2011 NBA lockout can trace its roots back to 1983
FRIDAY, 01 JULY 2011 16:19

http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/2011-nba-lockout-can-trace-its-roots-back-to-1983
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
Dear National Basketball Association fans:
A couple of weeks ago LeBron James told you like it is in sports when he said, “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 apologized for his statement even though what he said was true. But his rant was just the prelude to the next moment of truth in the world of a sports fan, an NBA fan. The owners and players don’t care if you offer unconditional loyalty to a logo or, as Jerry Seinfeld aptly says, dirty laundry. The NBA – and all sports -- are big business and if the NBA owners have to lock out the players to get a better deal, so be it.
The NBA is in a lockout mode. There will be teeth gnashing about greedy owners and greedy players but one day fans will have to be broken from their unconditional love, the face painting of colors, the tattoo team logo proudly displayed on some part of the body, the shirts, hats and realize that sports is nothing more than a business.
NBA fans really have not lost anything yet. Sure the rookie leagues have been cancelled and free agency is being delayed but there are still more than three months to go before the product disappears from the shelf -- pre-season games.
There is a question about the finances of the NBA. Commissioner David Stern, the owners’ front man, wants hundreds of millions of dollars in worker givebacks so that the league can be financially viable. Twenty-eight years ago, Commissioner Larry O’Brien was looking for givebacks to make the then 23-team league financially viable.
These were desperate time for the league, so much so that the owners of Madison Square Garden, Gulf and Western, somehow convinced New York City Mayor Ed Koch that the Gulf and Western’s subsidiary -- Madison Square Garden and the two franchises, the NBA Knicks and the National Hockey League Rangers -- could not compete with San Diego, Indiana, Cleveland, Salt Lake City for basketball players and Winnipeg, Hartford, Quebec City, Edmonton, Calgary along with Denver for hockey players.
Without property tax relief, Gulf and Western would relocate the Knicks to Nassau County and the Rangers to the Meadowlands. Gulf and Western never did like Madison Square Garden all that much and within four years of the building’s reopening in 1972, the company was considering moving both teams to an arena that would be built in East Rutherford.
Gulf and Western got the property tax break that the Dolan family, the Garden’s current owners, presently enjoys.
Despite the fact that both Larry Bird in Boston and Magic Johnson in Los Angeles were winning titles and a strong presence in Philadelphia where the old ABA star Julius Erving had won a title, the NBA was at the crossroads in 1983.
A good many franchises were losing money, the Collective Bargaining Agreement was up and the 23 team NBA was thinking of cutting as many as seven teams with Cleveland, Denver, Indiana, Kansas City, San Diego and Utah losing an enormous amount of money. Some teams fell behind on their deferred payments, estimated to be between $80 million and $90 million, which nearly prompted a player’s strike in 1982. 

There were rumors that Denver and Utah were going to consolidate into one franchise and that other teams would move. Donald Sterling moved the San Diego Clippers to Los Angeles following the 1983-84 season without the NBA's permission. The Kansas City Kings, a franchise that tried to regionalize itself in the 1970s by splitting home games between Kansas City and Omaha after leaving Cincinnati in 1972, went west to Sacramento in 1984-85. Utah attempted to solve some of its financial problems by playing a number of home games in Las Vegas.
The players and owners met for nine months and completely rewrote the Collective Bargaining Agreement from its foundations. The league opened its books and let the players see what the profits and losses really were and a deal was brokered.
“I think it just had a number of important consequences,” said NBA Deputy Commissioner Russell Granik who was part of the NBA management and negotiating team in 1983. “One, by having rolling around in that stuff, for the first time, I think that process in the nine months or the year of negotiations, was that the players for the first time got complete financial information. Everybody knew everything.
“That really, I think, sort of created a feeling of we are in this together as a partnership that maybe hadn’t existed between the players and the league. I think that was a great boast. The other thing by having the salary cap and the revenue sharing system in place, we were able to go out and attract new ownership in places that up until then we were struggling.”
Two franchises that were struggling were the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Indiana Pacers. All together the league might have been left with just 16 teams without the new bargaining agreement.
“I believe Gordon and George Gund at the time would not have purchased the Cleveland Cavaliers shortly thereafter except we had this deal. At that point Indiana was really struggling. Shortly after that Herb and Mel Simon purchased the team in Indiana. Both are still in the league (in 2001) many years later. Two of the strongest ownership groups we had. I think there were others that followed thereafter that probably would not have happened if we hadn’t been able to say OK I think we got a system that’s going to make sense.
“At the time we were very serious and I think Larry (Fleischer) and the players, you know your first reaction is they are bluffing, but again having been in the process and learn all the numbers, we were seriously thinking of at least right away folding two or three times, buying them back or merging them or something. I don’t have any doubt but for that kind of deal that would have happened as well,” said Granik.

The 1983 Collective Bargaining Agreement that put a salary cap in place is considered to be the turning point in the league's history by the owners and by the players. The 23-team league survived and both sides formed a working alliance, which would allow the league to grow. It also helped that two entities were about ready to join the league, Michael Jordan and Nike. The salary cap was the brainchild of a new lawyer that came on the scene named Gary Bettman. Bettman would become one of the three key people that would run the NBA in the mid-1980s and beyond. David Stern would be the boss, Granik the No. 2 guy, followed by Bettman.
The Collective Bargaining was Commissioner Larry O’Brien’s last major work for the NBA.
O’Brien was in a sense a transitional commissioner. The NBA was a business under his predecessor Walter Kennedy, but under O’Brien it became a bigger business. O’Brien replaced Kennedy in 1975 and guided the NBA in the league’s “merger” with the ABA. O’Brien was the lead negotiator in two Collective Bargaining Agreements in 1976 and 1983. During O’Brien, gate receipts doubled and TV revenues increased by threefold. Still O’Brien was unable to financially stabilize the league and without the 1983 labor agreement, which established a partnership with the Players Association and its Executive Director Larry Fleischer, the NBA might have contracted franchises.
The 1983 agreement propelled the league into a better financial position.
Or did it? Kansas City ownership sold the franchise to a Sacramento group. Twenty-eight years later, Sacramento is in dire fiscal shape. Indiana remains a troubled franchise. The league over the years added teams; Charlotte was an initial success but eventually moved. Vancouver lasted just six years before the owner Michael Heisley uprooted the franchise and placed it in Memphis. A second Charlotte franchise has not been financially successful. The second New Orleans franchise is on the financial ropes. Seattle no longer has a team.
Cost certainty is fleeting. The owners and players celebrated in 1983 a new deal. In retrospect, it didn’t work for everyone.
David Stern replaced O'Brien as commissioner on February 1, 1984. Stern was an attorney who had been the NBA's Executive Vice President. Stern would direct a tremendous expansion in the marketing of the NBA and develop a cohesive and profitable broadcasting strategy. He would move try to ensure the stability of NBA franchises by increasing licensing revenues, and developing corporate sponsorships.
In the buildup to the potential NBA lockout of 1998, NBC and TNT guaranteed owners that they would pay out $465 million dollars for broadcast rights whether the league played a game or not. The NBA had been very good to NBC and TNT in 1997-98 as they shared $400 million in profits from TV. Those two items did not go unnoticed by the National Basketball Players Association.
The players promised that it would boycott interviews with NBC and TNT personnel because the association’s leadership felt the networks were bankrolling the lockout and provided a guarantee of money against losses if no basketball was being played. Phoenix Suns CEO Jerry Colangelo disputed that saying television had no influence on the lockout and that owners were merely seeking a better collective bargaining agreement.
Each owner would get more than $15 million from the NBC and TNT and more from local cable contracts. Cable consumers would help pay for the lockout unknowingly. Cable consumers did not receive any rebates from games missed because of work stoppages in Major League Baseball in 1994 and 1995 and in the National Hockey League in 1994-95.
On March 23, 1998 NBA owners voted to reopen the talks because the players’ share of the revenues exceeded 57 percent. The league shut down operations on July 1, 1998 and both sides dug in. The owners had a nest egg and could afford to wait until the players caved. The television unit of General Electric, the National Broadcasting Company and Ted Turner’s Turner Sports agreed to pay the owners a rights fee even though there was a possibility that games would be cancelled. If the games were cancelled, NBC would get money back either in a form or a rebate of a reduced rights fee schedule in the final three years of the TV agreement while Turner would have the contract extended by a year.
A few players boycotted NBC TV interviews whether they were on a national or a local affiliate level but TV interviews with NBC or CNN (TNT’s sister network) were of little concern.
The players sat for 202 days. In the end, the owners kept the salary cap, keep the draft and got a ceiling on top salaries at $14 million and a limit on how many years a team could pay a player at the $14 million level at seven. There was always a rookie minimum salary and stiffer drug testing policies. The middle class NBA player got more money; the stars were capped. David Stern had turned the middle class player against the stars in the fight and won the battle and the war.
The NBA got cost certainty in 1999 but not everyone made out. Charlotte and Vancouver quickly became former NBA cities. In 2005, the NBA and the players cut yet another cost certainty deal. Seattle didn’t make it and Sacramento ownership seriously considered moving to Anaheim this past spring.
The business of the NBA will go on despite a lockout. Anaheim will continue to push to get the Maloof brothers’ Sacramento Kings. Louisville may want in once the dust settles. San Jose and Newark will be buyers as well. Meanwhile the fans take another one on the chin. But they will be back … well some of them in the arena if they can afford the price of the tickets. If not, the corporate crowd will go to a game and treat it as an event and the real fans can stay home and watch it on TV.
LeBron told it like it is and he was vilified for that. David Stern, Players Executive Director Billy Hunter and others won’t be as blunt. The NBA is a business and the two sides will eventually settle this dispute without any worry about the fans.
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.

