Brothers, business and it would lead to an humming economic engine has proven very wrong. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame gets local, state and federal subsidies to keep it going. Two Gateway Center garages have cost Cleveland millions of dollars because Cleveland officials gave away too many parking spaces to the Indians owners, the Jacobs and the then owners of the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Gund Brothers.
The two sets of owners got 250 parking spaces everyday for their private use. Jacobs also got 1,250 parking spaces for each Indians home game or 81 times a year. The Gunds got 1,450 spaces for each of 41 NBA games. The free spaces go to premium and loge ticket holders which meant that the high end ticket buyers went right into the stadium or arena and skipped businesses outside the buildings. Meanwhile Cleveland is paying off the stadium/arena garages by taking money from parking meters and parking garages to pay off the garage debt and that means less money for municipal workers.
Cleveland and Cuyahoga county taxpayers have a contract with the Indians, Cavaliers and National Football League Browns. They keep paying for the facilities whether they use the venues or not. The Cleveland Browns Stadium has cost taxpayers who smoke and drink $64,609,806.86 since August 2005. The "sin tax" also has paid about $266 million to cover some of Gateway’s costs at the baseball and basketball facilities. The "sin tax" is schedule to expire in 2015. But don't bet on that. Speaking of betting, because Cleveland's downtown was in such rotten shape economically, Cleveland politicians gave thought to opening casinos in an effort to create an economic engine. The dying rust belt city's political brain trust cannot find a formula to prime the economic engine pump.
In November 2009, Ohio voters said yes to building casinos in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus and Toledo. Interestingly enough Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert along with Penn National put up $35 million in campaign financing to support the initiative. There is a promise of 34,000 jobs with the creation of the casinos. Gilbert will own the casinos in Cleveland and Cincinnati.
Gilbert's tirade after Lebron James left might be more about his casino than basketball. Without Lebron James in the Cavaliers lineup, there will be thousands of people less in the arena and less people who could go to Gilbert's casino adjacent to the arena and spend money in Gilbert's casino.
Lebron James was not a linchpin of the economic pump and might have done more to harm Gilbert's business than Cleveland or James’ hometown of Akron.
The assertion that Lebron was worth $58 million to New York does need a closer inspection. Madison Square Garden, which sits on some valuable property in midtown Manhattan between 7th and 8th Avenue and 31st and 33rd Street does not pay city property taxes. It has been about 28 years since a tax bill was delivered to 4 Penn Plaza in care of Madison Square Garden. A basketball team plays just 41 regularly scheduled games during the season which runs between November and April, there may be a couple of pre-season games in October and maybe a dozen or so playoff games if a team goes far into the playoffs.
The basketball fan does not travel to games. The economic impact of a basketball game is minimal in a city's economy. Here is how this works. Sports teams need customers not fans because customers have more spending money than fans and are willing to dine in venue restaurants and other eatery which takes away from restaurants that surround arenas.
Madison Square Garden hosts about six NBA games a month between November and April. A basketball team has a coach, a number of assistant coaches, equipment and training staff along with the players and possibly a general manager. A total of perhaps 25 in a traveling party. At the upper extreme, if each member of the traveling party spent $1,000 on hotels and meals, the economic impact of a visiting team is $25,000 although some cities do tax visiting players while the perform in that city which might come out to $30,000 a day. The economic impact may be a million dollars a month which is a drop in the bucket.
Maybe.
Businesses are going to take clients somewhere to wine and dine them. If there was no basketball, there would be something else. Corporate ticket buyers also write 50 percent of the cost of a ticket of their taxes as a business expense.
The impact is not much. If business people in Miami are salivating over Lebron James, they are totally misguided. People will go to games because that is the "in thing" to do but what they are really doing is taking dollars that would be spent elsewhere in the area and there will be no uptick in sales at malls and supermarkets except in the immediate area of the arena.
Micky Arison, the owner of the Miami Heat and CEO of Carnival Cruises, will benefit financially. Arison knows how to work the system. The Heat’s arena was the product of the political process. In 1996, voters approved a bond for the construction of a new arena for the Heat. Arison kicked in $50 million to the costs of the building while hotel taxes were increased to pay for the other $163 million. Part of the deal was that Arison’s Carnival ships would use the nearby Miami port as a base. The Carnival Corporation has offices not far from the arena and the port.
Arison and the arena will make money. Money that had not been flowing into Heat games in the past few years will return from other parts of the region. As former New York Jets Vice President Jay Cross once pointed out when he was Jets owner Woody Johnson’s main negotiator for a Manhattan west side stadium accidentally pointed out, a new stadium (or arena) makes more for an owner, the players and maybe parking lot attendants. There is no trickle down for a municipality and in fact many municipalities are paying down large debts for venues and very few, if any, local businesses other than a bar or restaurant make measurable money off of sports teams.
Bloomberg has to know this. Sports makes people feel good or rotten. Too many people are too attached emotionally to their team. The players are not attached; it is a business no matter what they say about the home court, home ice, and home field advantage. The NFL stands for Not For Long for the players. They are feeling good in Miami, sports fans spew out venom in sports talk radio in New York. Lebron was called “The Queen” by callers, sports journalists are playing amateur shrink trying to figure out what makes Lebron James tick.
