Rant by LeBron James speaks volumes about the real world of sports
TUESDAY, 14 JUNE 2011 16:14
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/rant-by-lebron-james-speaks-volumes-about-the-real-world-of-sports
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
Perhaps in the smoke and mirrors and laser light shows filled with loud music of 2011 sports, LeBron James should be introduced with some Billy Joel music the next time he goes onto the basketball court.
The song "My Life" seems apropos but if you think LeBron's post game rift was out of line, think again. High salaried athletes of the 21st century in America live in gated communities and don't have much to do with fans on a daily basis. It is no longer the 1950s — a time when members of the Brooklyn Dodgers lived in the Brooklyn community, members of the New York Giants baseball team lived in Dobbs Ferry, New York and were a part of that community.
Phil Rizzuto and Yogi Berra are no longer selling suits in a Newark clothing store in the off season to supplement their New York Yankees income.
Sports fans and sports media employees expect a lot out of their athletic heroes.
At one time LeBron James was a hero but he has become the equivalent of a wrestling heel, a bad guy after leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers franchise and announcing his intentions during a made for cable TV show on ESPN. Forgotten in the criticism of the show which was dubbed "The Decision" was that LeBron James made some money for charity. Athletes are supposed to be role models and the excuse is always because kids look up to sports heroes. LeBron has been clean, no drugs, no jail time yet he is a villain while scores of athletes are arrested on an annual basis for various crimes.
Plaxico Burress and Michael Vick seem to be coming back into sports as conquering heroes after doing jail time. LeBron James doesn't seem to have humility or has yet to be humbled by the sports media so he is a bad, bad guy now. Athletes are supposed to be humble. Entertainers on the other hand are applauded for being wild people. The Lindsay Lohans, Britney Spears of the world are great copy. The sporting media expects athletes lead the way by example because the kids look up to them.
Babe Ruth was hardly a role model but the Babe was out there signing autographs for the kids back in the 1920s and 1930s. But Babe was also a businessman and in 1930 made more money than President Herbert Hoover. Babe’s response drew chuckles when asked about making more money than the President of the United States.
“I know, but I had a better year than Hoover,” he said.
LeBron James problem seems to be his lack of a quick wit and humor. His statement was innocuous. LeBron James is not refusing to go into military service as a conscientious objector and not following Muhammad Ali’s 1967 lead. He wasn’t on the podium in Mexico City with a black glove raised in the air like John Carlos and Tommie Smith did in 1968 protesting poverty in America.
There was a no political statement here. It was just a pro wrestling type rant.
James should have been signing the final words from the 1978 song — I don't care what you say anymore, this is my life. Go ahead with your own life, leave me alone.
"All the people that were rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today. They have the same personal problems they had today. I'm going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do with me and my family and be happy with that. So they can get a few days or a few months or whatever the case may be on being happy about not only myself, but the Miami Heat not accomplishing their goal. But they got to get back to the real world at some point," James said after the game.
James is getting excoriated for his statement.
James is saying publicly what athletes have thought and talked about privately for years. Athletes are not normal people as just everyday performers. LeBron James is in a different stratosphere from the average NBA player. Athletes are coddled, put on pedestals by fans — many of them adults who are in their 40s, 50s and 60s and wear the name of their favorite athlete on their back. They are pursued by autograph hounds and other jock sniffers and there are groupies who chase them. Their athletic exploits are recorded and chronicled for the ages.
Athletes are supposed to be happy just playing a child's game and at one time, great players like Honey Russell back before the days of the National Basketball League and the Basketball Association of America in the 1930s played for nothing. Even a great player like George Yardley played for nothing with the Los Angeles Jets of the American Basketball League (an organization that featured a Cleveland franchise owned by George M. Steinbrenner III). Yardley took the opportunity to play because he only participated in home games and select road games where his business would have taken him anyway. But as the late George Young pointed out in the 1980s while running the New York Giants in selecting player personnel and coaches that if a player says he will play for nothing, he is a liar.
It is a business and LeBron James is merely a businessman who let out a secret that is well known in his community, sports. You play a game and then get on with your life. Jim Bouton in his ground breaking baseball book Ball Four wrote that in 1970.