Gov. Christie should seek a disgruntled NBA owner instead of lobbying David Stern for Nets replacement
WEDNESDAY, 26 JANUARY 2011 12:59

http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/gov-christie-should-seek-a-disgruntled-nba-owner-instead-of-lobbying-david-stern-for-nets-replacement
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
There is an odd dynamic that plays out in sports. Elected officials genuflect before the commissioners of Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League and Major League Soccer along with NASCAR officials begging them for a franchise or in NASCAR's case an annual event. Conversely, a sports commissioner lobbies before elected officials for stadiums/arenas and on the federal level before Washington lawmakers to make sure various antitrust laws and in Major League Baseball's case, a full antitrust exemption, stay in place.
Big time college sports executives also show up in Washington to make sure big time college sports keep tax exemptions in place.
So it should not be surprising that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has begun a lobbying effort, not quite begging yet, in an attempt to get NBA Commissioner David Stern to think about replacing the soon-to-depart Newark-based New Jersey Nets with another team.
New Jersey's chances of landing a team on the surface seem to be non-existent however Christie has an ace in the hole that other prospective cities don't have. A major regional cable sports network that has limited winter programming, SNY, who could pay much more money in TV rights than say Louisville, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Seattle and Vancouver. In David Stern's three-legged stool world for a successful franchise, a large, local cable TV is an absolute must as is local government support (Christie is in favor of a Nets replacement) and corporate support. That last plank in Stern's platform is the major problem in New Jersey and has been a thorn in the side of past and present day Nets (and New Jersey Devils) ownerships.
Christie will have to wait though. The Brooklyn building has been on hold for years although there seems to be momentum to get the arena finally done. The NBA may not be operating in the fall of 2011 because the owners and players need a new collective bargaining agreement and Stern, as lead negotiator, figures to take a very hard line as he and the 30 NBA owners want changes in how players are compensated.
The NBA has some franchises that are on shaky financial footing. The league now owns the New Orleans Hornets, a franchise in desperate fiscal shape. The old Hornets ownership had attendance clauses built into the team lease with the state at the New Orleans Arena. There was a benchmark that needed to be reached by the end of January or the team ownership could pay $10 million and relocate. The league celebrated that the benchmark was hit but that doesn't mean the team will last in New Orleans beyond 2014. Indiana's owner Herb Simon is financially struggling and Charlotte has not been performing well financially since the NBA returned to the city in 2004.
The Maloof brothers are in a financial mess in Sacramento and claim they need a new arena. With California's financial woes and a proposal by Governor Jerry Brown to de-fund local redevelopment agencies on July 1, getting an arena built in Sacramento with public funding may be difficult. The Maloofs have failed in their quest for a new building on a number of occasions. (The Brown proposal could kill NFL stadium development in San Diego and a baseball park in San Jose for the Oakland A's.).
Newark has an NBA ready building for some owner and probably a lucrative cable TV deal. But Newark isn't the only NBA suitor. Louisville, Kentucky is once again seeking a team despite losing out on the Charlotte Hornets and the Vancouver Grizzlies about a decade ago. Vancouver may be back in the NBA wannabe category. The Vancouver saga in the NBA's mid-1990s expansion plans is worth noting in that the NBA decided to take Arthur Griffith's money ($100 million) in what seemed to be a cash grab.
Griffiths built a new arena with his own money and bought the franchise when the Canadian looney was worth 62 or 63 cents compared to the U.S. greenback. The two countries' dollar is around par right now. Griffiths sold the franchise to American businessman Michael Heisley in 2000. Heisley moved his franchise to Memphis in 2001. The Grizzlies franchise remains a cash-challenged NBA organization. A few years ago, Stern said he felt the NBA could not go back to Vancouver.
Stern can be a bullheaded bully. In 2005, the one-time New Jersey resident Stern trashed New Jersey politicians saying "you blew it" when another set of Nets owners could not get an arena built in Newark. Eventually Devils owner Jeffrey Vanderbeek worked out a deal with Newark officials and got an arena built with some of his money thrown into a publicly funded facility.
Christie seems to be willing to play ball with Stern. What Christie should be seeking out is an unhappy owner looking for greener pastures and go after that owner instead of Stern. Although the NBA blocked the planned sale and move of the Minnesota Timberwolves to New Orleans in 1994, a strong headed owner might tell Stern and his fellow owners to go stuff it and move anyway as Donald Sterling did in 1984 when he moved his San Diego Clippers to Los Angeles without league permission.


Moving an existing franchise to Newark may not be a large problem as the NBA, unlike Major League Baseball, is subjected to antitrust laws. It would take moving heaven and earth to put a third Major League Baseball team in the New York City area whether it is in Northern New Jersey or Brooklyn because Major League Baseball is exempt from certain portions of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Steinbrenner Yankees or the Wilpon Mets or both could say no to the idea and that would be it.
Major League Baseball is struggling to find a solution to the San Francisco Bay Area problem. The San Francisco Giants franchise has the territorial rights to San Jose and Santa Clara County, California even though those areas are much further away from the Giants home base in China Basin than Oakland, the city which houses the A's. Oakland A's owner Lew Wolff wants to move his team to San Jose but cannot because the Giants ownership group has the rights to the territory. Major League Baseball is looking for a solution. The solution will come when Wolff pays millions of dollars for "invading" Giants territory or if he wins an antitrust case against the Giants and Major League Baseball.
Wolff does not seem willing to sue Major League Baseball. Sterling told the NBA to try and stop me. The NBA didn't. But Christie may have to wait before he can really go after a disgruntled owner. There is the threat of the NBA lockout on July 1 and that takes precedent over everything else.
But Christie has thrown his hat in the ring and is running. The campaign has started to replace the New Jersey Nets in Newark as soon as possible.
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 www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com

Should Chris Christie be considered one of the most powerful people in sports?
TUESDAY, 12 OCTOBER 2010 16:22

http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/should-chris-christie-be-considered-one-of-the-most-powerful-people-in-sports

BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
It is silly season again as a S. I. M. magazine "the only global sport business magazine targeting a dual readership that focuses exclusively on influence and affluence in today's ever-changing world" is polling readership and asking readers to name the most influential people in the world of sports. For the record, this United Kingdom-based publication has Joseph Blatter, the President of FIFA (Soccer) out in front in the voting followed by the President of the International Olympic Committee, Dr. Jacques Rogge and Herbert Hainer, the Chairman and CEO of adidas in the top three slots. The first American on the list and coming in at number four is Heidi Ueberroth, which is a head turner. Ueberroth's father Peter, of course, ran the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Committee and was the Commissioner of Major League Baseball but his daughter simply doesn't belong as high on this list as President of NBA International. Her boss David Stern as the Commissioner of the National Basketball Association has more power.
Stern is ninth on the list well ahead of NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman who is at 50. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who cannot get his league market attention and traction outside the North American continent unlike Stern, Bettman and Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, who is 11th. Selig is 32nd, one spot ahead of CBS Sports President Sean McManus, which makes no sense. McManus just gave the NCAA billions of dollars in a partnership with Turner Sports for the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. McManus' Turner Sports Partner David Levy is ranked 54th.
For some reason, S. I. M. magazine has San Francisco 49ers owner Denise DeBartolo York in the Top 100. York doesn't run the football team, her 29-year-old son Jed with a rather thin business resume does.
Stern, the former Teaneck resident, understands where the real power in sports is located. Stern's three legged stool formula for success always starts with government. In the United States and in a great many countries, elected officials either directly give money to sports (as in Malaysia) or set up laws that funnel money into sports whether it is through tax breaks, tax incentives, the building of facilities at taxpayers' expense and in America, the federal government changed the cable TV laws which allowed owners like the Yankees George Steinbrenner, the Mets Fred Wilpon and the Dolan-family owned New York Knicks, New York Rangers and New York Liberty to make enormous sums of money from cable TV. The feds also give tax breaks to corporations buying high item sports event seats for "business purposes."
In New Jersey, Chris Christie as Governor is more important to the sports world than the state's highest paid employees, the Rutgers football coach and the Rutgers men's and women's basketball coach. Christie has to decide the fate of the Meadowlands at some point soon along with the horse racing industry in the state. Horse racing is a sport even though none of the top 100 on S. I. M.'s list represent horse racing.
Governors, mayors, state elected officials are major players in sports as they control the purse strings. The Meadowlands complex never would have opened without government support.
When publications and websites put out lists of the Top 100 this, the Top 100 that, they are should always to be taken with a grain of salt. In 2007, BusinessWeek posted a list of the Top 100 Power People in sports with National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell on the top of the list. BusinessWeek should have asked me to be part of their panel because their list is filled with questionable choices and omissions.
BusinessWeek asked the wrong people — players, agents, sports gadflies, for their opinions and didn't know that there is a formula for sports success — government support, a large local cable TV deal and corporate support, the latter two made possible by government assistance.
It's too bad because that Power 100 list might be far more accurate with real sports business experts than the BusinessWeek 100 that was presented. There really is nothing on the list that indicates that the panelists thought about the UEFA 2008 football tournament. That happens to be the second most watched sports event in the world behind the World Cup.
There is nothing about cricket or boxing on the list. The National Hockey League Commissioner is rated just 27th on the list even though the NHL has lots of eyeballs watching its product in Europe far more eyeballs than the NFL on that continent.
The list also was too United States-centric. The oddity here is that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell heads a highly successfully United States business that is attempting to catch up with Soccer, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and yes even the downtrodden National Hockey League in the global community. The list places Los Angeles Kings, Los Angeles Galaxy and AEG owner Phillip Anschutz at number 21. Anschutz may be the most powerful man in sports globally. Anschutz's LA Kings opened the 2007-08 National Hockey League season in London in the London arena he owns against the Anaheim Ducks. .
Anschutz controlled most of the franchises in Major League Soccer and brought David Beckham to America. National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern will tell you that London, England is the most ready city in Europe for an NBA franchise thanks to Anschutz.
Anschutz is also a major force behind the 2012 London Olympics.
The list has International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge but absent was the heads of the 2008 Beijing Summer Games, the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games, the 2012 London Summer Games and the 2014 Sochi Winter Games. That is worth noting because US Presidential candidate Mitt Romney launched his political career by running the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games. From there he ran for Governor of Massachusetts and may be attempting to get the Republican nomination for President in 2012.
Of course sports can be a great stepping stone. United States President George W. Bush was a two percent owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team and its general managing partner but he was never considered a Top 100 performer in sports during his days as a minority owner of a baseball team.
Texas Rangers and Dallas Stars owner Thomas O. Hicks, a major financial support of George W. Bush's 1994 and 1998 gubernatorial races in Texas and 2000 and 2004 Presidential bids is not on the list. Hicks and Montreal Canadiens owner George N. Gillett, Jr. purchased Liverpool P. C. in the English Premiere League and are building a football stadium in the English city that is more known for being the home of the Beatles John Lennon, Paul Mc Cartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr to Americans but Liverpool football has a long history. Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Malcolm Glazier isn't on the BusinessWeek 100 Power list either. Glazier owns the most recognizable sports brand internationally, Manchester United. Manchester United football is a lot better known globally than the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Hicks and Gillett recently sold Liverpool to Boston Red Sox owner John Henry.
Two glaring omissions in the 2007 list came from the world of the original cable TV investors, Ted Rogers in Canada and Chuck Dolan in New York . Rogers owns the Toronto Blue Jays and Sportsnet, which carries Blue Jays baseball, five NHL teams telecasts and has the rights to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and the 2012 London Summer Olympics. Dolan, who helped found HBO, owns Madison Square Garden, the New York Knicks, New York Rangers, New York Liberty, the Madison Square Garden Network (which has Knicks basketball and the three New York City area hockey teams, the Rangers, Islanders and New Jersey Devils hockey as part of its programming along with the Liberty and other sports) and Radio City Music Hall.
Another cable TV guy, Altitude Sports and Entertainment Network-Colorado Avalanche-Denver Nuggets-St. Louis Rams-Colorado Crush-Colorado Rapids and Arsenal FC owner Stan Kroenke is also not highly thought of by BusinessWeek either. Nor is New York Islanders owner Charles Wang who is trying to raise hockey interest in China, nor are the Toronto Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment Chairman of the Board Larry Tannebaum a player on BusinessWeek's 100. Tannenbaum runs the NHL Maple Leafs, the NBA Raptors, the MLS Toronto FC, two Toronto arenas Leafs TV, Raptors TV and Maple Leaf Square which includes office space and residential living.
Why is Arnold Palmer on this list? Palmer was a great golfer in his day and businessman but if you include Palmer how do you leave off Jack Nicklaus and Greg Norman who are major figures in golf course development?
There is something else that is puzzling on the BusinessWeek 100 when it comes to NFL owners. Jerry Jones, Daniel Snyder, Robert Kraft, Robert Mc Nair and Jeffrey Lurie are the five most powerful NFL owners in that they stuck together and tried to break the NFL's "Leaguethink" philosophy during the last owners squabble over revenue sharing but neither Mc Nair nor Lurie are on the list. Denver owner Pat Bowlen was on the NFL TV committee, a group that helped negotiation the league's huge TV deals with Rupert Murdoch's FOX, General Electric's NBC, Disney's ESPN and Sumner Redstone's CBS along with DirecTV but he isn't on the list.
Where are politicians on this list? Without Anthony Williams, the former Washington mayor, there is no new baseball park in Washington; there is no Major League Baseball in the city period. Russian President Vladimir Putin belongs on this list. Putin lobbied the International Olympic Committee to get the 2014 Winter Olympics for Sochi and Putin was behind that the formation of a state corporation, which will supervise the infrastructural development of Sochi and the construction of the Olympic facilities.
Can BusinessWeek explain Vladislav Tretaik's 2007 exclusion on the list? Tretiak, the President of the Russian Ice Hockey Federation, refused to sign off on the International Ice Hockey Federation-National Hockey League transfer deal that allows young Russian players to play on an NHL in exchange for financial considerations.
Business Week also enlisted ESPN: The Magazine for data. Another mistake. ESPN may own TSN in Canada and ESPN International may carry North American sports around the world but you would never know it from the Power 100 list. Depending on ESPN reporters for business information is risky because ESPN reporters are clueless when it comes to business. What do Shane Battier, Amanda Beard, Bill Cowher, Carl Edwards, Brad Faxson, Martina Hingis, Mark Kreigel, Tommy Lasorda, Lisa Leslie and Mark Spitz know about dealing with politicians to secure taxpayers dollars for the Olympics, World Cup, Super Bowl and other major sports events globally for stadiums and arenas? What do they know about the difficulties in getting tax abatements, payment in lieu of taxes, tax increment financing in the United States, getting dollars from provincial hockey lotteries in Alberta, converting US dollars into pounds, Euros and Yuans?
If BusinessWeek did an honest list of the real power figures about 50 percent of the Top 100 would be gone. BusinessWeek failed to identify the real power behind sports, particularly in the United States. It's a fun list to scan but its little more than that. It is sort of like the Forbes list of what North American sports franchises are worth. Interesting reading but in reality a franchise is worth want someone is willing to pay for the business.
BusinessWeek's 2007 list was filled with glaring holes. In 2009, BusinessWeek had Tiger Woods as its most powerful sports player followed by Goodell and Stern. As always, no government people were on the 2009 BusinessWeek list. The S. I. M. 2010 list will be no better. BusinessWeek had Goodell ranked too high. Goodell is powerful in the US but is pretty feeble internationally compared to MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, NBA boss David Stern, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and FIFA President Blatter.
That will tell you a lot about that list.
Evan Weiner is an award winning author, radio and TV commentator and speaker on the "Business and Politics of Sports. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com