Lebron should have called his business partner Gilbert and told him that it was over. But is Lebron now a villain like sports people, media and fans, are painting him? The answer should be no. He did something stupid in the infomercial on ESPN and ESPN provided no strategic guidance but then again, ESPN is mostly geared for children anyway and this was a reality show of sorts. “The Decision”. ESPN is owned by Disney although the executives at Disney are hardly children and they too know how to work the political system.
Lebron James is a 25-year-old basketball player, an entertainer, nothing more and nothing less. Too many grownups genuflect in front of 20-something athletes. But then again fan is short for fanatic. Maybe it is time for the grownups (the politicians and the media) to grow up.
Evan Weiner is an author radio-TV commentator and speaking on “The Politics of Sports Business” and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Showing posts with label Cleveland Cavaliers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cleveland Cavaliers. Show all posts
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Monday, May 31, 2010
LeBron James, Dwayne Wade colluding to be N.Y. Knicks? Times have certainly changed in the NBA
LeBron James, Dwayne Wade colluding to be N.Y. Knicks? Times have certainly changed in the NBA
MONDAY, 31 MAY 2010 12:54
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/lebron-james-dwayne-wade-colluding-to-be-ny-knicks-times-have-certainly-changed-in-the-nba#
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
COMMENTARY
Let's get this straight. People are "concerned" that National Basketball Association free agents to be Dwayne Wade, Lebron James, Joe Johnson and Chris Bosh may meet to discuss whatever free agents-to-be need to discuss, such as playing together. Wade's agent now says there will not be a "summit" with the NBA's top available free agent talent but there probably will be some talks here and there. The New Jersey Nets, New York Knicks and Los Angeles Clippers can offer two "max" contracts and there is talk the Dolan-family owned Knicks (who probably don't pay a "max" salary of about $14 million a year in New York City property taxes on Madison Square Garden real estate) might go after Lebron and Wade. There is "concern" that players can collude but owners cannot and that the players will orchestrate where they will play which means the free agents could make or break franchises.
Nowhere in this "concern" is it mentioned that the NBA's Collective Bargaining Agreement with the players is up after the 2010-11 season and that the NBA wants huge financial rollbacks from the players which could scuttle the plans of any owner including Dolan or the Nets new moneyman Mikhail Prokhorov or even the Clippers Donald Sterling from going after two max players.
The NBA is still an owners toy because of a salary cap. Two great players might be on the same team, but good complimentary players may be passed over because of salary cap restrictions and that is a complication in building a team.
At one time, Dwayne Wade, LeBron James, Joe Johnson and Chris Bosh-like players would not have even been considered for employment in the NBA.
Prior to 1950, they all would have ended up with the Harlem Globetrotters. The NBA closed the doors to Negro players back then just like it closes the doors today to 18-year-olds of all stripes out of high school.
The NBA remains an exclusive and exclusionary club to certain people.
The Harlem Globetrotters were important to the NBA. The team and brand were bigger than the National Basketball League, the Basketball Association of America or the new National Basketball Association that was established in August 1949. In what turned out to be the dying days of the NBL, the match up of the Globetrotters and the Mikan led Minneapolis Lakers brought attention to the struggling Midwest-based league in 1948.
The Globetrotters were basketball troubadours who literally played anywhere as long as someone set up a basketball court and was willing to give Abe Saperstein some cash. The Globetrotters also provided the first half of a night's worth of entertainment at NBA games as a featured attraction in a double header.
"The Globetrotters would play the preliminary and the NBA would play the main attraction," said Marquis Haynes. "But it got to the point we people after our game, the Harlem Globetrotters game would start leaving before the halftime of the NBA game and they switched it around for them, the NBA teams to play the first game and the Harlem Globetrotters the second which made a lot of sense."
The Globetrotters popularity might have had something to do with blacks being accepted into pro basketball with no fanfare. In 1942/43, the Toledo Jim White Chevrolets and the Chicago Studebakers of the National Basketball League had black players in their lineups. Both teams folded, but the NBL was integrated four and a half years before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color barrier.
Mikan and the Lakers would face the Globbies before a sellout crowd at Chicago Stadium on February 20, 1948 in a game that was conceived by a Chicago sports editor, Arch Ward. (Ward came up with the idea for the American and National League All-Star Game in baseball and pushed for the formation of a new football league, the All America Football Conference in 1946 and the College All Star Game against the NFL in Chicago).
Mikan's Lakers seemed to be really good and the Globetrotters team was thought to be the best in the world. Ermer Robinson, Ducky Moore, Sam Wheeler, Goose Tatum, Haynes, Babe Pressley, Ted Strong, Vertes Ziegler, and Wilbert King defeated Mikan, Jim Pollard and the Lakers, 61-59, before a crowd of 17,823 at Chicago Stadium. Robinson won the game on a last second, two-handed 20-foot set shot.