Sports is nothing more than a business even though fans are asked and give unconditional love for the team. But fans have to put up with an awful lot in exchange for a team. Madison Square Garden displaced the true "fans" decades ago when the building owners tore out the blue seats and replaced them with luxury boxes. The blue collar worker has been evicted from the best seats in that and other buildings.
All of the new buildings that have gone up since the 1986 federal tax code update (which shifted the way municipalities could charge owners for debt payment and put the onus of paying the bills for the facility on the taxpayers) also gave owners an excuse to hike ticket prices. The new places became malls complete with a sporting event, restaurants, shops and some new places included a Ferris Wheel or a swimming pool. In a 2000 interview, long time basketball executive John Nash, talking before Nets game at the Meadowlands, wondered if ticket prices for sporting events became too high.
"Cost is obviously a factor and it is directly related to players salaries," said Nash who was the General Manager of the New Jersey Nets at that time. "The players get 53 percent of the gross revenues by virtue of the agreement they made with the NBA. And as their salaries go up, the revenues streams necessarily have to go up."
In 2000 Nash and other sports executives were asking the same question. Were ticket prices hitting a plateau? The answer was no as ticket prices continue to escalate shifting the culture and social class inside of the arena to a high income "fan" and leaving behind the real sports lovers.
"That's a great question and I think every year teams have to decide for themselves," Nash said. "What has happened in many cases is that corporations have become our top customers as opposed to the everyday fan who cannot afford either the time commitment of 41 games or the cost."
In two weeks, NBA players may be locked out by the owners over money issues.
Politicians are willing to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to build sports stadiums and arenas and in some cases go the extra mile and hand owners money so their cities can be considered big league.
This is the culture of sports and Lebron James is part of that culture.
There is a National Football League owners led work stoppage taking place right now. On July 1, there could very well be an owners-led National Basketball Association work stoppage. Looking down the pike, the possibility of a Major League Baseball work stoppage exists as the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the owners and players expires in December. That National Hockey League owners and players CBA ends in the summer of 2012.
Since the Nash interview, the three NBA franchises have been relocated. Vancouver lost the Grizzlies franchise when Michael Heisley went shopping for a better arena deal in 2001. Heisley took an offer from Memphis. George Shinn relocated his Charlotte Hornets franchise in 2002 to New Orleans also in search of a better arena deal. The Oklahoma City-based owners of the Seattle SuperSonics took the franchise to Oklahoma City in 2008 after Seattle officials refused to build a new arena for the team some 13 years after the city rebuilt the municipally owned arena that housed the NBA team. The owners left despite having two years remaining on the lease between the city and franchise.
New Jersey will be losing the NBA Nets soon as that team will relocate to Brooklyn.
Allegedly 22 of the NBA’s 30 teams are losing money.
National Hockey League owners locked out their players in 2004 and shut down the business for an entire year. The NHL figures to approve the relocation of the Atlanta franchise to Winnipeg in a few days. Glendale, Arizona is paying $25 million a year for the privilege of having an NHL franchise in the Phoenix suburb.
Hawaiian officials are questioning why they are paying the NFL $4 million annually to host the league's annual all-star game, the Pro Bowl.
Businessmen in the Los Angeles area are demanding Los Angeles taxpayers kick money into a stadium for a National Football league team. In Sacramento, police, firefighters, teachers and other municipal employees are getting fired but Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson is determined to spend taxpayers dollars to build an arena for the Maloof brothers Kings NBA franchise and keep the team in town.
Stadiums and arenas are costly projects and sports owners are smart enough to know that they don't want to build one on their own dime if possible.
Sports is filled with entitlement.
It doesn't matter if it is pro sports, college sports or in Lebron James case, the AAU. LeBron James and other talented young teens are courted by sneaker companies and push into colleges whose coaches have deals with sneaker companies. The money game starts very early in life for basketball players.
LeBron James talked and the sports world went into a tizzy.
He said nothing.
America is fighting two declared wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and is involved with NATO in Libya. There seems to be secret wars taking place in Pakistan and Yemen. The economy is still struggling; politicians are more concerned with ideology than settling real problems yet LeBron James' my life statement is being scrutinized.
LeBron James is nothing more than a highly paid basketball player and entertainer. He's right. People go back to their lives after a game and he has his own life. He just plays a game, nothing more, nothing less.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition" is available at bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.
Showing posts with label Miami Heat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Miami Heat. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Lebron, Economic Impact and a Cleveland Casino
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
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
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
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