Chris Dudley lacking NBA support for gubernatorial run in Oregon
MONDAY, 04 OCTOBER 2010 11:13
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/chris-dudley-lacking-nba-support-in-gubernatorial-run-in-oregon
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern seems to be staying out of this year's Oregon Gubernatorial campaign. There is nothing odd about that until you realize that one of Stern's former employees — the one time New Jersey Nets and New York Knicks center Chris Dudley — has the Republican line in this contest. John Kitzhaber has the Democratic line in the contest.
Stern is a master political operative as a lobbyist but Dudley doesn't really rate on his radar screen. Dudley is not in the same class of pedigree as former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley who, of course, was part of the New York Knicks championship teams in 1970 and 1973. When Bradley decided to run for President in 2000, the entire NBA seemingly was at his disposal.
Not so for Dudley.
Dudley does have a basketball money savior though. NIKE's Phil Knight is a big donor. Dudley, who graduated from Yale and wasn't much of an NBA player, has some political genes as his grandfather Guilford Dudley was the United States Ambassador to Denmark in the Nixon and Ford Administrations.
Back in the days when basketball leagues looked for any available space to play a game, the game had almost no political influence. Over the decades that changed. The National Football League Commissioner Pete Rozelle persuaded Congress to allow league's to bundle its teams together and have one entity negotiate for a national TV deal. President John F. Kennedy signed the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 on September 30, 1961 and that changed the bargaining power of leagues.
The Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 was an important factor in the growth of the National Football League and ultimately the NBA. By 1999, Stern, a lifelong Democrat, was holding a league sanctioned political fundraiser at Madison Square Garden for one of the NBA's own, Bill Bradley.
Bradley rolled out a who's who in basketball lore in his bid to raise money for his challenge against Al Gore for the nomination.
Presidential campaigns and Hollywood seem to go hand in hand. Both Democrats and Republicans have sought out actors and actresses to bolster campaigns and money. In fact, Hollywood has produced one President, Ronald Reagan. Others like Fred Thompson, George Murphy, Fred Granby, Sonny Bono and Al Franken went onto Congress. Arnold Schwarzenegger became the Governor of California.
Over the years, the world of sports has not had many players in the Presidential game. Certainly, the NBA did not although there were some owners who in the 1990s were heavily involved in politics. The Milwaukee Bucks owner Herb Kohl holds one of the Wisconsin senate seats on Capitol Hill. Former National Football League and American Football League quarterback Jack Kemp, who was also the President of the American Football League Players Association in the mid 1960s, was Robert Dole's running mate for the GOP in the 1996 Presidential election.
Bradley received help at his Garden fundraiser from Kareem Abdul-Jabber, Bob Cousy, his onetime Knicks teammate and roommate Dave DeBusschere, Bill Walton, Bill Russell, three other Knicks teammates Willis Reed, Earl Monroe and Walt Frazier, Bob Petit, Oscar Robertson, Nancy Lieberman-Cline, Wes Unseld, Dolph Schayes, Elvin Hayes, Nate Archibald, Julius Erving, John Havlicek, Dave Bing, Billy Cunningham, Jerry Lucas, Rebecca Lobo and Grant Hill. Spike Lee had a courtside seat along with the actor Harvey Keitel. Tennis great John McEnroe and Pro Football Hall of Famer quarterback Joe Namath were there too. Namath, of course was New York's big star leading the Jets to a Super Bowl championship in 1969 at the same time that Bradley and his Knicks teammates became championship contenders.
Patrons were paying New York Knicks-type prices to enter the Garden as tickets for the fund raiser ranged from $100-1,000. But a major question came up about the fundraiser. Could Bradley, a Rhodes Scholar who served 18 years as a United States Senator from New Jersey, get sports fans out to vote?
Would voters casting ballots in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut Democratic primaries vote for a hometown hero who helped New York win two championships or would they vote on the Bradley versus Gore record?
Jerry Lucas thought that Bradley's basketball pedigree was not going to sway voters. Bradley had been a college All-American at Princeton, had two championship rings, was a Basketball Hall of Fame member and enjoyed the support of a cross section of the basketball community, but Lucas thought that voters would scrutinize Bradley the man, not the basketball player.
"He told me he is having the most fun he has ever had in his life," said Lucas of his friend's campaign. "He is very much enjoying his campaigning and what he is doing. He is a very capable and very honest person and I appreciate that in Bill."
It's the human Bill Bradley, not the athlete that Lucas thought would connect with voters. Bradley also had Stern's commitment to help him on the stump.
Bradley wasn't the only 2000 Presidential candidate who had NBA star power around him. Gore picked up the endorsement of Newark native Shaquille O'Neal. That was somewhat interesting in that O'Neal's coach at that time with the Los Angeles Lakers was Phil Jackson who thought of running Bradley's campaign in Iowa but took the Lakers coaching job instead. Jackson was supporting his old Knicks teammate.
In an even stranger twist of sports in politics in the 1999-2000 election cycle, Philip F. Anschutz, who build the new downtown Los Angeles arena and had a piece of the Lakers ownership, rented out the arena for the 2000 Democrat Convention. Anschutz counted the 1996 Republican nominee for the Presidency, long time Kansas Congressman and Senator and one time Vice Presidential candidate Robert Dole as one of his lifelong friends. Jackson was, of course, the Lakers coach.
Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf was closely aligned with the late Ron Brown, the former Commerce Secretary and the Democratic National Committee chairman in 1992. Reinsdorf got the 1996 Democratic Convention at his arena in Chicago when he needed dates to fill and money to pay off costs of the privately funded arena. Owners and politicians do work rather closely.
Lucas said he supported Bradley because he was more than just a friend and he thought other basketball players felt the same way.
"When I played, we didn't support candidates," said Lucas, who competed in the NBA in the 1960s and 1970s.
One NBA big name ran for Congress after his playing days were done. Mikan. He lost in his bid for the House in 1956 to incumbent Democrat Roy Wier. The NBA did not hold a major fundraiser for Mikan in 1956 but then again there was nothing major about the NBA in 1956.
Some athletes like Wilt Chamberlain did attend national conventions. Chamberlain supported the Republican Richard Nixon who served as the American President between 1969 and 1974. Bradley was the first to take basketball players out on the campaign trail.
"People want to help certain people that they appreciate, love and believe in," said Lucas.
The fundraiser didn't help; Bradley was out of the race in March 2000 after Gore picked up most of the delegates available in the Super Tuesday primary including those in New York. His basketball background might have picked up a few votes but not many. In the east, people are not impressed with stars as say in California.
Perhaps Dudley is better off without Stern's involvement. Stern has failed to deliver new arena in Sacramento and seems to have lost a mile off of his political fastball lately. But make no mistake, the NBA is a political entity and wields enormous influence locally and nationally. Stern is still peeved at New Jersey legislators for not building the Nets a building in Newark going so far as saying that New Jersey politicians blew it. Bruce Ratner is building an arena in Brooklyn and the New Jersey Devils are in Newark. But Stern will keep hammering away as the politics of sports business never fades away even if Dudley isn't getting any support from the NBA's home office.
Evan Weiner is an award winning author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Business and Politics of Sports" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com

There appears to be a player collusion problem in the NBA

There appears to be a player collusion problem in the NBA
TUESDAY, 13 JULY 2010 08:42

HTTP://WWW.NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM/PROFESSIONAL/THERE-APPEARS-TO-BE-A-PLAYER-COLLUSION-PROBLEM-IN-THE-NBA
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE POLITICS OF SPORTS BUSINESS
There is a new contender for the dumbest athlete when it comes to the business of sports. The New Orleans Hornets guard Chris Paul now wants to join Amare Stoudemire in New York with the Knicks and Paul has also suggested that Denver Nuggets forward Carmelo Anthony joins James Dolan's crew in Manhattan. Paul, if the comments are correct, has thrown gasoline on a fire started by the Miami Heat's signing of Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh and LeBron James that might have be a product of players' collusion.
On Monday, NBA Commissioner David Stern downplayed the collusion charge after an owners meeting in Las Vegas.
The National Basketball Association is out of control in terms of the normal sports business model and Chris Paul, not LeBron James, may be the final spark that lights a war between the owners and players in July 2011. The athletes may be the show but the owners are the employers and there are some rules that need to be followed both official and unofficial. When you play in New Orleans or Denver, you don't say you are going to New York or elsewhere in a year or two. It kills the local enthusiasm for the customer and fan base. Paul plays for a small market that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina five years ago. In fact Paul played the first two years of his pro career in Oklahoma City because New Orleans could not economically support an NBA after the disaster. Paul has done some great work raising money for New Orleans and the surrounding area but his business acumen is not there.
Paul's remarks were ill conceived for the overall business of the NBA.
That should not be surprising because all he does is play basketball for a living but his advisors would do well to tell him to keep quiet. Paul joins LeBron James as two players who need better public relations advisors.
NBA Commissioner David Stern and his owners (except perhaps the Knicks Jimmy Dolan) have to be upset that Paul allegedly said at Carmelo Anthony's wedding that "we will form our own Big 3." That statement was reported in the New York Post. The New York tabloids and some Wall Street types who buy corporate tickets at Madison Square Garden may be happy, but Stern's league has outlets beyond the Hudson River and the players may cause fans and even corporate backlash in other markets.
The economy breakdown has hurt the NBA but players making comments about going somewhere else is a punch in the gut that Stern and the 30 owners don't need.
Whether Paul did make that toast or not is immaterial. The story is out there and you have to wonder what the very powerful Denver Nuggets owner Stan Kroenke (whose wife is a Wal-Mart heir) or Hornets owner George Shinn who wants to sell the Hornets to an oilman and Hornets minority owner Gary Chouest are going to do. Paul and Anthony are under contract to their respective teams and are the centerpieces of the team's sales push for luxury boxes, club seats and cable TV advertising (Kroenke owns the Nuggets cable TV network, Altitude).
This is a problem.
If Paul and Anthony want to leave, why should local corporates buy luxury boxes, club seats and marketers buy signage in the arena and TV advertising? The players are mercenaries and have no loyalty to the area but sports sells the idea of the "Sixth Man" in basketball, the "12th Man" in football, the home ice advantage in hockey. The home crowd is worth something, so sportswriters say and other sports people contend.
Root, root, root for the home team is the mantra and the players do it for the fans or as one time Nets forward Derrick Coleman said for the "city of New Jersey." That is absolute fiction as players go for the best contract for the most part wherever they can find it and this is just a job for most players who go from team to team either on their own or because some general manager decides that the player isn't good enough and needs to be replaced.
Players come and go. But players should not call the shots, employees don't call shots, Management does.
The national TV packages and international deals and some marketing partners probably don't care about the players calling the shots and building teams.
Did LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade collude to sign with the Miami Heat? There is some evidence that they wanted to play together however collusion is hard to prove. Eric Davis and Darryl Strawberry talked openly in 1990 about playing together for the Los Angeles Dodgers and eventually they did. Collusion has been a worry for 44 years going back to the Dodgers Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale hold out. The two pitchers decided to negotiate together for a new deal for the 1966 season. The pair held out for 32 days and finally signed the most lucrative contracts for any player in 1966.
By 1968, the Major League Baseball Players Association and Major League owners agreed to an anti-collusion clause in the collective bargaining agreement. Major League Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth in 1985 persuaded owners not to go after free agents. The policy continued in 1986 and 1987. The Major League Baseball Players Association filed a grievance with an arbitrator and won a $280 million award in November 1990.
Eric Davis and Darryl Strawberry talked about joining the Dodgers at some point during the 1989-90 time period. Davis was traded to the Dodgers from Cincinnati and Strawberry left the Mets after the 1990 season as a free agent and signed with the Dodgers.
The Wade-Bosh-James trio did nothing illegal. They fulfilled their contracts and went into free agency. Stoudemire finished out his Phoenix Suns contract and was free to negotiate elsewhere as was Joe Johnson. But the manner that LeBron James ended his free agency week and used a league partner — The Walt Disney Company's ESPN like it was another bad "reality" TV show on one of Disney's TV networks like ABC (which televises the NBA Finals) — will rub some people in the league the wrong way.
Here is a partial list of people who might not be very happy right now. The Chicago Bulls Jerry Reinsdorf (see his baseball history and his role in the 1994-95 Major League Baseball strike), the Hornets Shinn and Chouest, the Nuggets Kroenke (his Colorado Avalanche hockey team did not play in 2004-05 as part of the NHL owners lockout), the Cleveland Cavaliers Dan Gilbert, the Milwaukee Bucks Senator Herb Kohl, the Minnesota owner Glenn Taylor and owners in San Antonio, Salt Lake City, Portland, Sacramento, Oklahoma City and maybe Ted Leonsis in Washington who in May at a speech before the National Press Club said that the NHL (Leonsis owns the NHL's Washington Capitals) is in better financial shape than the NBA and pointed out that the NHL's collective bargaining agreement has a hard salary cap "that protects owners from taking stupid pills."
Paul apparently took a "stupid pill" when he suggested that he Stoudemire and Anthony team up with the Knicks in the same way that Wade, Bosh and James signed with the Miami Heat.
The NBA has had one major lockout, that in 1998-99 which took a few months to resolve. The players quickly agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement in 2005 possibly in part because some of the NBA owners had interest in National Hockey League teams (Los Angeles Phil Anschutz who owns the LA arena where the Lakers and Clippers play, the Toronto Raptors, Reinsdorf — a partner in Chicago's arena with the Wirtz family — the Philadelphia 76ers. Leonsis — a minority owner of the Wizards — the Atlanta Thrashers, the Colorado Avalanche and the Dolan-owned New York Rangers along with various TV and arena partnerships) and the players saw what happened with NHL players.
The players are the stars and performers and it is true that no own pays to watch Dolan or Portland's Paul Allen. But the players are also employees and there are some conditions that they need to meet. Announcing publicly that they want to play elsewhere is a major problem on many levels. The "alleged" bond between players, teams and fans that is being broken. Why would advertisers and marketers buy into a basketball team if they know the employees want to leave? Are municipalities who have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into arenas and stadiums that are not working out based on people flocking to the stadiums/arenas and businesses popping up around the building being duped? The NHL's Montreal Canadiens organization pays more in property taxes in Montreal than all 29 US-based NBA teams pay in property taxes.
There is also a question of whether the NBA is a bona fide competition. If Paul really wants to leave New Orleans for New York, is he playing his best before the people spending copious amounts of money in a very poor market or going through the motions until he gets to New York?
Dan Gilbert charged that LeBron James quit on the Cavaliers during the playoffs. Whether LeBron did or not cannot be quantified but it is not good if there is a suspicion that someone quit as a player during a competition.
The battle lines are being drawn. The big time players are flexing their collective muscles and the owners are not going to like that. Before the Miami Heat signings, owners are complaining about how too much basketball related income was going into the pockets of the players and that the owners have lost $400 million.
The summer of 2011 is coming up quickly for NBA owners and players as the collective bargaining agreement is done. Sports is business and the business of sports is about ready to put the economics and power of big name players on a collision course.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaking on "The Politics of Sports Business." He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
LAST UPDATED ( TUESDAY, 13 JULY 2010 08:42 )