"I was told by several NBA owners at the time that that was the beginning of them deciding to draft or recruit players from the Harlem Globetrotters and the black colleges," said Haynes in an interview in the mid-1990s.
Minneapolis, along with three other teams, joined the BAA in the 1948 off season. Wade, LeBron, Johnson and Bosh would not have been able to follow the Lakers, Rochester Royals, Fort Wayne Pistons or Indianapolis into the newer league. Despite enormous talent, Negroes were "unofficially" barred from the BAA. There seems however to be an exception in the case of the New York Knicks player, the Japanese-American Wataru Misaka, who played with New York in 1947-48 and is now considered the first non-white in the BAA.
Haynes never played in the NBA but he and his Globetrotter teammates helped open the door. It took a while for the NBA to consider top notch players. It was not until 1950 that the league would give a Negro player a try out.
NBA integration would not happen until October 31, 1950 when the Washington Capitols' roster included Earl Lloyd. Years later Lloyd would downplay the significance of his breaking of the color barrier.
Lloyd had a head start on the Knicks Sweetwater Clifton, whose contract was purchased from Saperstein's Harlem Globetrotters, and the Boston Celtics Chuck Cooper, who was taken out of college.
Black college coach John McLendon, who was at North Carolina College, was instrumental in getting Lloyd signed.
"The Washington Capitols were the first team to have historically black schools products on the team. They preceded Boston by one week." said John Mc Lendon (who was the first African-American coach of a pro team as he was hired by the American Basketball League's George Steinbrenner-owned Cleveland Pipers in 1961 and fired by Steinbrenner even though Cleveland won the Eastern Division because McLendon refused to tell a player Steinbrenner had traded him to that evening's opponent — McLendon then got as far away from Steinbrenner as possible and went to Malaysia as a basketball instructor). "There were two guys ahead of Cooper, Harold Hunter and Earl Lloyd.
"I took them to a tryout in Washington, D.C. They had 20 something guys in there and they put them in threes and no combination could be the three guys. The owner, (Mike) Uline, and the general manager called me upstairs, and said, ‘hey coach get those guys dressed and bring them up here.' I have a copy of the contract they signed."
Lloyd made the Capitols, Hunter didn't. McLendon said the first two black athletes who actually signed NBA contracts were Hunter (who played for McLendon at North Carolina College) and Lloyd with Washington and the Celtics signed Cooper after drafting him in the second round of the 1950 Draft a week later.
"I took them, I was there," said McLendon. "I asked the Basketball Hall of Fame just to note five pioneers in the game. They had it up for six months and then took it down because it caused too much controversy, people were arguing about who is the first one, who was the first under contract, the first one on the floor, the first one drafted. The first two in the NBA under a tryout were Harold Hunter and Earl Lloyd.
Lloyd and the rest of the players in the NBA were not playing for the money.
"We wasn't making more money with the Globetrotters." said Haynes. "In fact in those years, league teams weren't making much money either. They (NBA players of the 1940s and 1950s) were like we were, we had to keep in touch with different businesses in our hometown or in the area of our hometowns while the season was still going on. Hopefully, in keeping in touch with them, we were able to gain employment during the summer to be able to afford ourselves until the next season started. So the NBA players were in the same position as we were in keeping up to the money part."
The Globetrotters would eventually lose games to the Lakers but still got their share of talented players after their monopoly on black players was broken by the Lloyd signing. The Globbies did get quite a few players including Wilt Chamberlain who left Kansas to play with Saperstein's team in 1958-59 for a $50,000 salary, which was out of the NBA's range. Chamberlain was ineligible to play in 1958-59 in the NBA because he had not put in four years at college. Had Chamberlain been 18 years old in 2010, he would be ineligible for the NBA because he was not one year out of high school.
If there should be any player collusion, talented high school graduates should be filing lawsuits against the NBA for discrimination for not allowing them to apply for a job because of age. An 18-year-old can fight a war yet not play on an NBA team because Commissioner David Stern and his owners have decided that either colleges or overseas leagues should develop a player who can command millions sitting on the bench with an entry level contract. The National Basketball Players Association and NBA owners have agreed to banning 18-year-olds in the NBA and the harmed players can do nothing about it under US labor laws.
Wade and LeBron will get max contracts and the other guys, Bosh and Johnson won't be checking in with people in their hometowns for summer employment like Haynes and other NBA players once did.
Even if they collude.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business" and is available for speaking engagements at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
MONDAY, 31 MAY 2010 12:54
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/lebron-james-dwayne-wade-colluding-to-be-ny-knicks-times-have-certainly-changed-in-the-nba#
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
COMMENTARY
Let's get this straight. People are "concerned" that National Basketball Association free agents to be Dwayne Wade, Lebron James, Joe Johnson and Chris Bosh may meet to discuss whatever free agents-to-be need to discuss, such as playing together. Wade's agent now says there will not be a "summit" with the NBA's top available free agent talent but there probably will be some talks here and there. The New Jersey Nets, New York Knicks and Los Angeles Clippers can offer two "max" contracts and there is talk the Dolan-family owned Knicks (who probably don't pay a "max" salary of about $14 million a year in New York City property taxes on Madison Square Garden real estate) might go after Lebron and Wade. There is "concern" that players can collude but owners cannot and that the players will orchestrate where they will play which means the free agents could make or break franchises.
Nowhere in this "concern" is it mentioned that the NBA's Collective Bargaining Agreement with the players is up after the 2010-11 season and that the NBA wants huge financial rollbacks from the players which could scuttle the plans of any owner including Dolan or the Nets new moneyman Mikhail Prokhorov or even the Clippers Donald Sterling from going after two max players.
The NBA is still an owners toy because of a salary cap. Two great players might be on the same team, but good complimentary players may be passed over because of salary cap restrictions and that is a complication in building a team.
At one time, Dwayne Wade, LeBron James, Joe Johnson and Chris Bosh-like players would not have even been considered for employment in the NBA.
Prior to 1950, they all would have ended up with the Harlem Globetrotters. The NBA closed the doors to Negro players back then just like it closes the doors today to 18-year-olds of all stripes out of high school.
The NBA remains an exclusive and exclusionary club to certain people.
The Harlem Globetrotters were important to the NBA. The team and brand were bigger than the National Basketball League, the Basketball Association of America or the new National Basketball Association that was established in August 1949. In what turned out to be the dying days of the NBL, the match up of the Globetrotters and the Mikan led Minneapolis Lakers brought attention to the struggling Midwest-based league in 1948.
The Globetrotters were basketball troubadours who literally played anywhere as long as someone set up a basketball court and was willing to give Abe Saperstein some cash. The Globetrotters also provided the first half of a night's worth of entertainment at NBA games as a featured attraction in a double header.
"The Globetrotters would play the preliminary and the NBA would play the main attraction," said Marquis Haynes. "But it got to the point we people after our game, the Harlem Globetrotters game would start leaving before the halftime of the NBA game and they switched it around for them, the NBA teams to play the first game and the Harlem Globetrotters the second which made a lot of sense."
The Globetrotters popularity might have had something to do with blacks being accepted into pro basketball with no fanfare. In 1942/43, the Toledo Jim White Chevrolets and the Chicago Studebakers of the National Basketball League had black players in their lineups. Both teams folded, but the NBL was integrated four and a half years before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color barrier.
Mikan and the Lakers would face the Globbies before a sellout crowd at Chicago Stadium on February 20, 1948 in a game that was conceived by a Chicago sports editor, Arch Ward. (Ward came up with the idea for the American and National League All-Star Game in baseball and pushed for the formation of a new football league, the All America Football Conference in 1946 and the College All Star Game against the NFL in Chicago).
Mikan's Lakers seemed to be really good and the Globetrotters team was thought to be the best in the world. Ermer Robinson, Ducky Moore, Sam Wheeler, Goose Tatum, Haynes, Babe Pressley, Ted Strong, Vertes Ziegler, and Wilbert King defeated Mikan, Jim Pollard and the Lakers, 61-59, before a crowd of 17,823 at Chicago Stadium. Robinson won the game on a last second, two-handed 20-foot set shot.
"I was told by several NBA owners at the time that that was the beginning of them deciding to draft or recruit players from the Harlem Globetrotters and the black colleges," said Haynes in an interview in the mid-1990s.
Minneapolis, along with three other teams, joined the BAA in the 1948 off season. Wade, LeBron, Johnson and Bosh would not have been able to follow the Lakers, Rochester Royals, Fort Wayne Pistons or Indianapolis into the newer league. Despite enormous talent, Negroes were "unofficially" barred from the BAA. There seems however to be an exception in the case of the New York Knicks player, the Japanese-American Wataru Misaka, who played with New York in 1947-48 and is now considered the first non-white in the BAA.
Haynes never played in the NBA but he and his Globetrotter teammates helped open the door. It took a while for the NBA to consider top notch players. It was not until 1950 that the league would give a Negro player a try out.
NBA integration would not happen until October 31, 1950 when the Washington Capitols' roster included Earl Lloyd. Years later Lloyd would downplay the significance of his breaking of the color barrier.
Lloyd had a head start on the Knicks Sweetwater Clifton, whose contract was purchased from Saperstein's Harlem Globetrotters, and the Boston Celtics Chuck Cooper, who was taken out of college.
Black college coach John McLendon, who was at North Carolina College, was instrumental in getting Lloyd signed.
"The Washington Capitols were the first team to have historically black schools products on the team. They preceded Boston by one week." said John Mc Lendon (who was the first African-American coach of a pro team as he was hired by the American Basketball League's George Steinbrenner-owned Cleveland Pipers in 1961 and fired by Steinbrenner even though Cleveland won the Eastern Division because McLendon refused to tell a player Steinbrenner had traded him to that evening's opponent — McLendon then got as far away from Steinbrenner as possible and went to Malaysia as a basketball instructor). "There were two guys ahead of Cooper, Harold Hunter and Earl Lloyd.