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

Could New Jersey end up with another NBA team after the Nets leave?

Could New Jersey end up with another NBA team after the Nets leave?

Thursday, 15 April 2010 12:39

BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
An era in New Jersey sports history ended earlier this week when the New Jersey Nets National Basketball Association franchise played the team's final game in the East Rutherford building that once was named after New Jersey Governor Brendan Byrne. For the next two seasons the Nets will call Newark home and then it is onto Brooklyn — maybe.

Assuming all goes well with the arena that grows in Brooklyn, New Jersey will lose the Nets again. The original Nets franchise played in the American Basketball Association at the Teaneck Armory in the 1967-68 season and ended up on Long Island because the Armory was unavailable for a playoff game in March 1968. The team known as the New Jersey Americans never played a playoff game on the Island because the floor at the Commack Arena was unsuitable for a game and the team forfeited the game to Kentucky.

Basketball is a business; it may be called a sport but it is a business first and foremost.

Roy Boe ended up owning the old Americans, a team that transformed into the New York Nets, and was granted a National Hockey League expansion franchise in Uniondale. Boe never had the money to properly run the Nets and the expansion Islanders and things got worse for him after the National Basketball Association "expanded" and took in four American Basketball Association teams in 1976. Boe had to pay $3.2 million for the "privilege" of joining the NBA and on top of that gave the New York Knicks $4.8 million because the Nets "invaded" Knicks territory and Boe could not get access to NBA national television money (from CBS) for three years.

The business of basketball forced Boe to sell his best player and perhaps the sport's best player Julius Erving to Philadelphia for $3 million. The team left Uniondale after 1977 and Boe had to sell his franchise in 1978. Boe's financial problems nearly wiped out the Islanders as well.

New Jersey was the perfect place to start over for Boe and the Nets. A new arena was coming online and this building had some nifty new gadgets, luxury boxes and it sat a lot of people. People were used to going to the Meadowlands for New York Giants games and horse racing.

The new building was the lure for Boe just like the new building in Brooklyn was the target of Nets owner Bruce Ratner's affections although Ratner probably looked at the Nets' moving to Brooklyn as strictly part of a real estate deal.

The Nets' 35-year New Jersey run will end in 2012, if an arena grows in Brooklyn. But that does not necessarily mean that New Jersey cannot get another NBA team even though one-time New Jersey resident and NBA Commissioner David Stern about five years ago trashed New Jersey politicians saying "you blew it" when Nets owners could not get an arena built in Newark.

There is an arena in Newark now but more importantly there is also a regional sports cable TV network available that has limited winter programming that might want to spend big, big money to acquire some winter programming like a third team in the New York City area, namely Newark.

The NBA is not going to expand in the near future and the league could lockout the workforce, the players, in 2011. There are a good number of teams, including Bruce Ratner's Nets that allegedly are posting multimillion dollar losses that might be available for relocation following the 2011 labor negotiations if the owners cannot reduce spending.

Memphis could be one of those franchises.

With the absence of a new arena plan in Seattle, Newark just might be the best location for an owner looking to start anew. The city has a relatively new arena, there is the regional cable network, SNY, that has a lot of college basketball in the winter months but no local team as the Knicks are tied up with the Madison Square Garden Network and the Nets have a deal with the YES Network. There is also a corporate base that already attends NBA games in New Jersey that is unlikely to cross a tunnel and a bridge or a tunnel to get to Brooklyn. That corporate base will get used to going to Newark for NBA games and frankly, Devils owner Jeffrey Vanderbeek probably would work out a deal whereby an NBA team could do well financially in Newark as it is in Vanderbeek's best interests to fill as many dates as possible in his building.

Moving an existing franchise to Newark may not be a large problem as the NBA, unlike Major League Baseball, is subjected to antitrust laws. It would take moving heaven and earth to put a third Major League Baseball team in the New York City area whether it is in Northern New Jersey or Brooklyn because Major League Baseball is exempt from certain portions of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Steinbrenner Yankees or the Wilpon Mets or both could say no to the idea and that would be it.

Major League Baseball is struggling to find a solution to the San Francisco Bay Area problem. The San Francisco Giants franchise has the territorial rights to San Jose and Santa Clara County, California even though those areas are much further away from the Giants home base in China Basin than Oakland, the city which houses the A's. Oakland A's owner Lew Wolff wants to move his team to San Jose but cannot because the Giants ownership group has the rights to the territory. Major League Baseball is looking for a solution. The solution will come when Wolff pays millions of dollars for "invading" Giants territory or if he wins an antitrust case against the Giants and Major League Baseball.

Wolff does not seem willing to sue Major League Baseball.

That is not the case in the NBA or at least seems not to be the case. San Diego Clippers owner Donald Sterling moved his team to Los Angeles in 1984 without permission from NBA owners. The NBA did block the move of the Minnesota Timberwolves to New Orleans in 1994. It was the last time a franchise shift was denied. Since then Vancouver moved to Memphis, Charlotte's George Shinn took his team to New Orleans and Seattle ended up in Oklahoma City.

This might all be moot if the anti-Brooklyn arena project people somehow stop the Brooklyn project. The arena was originally scheduled to open in 2009 and now the target date is sometime in 2012. Could the metropolitan area support three NBA teams? There is cable TV money available; the Brooklyn corporate money will be coming from New York City not New Jersey. The question becomes whether there are enough "customers" who are willing to spend big money for luxury boxes, corporate seats, in-arena restaurants and concessions. Owners want customers, not fans as fans tend not to be willing to spend a lot of money for tickets. Customers buying luxury boxes and club seats can write off 50 percent of the value of the ticket as a business expense. Fans don't count; they can watch the games at home on TV.