"I took them to a tryout in Washington, D.C. They had 20 something guys in there and they put them in threes and no combination could be the three guys. The owner, (Mike) Uline, and the general manager called me upstairs, and said, ‘hey coach get those guys dressed and bring them up here.' I have a copy of the contract they signed."
Lloyd made the Capitols, Hunter didn't. McLendon said the first two black athletes who actually signed NBA contracts were Hunter (who played for McLendon at North Carolina College) and Lloyd with Washington and the Celtics signed Cooper after drafting him in the second round of the 1950 Draft a week later.
"I took them, I was there," said McLendon. "I asked the Basketball Hall of Fame just to note five pioneers in the game. They had it up for six months and then took it down because it caused too much controversy, people were arguing about who is the first one, who was the first under contract, the first one on the floor, the first one drafted. The first two in the NBA under a tryout were Harold Hunter and Earl Lloyd.
Lloyd and the rest of the players in the NBA were not playing for the money.
"We wasn't making more money with the Globetrotters." said Haynes. "In fact in those years, league teams weren't making much money either. They (NBA players of the 1940s and 1950s) were like we were, we had to keep in touch with different businesses in our hometown or in the area of our hometowns while the season was still going on. Hopefully, in keeping in touch with them, we were able to gain employment during the summer to be able to afford ourselves until the next season started. So the NBA players were in the same position as we were in keeping up to the money part."
The Globetrotters would eventually lose games to the Lakers but still got their share of talented players after their monopoly on black players was broken by the Lloyd signing. The Globbies did get quite a few players including Wilt Chamberlain who left Kansas to play with Saperstein's team in 1958-59 for a $50,000 salary, which was out of the NBA's range. Chamberlain was ineligible to play in 1958-59 in the NBA because he had not put in four years at college. Had Chamberlain been 18 years old in 2010, he would be ineligible for the NBA because he was not one year out of high school.
If there should be any player collusion, talented high school graduates should be filing lawsuits against the NBA for discrimination for not allowing them to apply for a job because of age. An 18-year-old can fight a war yet not play on an NBA team because Commissioner David Stern and his owners have decided that either colleges or overseas leagues should develop a player who can command millions sitting on the bench with an entry level contract. The National Basketball Players Association and NBA owners have agreed to banning 18-year-olds in the NBA and the harmed players can do nothing about it under US labor laws.
Wade and LeBron will get max contracts and the other guys, Bosh and Johnson won't be checking in with people in their hometowns for summer employment like Haynes and other NBA players once did.
Even if they collude.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business" and is available for speaking engagements at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Saturday, May 8, 2010
A New York Tabloid’s Seduction of Lebron James
A New York Tabloid’s Seduction of Lebron James
By Evan Weiner
May 7, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- United States security officials are still investigating the Times Square bombing attempt, Greece is falling off the economic cliff, there is a flood cleanup in the heart of Nashville, the BP oil spill has not been capped in the Gulf of Mexico, the stock market blew a fuse on Thursday, a volcano in Iceland is still throwing ash into the sky and causing some airplane disruptions in Europe, the United Kingdom had an election and Roland Martin wore an ascot on CNN which became a running joke on The Daily Show for two days yet the New York Daily News, Mort Zuckerman's New York Daily News had an open letter to Lebron James on the front page of May 8's edition, please come to New York and sign with the Knicks after James becomes a free agent on July 1. Zuckerman's headline writer had a plea to Lebron.
This Is Home.
Actually Akron, Ohio is home for Lebron.
On pages 8 and 9 of the tabloid, there were articles and then a comparison between New York and Cleveland and why New York is better. This is not an unusual Daily News tactic. When the Knicks played Indiana in the playoffs in the 1990s, the tabloid poked fun at Indianapolis and Indiana using the headline "The Knicks Versus the Hicks".
Disrespectful yes, but tabloids have no time for hurt feelings. Especially New York tabloids in the midst of in what seems to be the Hundred Years' (tabloid) War.
The "This is Home" complete with pictures of the Statue of Liberty and Lebron front page (Emma Lazarus probably wasn't thinking of Lebron when she wrote give me your tired and poor line as part of her sonnet, The New Colossus which is immortalized on a plaque at the Statue of Liberty) was just the latest New York media's love note to Lebron, the wooing of Lebron in the New York papers is akin to the Knicks trying to recruit Lebron and it appears Knicks owner James Dolan has no problem with the New York tabloids gushing over Lebron who is a free agent come July 1. Dolan who himself owns a newspaper -- Newsday -- has been quiet on the subject, he could be accused of tampering with a player under contract to another team and Newsday has not been out in front of showing love and affection for the Cleveland Cavaliers player.
Zuckerman, whose paper (along with Rupert Murdoch's New York Post, the New York Times and Newsday) put up money for the establishment of the NYC2012 Olympic Committee and himself a part owner of the Washington Redskins, cannot be serious or can he? The Daily News is in a struggle with the New York Post for tabloid domination in the New York market, neither paper puts out much of a useable product as both are filled with mayhem, murder, entertainment and sports news with a lot of sensationalism and on top of that ESPN's new New York website poached Zuckerman's product and took a number of sportswriters.
The Daily News needs readership and if Lebron and the Statue of Liberty and "This is Home" sells papers, that is fine.
The Lebron on the Saturday cover and two-page in the non-sports section articles along with a blow up of Lebron in a Knicks uniform is a thoroughly unprofessional of a journalistic endeavor however and sophomoric at best. The paper seems to be on collectively hands and knees in begging mode, please Lebron look at me status. The only thing missing was Zuckerman's star writer, Mike Lupica (who in the 1990s was Garden President Dave Checketts stenographer and MSG's chief welcome wagon host in his love letters in the sand to MSG columns and Lupica is still pining for those days when the Knicks and Rangers mattered and the Garden was either the hippest or coolest spot on Earth---perhaps he can again hire people like he did back in the 1990s to tell him how the Rangers played and write coherent columns about hockey as well) did not write the valentines to Lebron pieces but that will soon be coming from the Daily News superstar political and sports columnist as the days dwindle down to July 1.
(Love Letters in the Sand was written by J. Fred Coots. Coots also wrote Santa Claus is Coming to Town and the Rangers Victory Song – the New York Rangers fight song back in the 1930s and 40s and beyond.)
The New York tabloid papers basketball coverage have been nothing more than let’s hope Lebron falls in love with New York cheerleaders and the papers are perhaps one step ahead of the New York sports talk radio shows in their infatuation. The hosts of those radio shows also pine for Lebron's love for New York.
Zuckerman, who has the very serious magazine, US News and World Report, has not mentioned in any of his coverage that Lebron's maximum annual NBA contract would allow him to make about $14 million a year is about the same amount of money that Madison Square Garden would pay in property taxes except Dolan doesn't have to pay property taxes. Dolan doesn't pay because in the early 1980s, Gulf and Western, then Garden owners, somehow convinced Mayor Ed Koch, the New York State Legislature and New York Governor Mario Cuomo that the NBA's Knicks and the NHL's Rangers could not be financially viable and could not compete with small market teams for talent without a reduction in property taxes and help with the Con Ed electric bill.
The Knicks and Rangers stayed in a valuable parcel of real estate not far from Macy's or Times Square, Gulf and Western got the property off the city's books and Con Ed customers paid for the privilege of having the two teams stay in Manhattan by picking up the Garden's electric tab. The New York State-Garden deal seems to be one of those that will last in perpetuity or eternity.
Zuckerman seems to be trying to play the Jack Murphy role in getting two big league sports franchise in San Diego in 1961 and 1969 in the pursuit of Lebron James. There is no secret that newspapers like to shape public opinion and make endorsements for political candidates and public policy. But a newspapers main goal is not reporting news per se. The news is the lure or the bait for people to look at the newspaper and check out the advertisements. It is the ad money that newspapers have lived and died with. Ad money has been evaporating for newspapers over the past decade and the product has suffered as writers have been let go.
The Lebron on the front cover is a ploy to get people to sample the Daily News. Zuckerman is not Jack Murphy though. Jack Murphy is a forgotten figure in sports and probably belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the Baseball Hall of Fame as a contributor. Murphy was a columnist and the sports editor of the San Diego Union in the 1950s. San Diego was a quiet, navy town in the 1950s but Murphy reached out to the owner of the American Football League's Los Angeles Chargers, Barron Hilton (the grandfather of Paris Hilton) and began a city pursuit of Hilton's football team. Murphy did convince Hilton that San Diego was a much better venue for his fan-challenged Los Angeles Chargers but there was a potential short term and long term problem.
San Diego lacked a suitable professional football stadium. With Hilton's team ready to move southward but not having a home, Murphy began writing that the Chargers needed a real stadium not the patchwork Balboa Stadium (some renovations at the facility to make it an acceptable AFL stadium were done by Chargers players including Jack Kemp and Paul Maguire) which sat 34,000 people. Murphy pushed to get public support in a referendum to build a real stadium and voters responded by passing the $27 million stadium ballot in November 1965. The new stadium opened in 1967 with the Chargers football team as the main tenant. After Murphy passed away in 1980, San Diego Stadium became Jack Murphy Stadium. The name didn't stick along as changing economics forced a naming rights partner's logo on the stadium in exchange for multi-million dollar checks that went to help pay off players salaries.
A series of factors led both the American and National Leagues in baseball to expand in 1969. Neither league had an expansion plans on the table but when Kansas City A's owner took his team to Oakland after the 1967 season, Missouri Senator Stuart Symington threatened Major League Baseball with stripping the antitrust exemption that the Supreme Court gave the game in 1922. Senator Symington demanded a replacement for Finley's A's as soon as possible which meant 1969.
Initially, the National League did not want to add teams until 1971 but with Symington breathing down Baseball's neck and the American League committing expansion franchises to Kansas City and Seattle, National League owners took San Diego as one territory and Montreal or Buffalo for the other expansion team. Montreal officials were about to secure a ballpark while San Diego had a major league stadium ready to go. Buffalo did not get a team and was a fallback in the event Montreal could not produce a stadium.