The NBA will have some changes after the next collective bargaining agreement is signed. Some smaller market team owners might decide to get out and sell their teams. That is what happened in Major League Baseball following the 1994-95 strike. Montreal was done and in the NHL, Quebec and Winnipeg lost teams after the 1994-95 lockout.

The NBA might advertise itself as a sport but it is really a business and in 2012 after the Nets are in Brooklyn, New Jersey might be a viable option for another financially failing NBA team.

Evan Weiner is a radio-TV commentator, an author, columnist and a lecturer on "The Politics of Sports Business" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com

Will Stern Allow Chinese or Russian Owners in the NBA?

http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7539



Will Stern Allow Chinese or Russian Owners in the NBA?



By Evan Weiner



September 19, 2009



8:00 PM EDT



(New York, N. Y.) – In January 1992 at a little media conference prior to the annual Baseball Assistance Team fundraiser in a Times Square hotel, Major League Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent was trying to explain why his 26 member ownership group had a policy that barred non-American citizens from owning a Major League Baseball with the exception of the two Canadian teams, the Montreal Expos and the Toronto Blue Jays. Vincent and his owners had a major problem on their hands, Jeff Smuylan, the man who invented 24-hour a day sports talk radio in the United States, was having financial problems and had a deal in principle to sell his majority share of the Seattle Mariners to Hiroshi Yamauchi, the president of the Nintendo Company Ltd.



The problem with Yamauchi’s bid was simple. He was offering $75 million for 60 percent of the Mariners franchise. That was the good news for Vincent’s owners but the bad news was that Yamauchi lived in Japan and that was a major problem as xenophobic owners wanted nothing to do with a foreigner running a Major League Baseball team.



After all, it was un-American for a Japanese citizen to fund a franchise in America’s National Pastime.



Yamauchi thought it made good business sense for him to invest in a Major League Baseball team in Seattle. His son-in-law Minoru Arakawa ran Nintendo’s American division in Seattle. Arakawa, his wife Yoko and grandchildren lived in Seattle. Yamauchi’s company employed 1,400 people in Seattle and Yamauchi pledged to keep the franchise in the city.



That didn’t seem to please Vincent or the owners and on a cold January night in New York Vincent seem to be looking for excuses that would keep the Mariners franchise out of foreign hands. None of his answers seemed logical.



Eventually after Major League Baseball was put through the ringer as Seattle and Washington state officials along with Washington Senator Slate Gorton started questioning baseball’s anti-foreigner ownership policy, a compromised was reached. Yamauchi was allowed to buy a significant stake in the franchise but could not be a majority owner.

On July 1, 1992, Yamauchi closed the deal and he and his American partners have run the Mariners franchise since then. Yamauchi’s Seattle representatives has been a good group for the other owners; the Yamauchi’s people knew what buttons to push to get a new Seattle taxpayers funded stadium from the Washington legislature in 1995 after voters said no to a new stadium in 1994.



Major League Baseball has not had a legitimate foreign offer for any American team since 1992. The Belgium-based Interbrew brewery owned the Toronto Blue Jays for five years between 1995 and 2000 after the brewers purchased the Blue Jays owner Labatts (beer). The National Football League has not faced that issue either. The National Basketball Association could be getting a foreign owner if a Reuters report on September 16 is correct.



Russia’s richest man, Mikhail Prokhorov, according to the Reuters article is interested in buying a significant stake in Bruce Ratner’s New Jersey Nets franchise. Ratner has been attempting to move the East Rutherford-based team to the Atlantic Railyards in Brooklyn for four years and just got New York State approval for a scaled-down arena. Ratner’s problem is that he has been losing money on the team since he purchased the franchise in August 2004.



It seems inconceivable that NBA Commissioner David Stern would mimic Fay Vincent circa 1992 and rattle off reasons why he and his owners would block foreign investors in NBA teams. Stern has been pushing a strategy that has globalized the NBA and basketball with his biggest success to date in making China an NBA hotbed and before that Hong Kong.



In May 2009, Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert completed a deal to sell up to 15 percent of the team to a group of Chinese businessmen including JianHua Huang, who has brokered sponsorships with a number of North American sports teams.



Phil Anschutz’s AEG (Anschutz has a piece of the Los Angeles Lakers) and NBA China are developing arenas throughout China in an effort to not only push the NBA in China but other sports and entertainment at well.



So it will seem that Stern would welcome Prokhorov who has a financial stake in the Russian Super League and the Euroleague’s CSKA Moscow’s basketball team if he passes all of the NBA’s checks.



Ownership groups can be good or bad from the United States or Canada; it is never easy to figure out who will be successful and who will fail. The NHL, which also has global aspirations, has had one non-North American owner.



National Hockey League President Gil Stein and his 22 owners had no problem with the prospect of Japanese money providing the majority funding for the expansion Tampa Bay Lightning franchise in 1992 (along with New York Yankees owner George M. Steinbrenner III). Kokusai Green’s owner Takashi Okubo. The experience was terrible as Okubo was an absentee owner and the team’s finances were a mess. Kokusai Green sold the franchise in 1998. That was the last foreign owner in the NHL. Charles Wang, who purchased the New York Islanders in 2000, was born in Shanghai, China but moved to New York at the age of 8.



Even though Major League Baseball has a sign still up saying Americans only despite increasing globalization and the National Football League has not faced the prospect of having a foreigner buy a team, North American owners have been purchasing European properties in English soccer. MLB’s Texas Rangers (and NHL Dallas Stars) owner teamed up with former NHL Montreal Canadiens owner George Gillett to purchase the English Premier League’s Liverpool F. C.

In 2006, NFL Cleveland Browns owner Randy Lerner bought Aston Villa. The year before, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Glazier family purchased Manchester United.



Former Detroit Pistons executive and Minor League Baseball owner Andrew Appleby purchased the Derby County Football Club of the Premiership in 2008. Another American owner, Stan Kroenke (NBA’s Denver Nuggets, NHL Colorado Avalanche, MLS Colorado Rapids, National Lacrosse League’s Colorado Mammoth, NFL’s St. Louis Rams and the Altitude Sports and Entertainment regional cable TV network in the Rocky Mountain states) is the largest share holder of the North London-based Arsenal FC.



Major League sports teams are not cheap and there are not a lot of Americans who could afford purchasing a team. If Prokhorov is indeed interested in the New Jersey Nets, NBA Commissioner David Stern would be foolish to turn a deaf ear to him. The founder of the Kontinental Hockey League, the Russian billionaire Alexander Medvedev claimed last May that he wanted to buy an NHL team and move it to Quebec City.



If Jim Balsille thinks the NHL has given him a difficult time in attempting to buy the Phoenix Coyotes and moving the franchise to Hamilton, Ontario, Balsille’s case against the NHL would be child’s play compared to an attempt by Medvedev to buy an NHL franchise. Medvedev started a new Russian league that went after NHL players and signed a few including Alexander Radulov who left his Nashville team while under contract to play for Salavat Yulaev Ufa in 2008-09.



It is only a matter of time before some North American franchises are purchased by non-Americans and non-Canadians. Americans are snapping up English Premiership League teams why wouldn’t major money people from Europe or Asia not jump at the opportunity at a North American team? Fay Vincent is no longer guarding the gate like he did on that cold January night in the middle of Times Square in January 1992. The xenophobic policy of Major League Baseball of 1992 made no sense. It makes even less sense in 2009.







eweiner@mcn.tv

The NBA Celebrates Birthday #60 Next Week

The NBA Celebrates Birthday #60 Next Week http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7472 By Evan Weiner

July 25, 2009

11:30 AM EDT

The National Basketball Association celebrates birthday number 60 on August 3. David Stern's NBA of 2009 is made up of smoke and mirrors, lasers and loud music, dunks and ballet. Its cell phones at courtside, luxury boxes with waiter service and wired seats, arenas with wide concourses for customers to buy merchandise and in-arena restaurants and food courts.Maurice Podoloff's NBA of 1949 was the Harlem Globetrotters vs. the Washington Generals in first and featured game of a doubleheader with the home team against an opponent as the night cap along with double headers at Madison Square Garden featuring four teams. Eventually half of the league’s teams, four squads, could be found in one arena on certain nights at the Garden.

August 3, 1949 is the date that Podoloff’s Basketball Association of America completed poaching National Basketball League franchises and unified “major league” professional basketball under one umbrella. The BAA started in 1946 with teams in the United States’ big east coast cities like New York, Philadelphia and Boston while the NBL began life in 1937 in the American Midwest "We had doubleheaders just to get the people into the Garden," said Jerry Fleishman who played with the BAA New York Knickerbockers. In fact the Knicks didn't even play a full schedule of games at the Garden as they also used an armory as a home court. Today, if the Knicks are good, the waiting list for a Knick ticket is long and the team, when if it is good, can sell out for years. "One day the Warriors played the Boston Celtics and the Knicks played the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons named after Fred Zollner the owner."We used to play in a high school in Fort Wayne and if you went into the stands after a lay up, you'd come out chewed up" Fleishman was also in the forerunner of the Continental Basketball Association, the Eastern Basketball League which was a weekend minor league. He played for Scranton on Saturday and Sunday and was in business the rest of the week. Fleishman's NBA stories are pretty much the same as other league pioneers. The BAA and the NBL were rag tag collection of teams that were poorly financed and made moves based on finances not talent.

“In the first couple of years, nobody knew whether this thing was going to last,” said Ralph Kaplowitz who played in the BAA’s first game as a member of the 1946-47 Knicks. “As you look back, all the teams really had trouble, as a matter of fact a couple of the teams dropped out after the first year.”

Kaplowitz was sold to Philadelphia in the middle of January 1947.

“I was fortunate because I was instrumental in helping the team win the World’s Championship at that time with Joe Fulks, Howie Dallmar, George Senesky, Angelo Musi and Jerry Fleishman. We had a great team.”

The Philadelphia Warriors may have been the best team in the BAA and the BAA may have had the big cities but the NBL had the talent and one talent in particular, George Mikan. The BAA wanted Mikan in its league and to get him they had to entice the Minneapolis Lakers to leave the NBL. Podoloff and his owners looked at the Minneapolis team and saw an opportunity to make money.

“I was probably part of it because the BAA was getting started at the time and the old league was the National League and they (the BAA) went in and took four of the top teams,” said Mikan. “I was with the Chicago American Gears and then I was drafted by the Lakers and played with them before the merger. The merger came in 1949.”

The BAA and NBL needed the Harlem Globetrotters to help with recognition and on February 19, 1948, Abe Saperstein’s Harlem Globetrotters took on the National Basketball League’s Minneapolis Lakers in the first game of a doubleheader at Chicago Stadium. The Basketball Association of America’s New York Knicks and Chicago Stags played what was thought to be the “main” game but the 17,823 fans who attended the game wanted to see the Globbies and the Lakers. The Lakers weren’t in the BAA, so it was just an “exhibition game” that featured Goose Tatum and Marquis Haynes. The Lakers had Mikan. Mikan started out his career with the Chicago American Gears of the Professional Basketball League of America in 1947-48. The league never made it past November 12, 1947. The 16-team PBLA folded and Lakers ended up with the big guy from DePaul University.

The first Lakers-Globetrotters match up was still on the mind of the Minneapolis coach in 1947 John Kundla decades later. He was still smarting over the 61-59 Globetrotters win.

“The first two games they beat us,” said Kundla. “I will tell you, I am not making excuses but (Jim) Pollard didn’t play in the first game and I think Don Carlson didn’t play in the second game, but what happened too was that Abe Saperstein had both of his officials. Another thing, Jim Pollard mentioned it to me, it was an exhibition game. We didn’t get a cent for it. Like Jim Pollard said, we didn’t even get a cup of coffee for it.

“I didn’t mean any thing, it was sort of a resting fun game. But when they beat us twice in a row, we had pride and they never beat us again. And I will tell why, Max Winter, our general manager, said when we were going to play them a third time said, Abe you have one of your officials and the NBA will have one of our officials and we didn’t have any trouble with them since.”

The Lakers-Globetrotters games were pretty devoid of the Globetrotters stock and trade fancy dribbling and wise cracks except for one routine at the end of one of the games which still bothered Kundla.

“No they didn’t except Marquis Haynes dribbled once in a while,” the Hall of Fame coach said. “He dribbled for the last part of part of the (second) game when they had a four or five point lead for a little while. When he got to Minneapolis (on March 14, 1949), we had the biggest crowd ever there, Slater Martin did the same thing, he repaid him for that dribbling.”

The Globetrotters beat the Lakers for a second time on February 28, 1949 before 20,046 people at Chicago Stadium. The 49-45 win would be the last time the Globetrotters would beat the Lakers.

A healthy Lakers team defeated the Globetrotters 68-53 two weeks later.

“Yeah, we had a little pride, because we won the championship the first two years too,” said Kundla on finally beating the Globetrotters. “We weren’t going to take that anymore. After the humiliation, they started playing ball. I think the last game we played (January 3, 1958) Abe Saperstein left the Chicago Stadium and disappeared for two days.

Bobby Wanzer was the 10th pick overall by the Rochester Royals in the 1948 BAA draft. He was older than most first year players being 27 years old but had been in the Marines during World War II and then went to Seton Hall University. Wanzer just wanted to play some ball and then get on with his life. Instead he ended up playing nine years in Rochester and only quit because of a knee injury at the age of 36. He was a player-coach with Rochester and coached with the Cincinnati Royals. He became a basketball lifer until he was 40 which was totally unexpected.

“A lot of us came out of the service and we figured we play a few years and then go to work. But it beat working. We all loved the game and probably would have played it for nothing,” Wanzer said. “Coming out of the service, you missed three years out of your life or four. It was just great to be able to play ball.”

Wanzer was joining a Rochester Royals squad that had just left the National Basketball League along with Minneapolis, Fort Wayne and Indianapolis to joining the Basketball Association of America. Wanzer thought the National league was the stronger of the two “major” professional leagues at the time and the shift of the four franchises probably saved the BAA.

Rochester’s Les Harrison brought athletes to Rochester, his collection included baseball players Del Rice and Chuck Connors and an eventual Pro Football Hall of Famer, Otto Graham who led the Cleveland Browns to championships in both the All American Football Conference and the National Football League. Graham is the answer to a trivia question. He is the only athlete to win “major league” championships in basketball with the 1945-46 Royals and the 1946 Cleveland Browns of the AAFC in the same calendar year.

The NBL was not a fulltime enterprise. Graham ended up with the Browns. And quarterbacked Paul Brown's championship squad. Graham became a football superstar and one of football’s highest paid performers, something that was no going to happen in Rochester playing basketball. "We won the championship in all four years there," said Graham. "We played in the championship game six straight years in the NFL and won three of the six there. I went to college on a basketball scholarship. I didn't even play football I played intramural football," he said. I played with the Royals the season before the All American Football Conference had started. My teammates were Del Rice, Chuck Connors, the Rifleman of TV fame (both of whom also played Major League Baseball Bob Davies, Red Holtzman, Fuzzy Levane and we won the championship. "I think I'm the only guy to have played on a championship basketball team and football team in the same year (1946). I played in Fort Wayne, Indiana and in fact they did dominate professional basketball at that time. We knocked them off. It was fun. But basketball took up too much time and I couldn't play football and basketball both, so I stuck with football. "The NBL was the best league in the world. The Browns hadn't started yet and the Browns and the All American Football Conference didn't start until the fall of 1946. So I had nothing to do at that time, so after I started football, it overlapped with basketball and I didn't go back."

Both Wanzer and Graham agreed. The NBL caliber of ball was better than the BAA.

“Actually our league (the NBL) had the best teams,” Wanzer explained. “Us, Fort Wayne, Minneapolis, that was the savior.”


Rochester had been a strong basketball outpost. The Rochester Seagrams basketball team was one of the strongest independent operations in the United States and the team barnstormed the nation. The Seagrams became the Pros and the team was asked to join the National Basketball League in 1946 after the end of World War II. The team was renamed in Royals in a name the team contest and won the NBL Pennant in 1946-47. The Royals took home another flag in 1947-48 but lost a playoff game to Chicago and went home. The following season, the Royals finished with the best record in the NBL but lost to George Mikan and the Minneapolis Lakers in the NBL Finals three games to one.

The Royals and Lakers were BAA powerhouses. The Royals were 45-15 in 1948-49 but the team’s playing facility, the Edgerton Park Arena was strictly third rate and possibly dangerous for opposing players finishing lay ups. If the arena’s side doors were open, the player might have ended up in his uniform in the parking lot freezing during a cold and snowy Rochester winter.

“It was a regulation court but there was very little space between the end of the court and the swinging doors, you can run right out and end up in the snow,” Wanzer laughed. “You were lucky if it didn’t lock on you, you were out in the snow. The arena was a little way from the lake (Ontario) but it wasn’t the coldest building.”

Wanzer’s Royals did win a BAA championship despite the presence of Mikan in the league. The Royals beat the New York Knickerbockers in seven games in 1951. Mikan’s team had eliminated the Royals in the previous three playoffs.

“Well we had to beat them once in a while,” Wanzer laughed. “He (Mikan) was a great player. As I said the two best teams in basketball in those days was Minneapolis and us. Each year we would win the division or they would win it. In the playoffs, they always managed beat us but the one year we beat them and we went onto win the championship.”

Otto Graham might have continued his basketball career if the money was right with Rochester in the NBA although his teammate Fuzzy Levane said Otto planned to play just two years of pro basketball.


Graham was the highest paid player in the NFL when his career ended in 1955. He made $25,000. In mid-1990s dollars, that $25,000 would be worth about $400,000 according to Graham. The Browns received less than a $1,000 per man for winning the 1946 AAFC championship. Graham said the entire the 1950 NFL championship season was the highlight of his career. Travel was limited to buses and trains in both football and basketball. "Rochester is now out in Sacramento after going to Cincinnati and Kansas City and Fort Wayne is in Detroit. I remember one train trip. We played a ballgame in Rochester; we spent the night on a train, not a sleeper but sitting up all night long. I was so mad and we had to go to Oshkosh two nights later. That's the way it was in those days. Our owner (Lester Harrison) wanted to save money. "It's tough to do both sports," he said of Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson who played Major League Baseball and were in the NFL at the same time in the 1990s. "But if I was paid they kind of money they got, I would be tempted."