Murphy got two franchises into San Diego. Zuckerman waves pom poms for the Knicks. It would be interesting to see how Zuckerman would have reacted if he had more of a financial stake in the Washington Redskins and papers in other markets wanted the Redskins best player and spent years courting the superstar player.
NBA Commissioner David Stern cannot stop Zuckerman's bouquets to Lebron and Stern must know that the Knicks from Dolan to the team's president Donnie Walsh to others in the Garden, while not actively encouraging sportswriters and the papers to seduce Lebron are also not discouraging writers to blow kisses at Lebron. Sportswriters for all their talk about being professionals are fans too and are happy to cover a winning team. The New York Knicks basketball franchise has not been a good product for years.
Lebron is not going to sell any papers anyway. Those days are long gone; newspapers have too much competition from other media sources. But don't tell that to Mort on Rupert. They are in a tabloid war and if Lebron or Dwayne Wade, individually or together, don't come to New York, there is always Carmelo Anthony waiting for free agency in 2011. In fact some New York basketball fans, rather writers, think that Lebron will spurn them and are already making eyes at the Denver Nuggets player. Until Lebron makes a decision, the newspaper seduction of Lebron James will continue in New York.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and a lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business." He is available for speaking at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
By Evan Weiner
May 7, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) -- United States security officials are still investigating the Times Square bombing attempt, Greece is falling off the economic cliff, there is a flood cleanup in the heart of Nashville, the BP oil spill has not been capped in the Gulf of Mexico, the stock market blew a fuse on Thursday, a volcano in Iceland is still throwing ash into the sky and causing some airplane disruptions in Europe, the United Kingdom had an election and Roland Martin wore an ascot on CNN which became a running joke on The Daily Show for two days yet the New York Daily News, Mort Zuckerman's New York Daily News had an open letter to Lebron James on the front page of May 8's edition, please come to New York and sign with the Knicks after James becomes a free agent on July 1. Zuckerman's headline writer had a plea to Lebron.
This Is Home.
Actually Akron, Ohio is home for Lebron.
On pages 8 and 9 of the tabloid, there were articles and then a comparison between New York and Cleveland and why New York is better. This is not an unusual Daily News tactic. When the Knicks played Indiana in the playoffs in the 1990s, the tabloid poked fun at Indianapolis and Indiana using the headline "The Knicks Versus the Hicks".
Disrespectful yes, but tabloids have no time for hurt feelings. Especially New York tabloids in the midst of in what seems to be the Hundred Years' (tabloid) War.
The "This is Home" complete with pictures of the Statue of Liberty and Lebron front page (Emma Lazarus probably wasn't thinking of Lebron when she wrote give me your tired and poor line as part of her sonnet, The New Colossus which is immortalized on a plaque at the Statue of Liberty) was just the latest New York media's love note to Lebron, the wooing of Lebron in the New York papers is akin to the Knicks trying to recruit Lebron and it appears Knicks owner James Dolan has no problem with the New York tabloids gushing over Lebron who is a free agent come July 1. Dolan who himself owns a newspaper -- Newsday -- has been quiet on the subject, he could be accused of tampering with a player under contract to another team and Newsday has not been out in front of showing love and affection for the Cleveland Cavaliers player.
Zuckerman, whose paper (along with Rupert Murdoch's New York Post, the New York Times and Newsday) put up money for the establishment of the NYC2012 Olympic Committee and himself a part owner of the Washington Redskins, cannot be serious or can he? The Daily News is in a struggle with the New York Post for tabloid domination in the New York market, neither paper puts out much of a useable product as both are filled with mayhem, murder, entertainment and sports news with a lot of sensationalism and on top of that ESPN's new New York website poached Zuckerman's product and took a number of sportswriters.
The Daily News needs readership and if Lebron and the Statue of Liberty and "This is Home" sells papers, that is fine.
The Lebron on the Saturday cover and two-page in the non-sports section articles along with a blow up of Lebron in a Knicks uniform is a thoroughly unprofessional of a journalistic endeavor however and sophomoric at best. The paper seems to be on collectively hands and knees in begging mode, please Lebron look at me status. The only thing missing was Zuckerman's star writer, Mike Lupica (who in the 1990s was Garden President Dave Checketts stenographer and MSG's chief welcome wagon host in his love letters in the sand to MSG columns and Lupica is still pining for those days when the Knicks and Rangers mattered and the Garden was either the hippest or coolest spot on Earth---perhaps he can again hire people like he did back in the 1990s to tell him how the Rangers played and write coherent columns about hockey as well) did not write the valentines to Lebron pieces but that will soon be coming from the Daily News superstar political and sports columnist as the days dwindle down to July 1.
(Love Letters in the Sand was written by J. Fred Coots. Coots also wrote Santa Claus is Coming to Town and the Rangers Victory Song – the New York Rangers fight song back in the 1930s and 40s and beyond.)
The New York tabloid papers basketball coverage have been nothing more than let’s hope Lebron falls in love with New York cheerleaders and the papers are perhaps one step ahead of the New York sports talk radio shows in their infatuation. The hosts of those radio shows also pine for Lebron's love for New York.
Zuckerman, who has the very serious magazine, US News and World Report, has not mentioned in any of his coverage that Lebron's maximum annual NBA contract would allow him to make about $14 million a year is about the same amount of money that Madison Square Garden would pay in property taxes except Dolan doesn't have to pay property taxes. Dolan doesn't pay because in the early 1980s, Gulf and Western, then Garden owners, somehow convinced Mayor Ed Koch, the New York State Legislature and New York Governor Mario Cuomo that the NBA's Knicks and the NHL's Rangers could not be financially viable and could not compete with small market teams for talent without a reduction in property taxes and help with the Con Ed electric bill.
The Knicks and Rangers stayed in a valuable parcel of real estate not far from Macy's or Times Square, Gulf and Western got the property off the city's books and Con Ed customers paid for the privilege of having the two teams stay in Manhattan by picking up the Garden's electric tab. The New York State-Garden deal seems to be one of those that will last in perpetuity or eternity.
Zuckerman seems to be trying to play the Jack Murphy role in getting two big league sports franchise in San Diego in 1961 and 1969 in the pursuit of Lebron James. There is no secret that newspapers like to shape public opinion and make endorsements for political candidates and public policy. But a newspapers main goal is not reporting news per se. The news is the lure or the bait for people to look at the newspaper and check out the advertisements. It is the ad money that newspapers have lived and died with. Ad money has been evaporating for newspapers over the past decade and the product has suffered as writers have been let go.
The Lebron on the front cover is a ploy to get people to sample the Daily News. Zuckerman is not Jack Murphy though. Jack Murphy is a forgotten figure in sports and probably belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the Baseball Hall of Fame as a contributor. Murphy was a columnist and the sports editor of the San Diego Union in the 1950s. San Diego was a quiet, navy town in the 1950s but Murphy reached out to the owner of the American Football League's Los Angeles Chargers, Barron Hilton (the grandfather of Paris Hilton) and began a city pursuit of Hilton's football team. Murphy did convince Hilton that San Diego was a much better venue for his fan-challenged Los Angeles Chargers but there was a potential short term and long term problem.
San Diego lacked a suitable professional football stadium. With Hilton's team ready to move southward but not having a home, Murphy began writing that the Chargers needed a real stadium not the patchwork Balboa Stadium (some renovations at the facility to make it an acceptable AFL stadium were done by Chargers players including Jack Kemp and Paul Maguire) which sat 34,000 people. Murphy pushed to get public support in a referendum to build a real stadium and voters responded by passing the $27 million stadium ballot in November 1965. The new stadium opened in 1967 with the Chargers football team as the main tenant. After Murphy passed away in 1980, San Diego Stadium became Jack Murphy Stadium. The name didn't stick along as changing economics forced a naming rights partner's logo on the stadium in exchange for multi-million dollar checks that went to help pay off players salaries.
A series of factors led both the American and National Leagues in baseball to expand in 1969. Neither league had an expansion plans on the table but when Kansas City A's owner took his team to Oakland after the 1967 season, Missouri Senator Stuart Symington threatened Major League Baseball with stripping the antitrust exemption that the Supreme Court gave the game in 1922. Senator Symington demanded a replacement for Finley's A's as soon as possible which meant 1969.
Initially, the National League did not want to add teams until 1971 but with Symington breathing down Baseball's neck and the American League committing expansion franchises to Kansas City and Seattle, National League owners took San Diego as one territory and Montreal or Buffalo for the other expansion team. Montreal officials were about to secure a ballpark while San Diego had a major league stadium ready to go. Buffalo did not get a team and was a fallback in the event Montreal could not produce a stadium.
Murphy got two franchises into San Diego. Zuckerman waves pom poms for the Knicks. It would be interesting to see how Zuckerman would have reacted if he had more of a financial stake in the Washington Redskins and papers in other markets wanted the Redskins best player and spent years courting the superstar player.
NBA Commissioner David Stern cannot stop Zuckerman's bouquets to Lebron and Stern must know that the Knicks from Dolan to the team's president Donnie Walsh to others in the Garden, while not actively encouraging sportswriters and the papers to seduce Lebron are also not discouraging writers to blow kisses at Lebron. Sportswriters for all their talk about being professionals are fans too and are happy to cover a winning team. The New York Knicks basketball franchise has not been a good product for years.
Lebron is not going to sell any papers anyway. Those days are long gone; newspapers have too much competition from other media sources. But don't tell that to Mort on Rupert. They are in a tabloid war and if Lebron or Dwayne Wade, individually or together, don't come to New York, there is always Carmelo Anthony waiting for free agency in 2011. In fact some New York basketball fans, rather writers, think that Lebron will spurn them and are already making eyes at the Denver Nuggets player. Until Lebron makes a decision, the newspaper seduction of Lebron James will continue in New York.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and a lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business." He is available for speaking at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
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