In today’s NBA, virtually every player has a guaranteed contact. In the BAA, there was no such thing as a guaranteed contract. Players would come and go like Bill (Butch) van Breda Kolff who joined the Knicks in February 1947.

“I think all the pro players now should spend a year the way it was then,” van Breda Kolff laughed as he recalled the formative days of the NBA in the mid-1990s. “Then they would appreciate their lot. The absurdity of the thing nowadays is that these players don’t have any idea of how good they have it.

“And yet, we didn’t complain in those days either because we were doing what we wanted to do. We wanted to play basketball, we loved to play and we got paid anyway. We got five dollars per day, per diem when we were on the road and if you were going on a train, you can’t eat for five dollars in a day. But that was the way it was and we did it.”

Basketball players had other careers to pursue, no one was going to get rich off of the basketball industry, not the owners, not the general managers, not the coaches and not the players. The NBL and BAA was loaded with young guys either out of college or fresh from fighting in World War II and basketball was a way station for a couple of years to kick back and then get on with life.

“I don’t whether it was the NBA or the BAA or the NBA again, I don’t know, I think more of it, we had a lot of fun,” said van Breda Kolff. “And if you lose a few games in a row, then we would start singing. ‘Someone’s gotta go.’ Because if you lose a few, they were always looking to pick someone up. There is no such thing as guaranteed contracts, no cuts. You were there day by day.

“We’d sing it right in the locker room before a game. You lose four in a row, you’d said hey fellas we got to win one because ‘Someone’s gotta go!’ We would get together, all we have to do is play better defense, look for each other a little bit more, play together a little but hard, do everything, the fundamentals and then we would win a few games.”

There was very little money that was lost if a player got cut.

“The first year, I don’t think anybody got paid more than five or six thousand dollars or something like that,” said van Breda Kolff. “Multiple that by 12 people and the payroll would be at the most $100,000. Train, train, train and then in that one year they put in Denver, Anderson, Indiana, and Oshkosh, and Sheboygan and those, I think we flew a couple times to Chicago but most of the times it was train.”
The Basketball Association of America and the National Basketball League buried the hatchet and merged entities on August 3, 1949. The United States Congress didn’t have to approve the business transaction and President Harry S. Truman didn’t have to sign legislation that created a professional basketball monopoly. The owners just merged their leagues.

“The National Professional Basketball League and the BAA merged in 49-50. The year before that, four teams from the National Professional Basketball League, Rochester, Minneapolis, Indianapolis and Fort Wayne jumped the National Basketball League and merged with the BAA,” said Levane. “The next year, they (the BAA) wanted Syracuse and another team, Anderson but the heads of the National Professional League said either you take every team or you don’t take any.

“Leo Ferris from Syracuse with Danny Biasone signed up the five Kentucky kids to own the Indianapolis franchise and that was the thing that set up the whole thing.”

The NBA became a 17 team league but it remained just a step above minor league levels.

“All the old guys, Ned Irish (Knicks), Les Harrison, Gottlieb from Philly would turn over in their graves if they saw what is going with a $2.4 billion TV contract and guys like Ewing and Jordan making $20 million a year, it was inconceivable,” said Levane nearly 50 years after the merger took place. “The last guy on the Knickerbockers making the minimum salary which is $250,000 which was ten times as much as the whole Rochester Royals payroll in 1945-46 which was a championship ball club.

“I will tell you the names on that ball club, Al Cervi, Red Holtzman, Bobby Davies, Otto Graham, Chuck Connors, Fuzzy Levane, Dutch Garfinkle and so on. That was a pretty good crew.”

Those names mean next to nothing to most NBA fans although Holtzman is still treated as a deity in New York for winning two championships as the New York Knicks coach in 1970 and 1973 and his protégé Phil Jackson has had a stellar coaching career. Graham is in the Football Hall of Fame and somewhere, someone is watching old Rifleman TV shows on the web that feature Connors who is remembered as an actor not as a basketball or baseball player.

The NBA at 60 bears no resemblance to the entity that was formed six decades ago on August 3.

eweiner@mcn.tv

A Congressman wants to know why a qualified 18-year-old cannot play in the NBA

http://www.examiner.com/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2009m6d4-A-Congressman-wants-to-know-why-a-qualified-18yearold-cannot-play-in-the-NBA

Evan Weiner
Go to Evan's Home Page
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A Congressman wants to know why a qualified 18-year-old cannot play in the NBA

June 4, 3:44 PM

It was inevitable that one day Congress would be calling on National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern and ask him why his league doesn’t hire qualified 18-year-old high school graduates to play in the league. Congressman Steve Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat, wants to know how Stern and the National Basketball Players Association came up with the rule in the collective bargaining process and his office is checking out whether the rule is legal even though it was ratified by the owners and players as part of the collective bargaining process in 2005. To get into the NBA, a player has to be one year out of high school and 19 during his rookie season.

Stern is on record as wishing the entry age into the NBA was 20, not 19. The present collective bargaining agreement is done in 2011.

The real reason that Stern wanted a 19-year-old entry rule was economical. NBA owners don’t want to pay an 18-year-old to sit on the bench or apprenticing. A player can develop his skills in college and spare an NBA owner research and development costs. That is the real reason qualified 18 year olds cannot work in the NBA. It has nothing to do with maturity although that is an excuse that people who love basketball have bought hook, line and sinker.

The 19-year-old entry into the NBA was something Stern very much wanted. He had been complaining for years that allowing 18-year-olds to enter the league right out of high school was wrong although Stern did not provide any evidence that having 18-year-old employees playing for NBA franchises was an unwise policy. It must have been good to be National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern when he reached a new Collective Bargaining Agreement with the players in 2005. The NBA strongman snapped his fingers and the National Basketball Players Association Executive Director Billy Hunter jumped and agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement that stated high-school graduates could no longer apply for a job in Stern's domain starting in 2006.Stern didn't want new high-school grads in his league because he says it's not good for his business to have his franchises send scouts to high school basketball games.But Stern did welcome 18-year-olds in his league for a final time in 2005-06 with the knowledge that if any of them are any good, he would market their likenesses globally so the NBA can make a buck off them. Stern defended his hypocritical stance by saying that once a player joins the NBA, he has full membership rights.Just as Stern got his way, the United States Pentagon decided to go after the same high-school-student pool that Stern decided was too young, immature and unproven for his franchise owners and the high rollers who buy NBA tickets whether they are in the comfort and safety of a luxury box or sitting in seats with WiFi-equipped waiter service.Stern repeatedly said that there is no room for recent high-school graduates in his domain. Perhaps, the new graduates were better off in Iraq or Afghanistan. The Defense Department started to market military service to 16- and 17-year-olds with the hope that high-school seniors will sign up for the military upon graduation.The Defense Department was working with a private marketing company to create a database of high-school and college students. The Defense Department was trying to identify potential recruits by getting information such as birth dates, Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, grade-point averages, ethnicity and subjects the students are studying.The military some information already on potential recruits through the No Child Left Behind Act. Military recruiters have called students' homes trying to find 18-year-olds to join the armed forces.Last time anyone looked, basic training was a lot tougher than any NBA training camp. Qualifying to become an Army Ranger is harder than making the Orlando Magic and sitting on the bench at 18.While the United States was sending 18-year-olds into harm's way, Stern was banishing 18-year-olds from his league. Maybe Stern is trying to shield them from the Knicks City Dancers or the Lakers Cheerleaders. He said it does not send a good message that his league's scouts are in high-school gyms looking at players. One has to wonder what Stern thinks about the Defense Department's recruiting techniques.

Congressman Cohen is also wondering about that and the sports versus military service qualifications aspect of the collective bargaining agreement could be a key reason that the NBA's rule has attracted his attention.What was even more baffling was how NBA-beat writers and sports-radio talk-show hosts bought into Stern's argument, and how NBA basketball will benefit from not having 18-year-olds in a 30-team league. Basketball, both on the college and NBA level, is entertainment, that's all. Yes, billions of dollars flow into the industry, but it's not the real world.Stern is the keeper of entertainment. How can he welcome an 18-year-old into his league this year, and then deprive another one of the same chance the next? Is an 18-year-old old enough to serve his country, but not old enough to play basketball?There is something very wrong with that picture. But neither Stern nor Hunter really care about the 18-year-old player. The NBA owners got cost control and the NBA players continued to make millions.


It is too bad that Greg Oden and Kevin Durant, who decided to enter the 2007 NBA Draft after their freshmen seasons in college, didn’t go up to the podium at the theatre in Madison Square Garden in New York after their names were called, shake hands with Commissioner David Stern and said, “Thanks Mr. Stern and thanks to you and National Basketball Players Association Executive Director Billy Hunter for selling us out and costing us millions of dollars.”

Both Oden and Durant could have been in the NBA in 2006-07, but they were not allowed to work in Stern’s business because Stern decided he didn’t want 18-year-olds around and Hunter suddenly agreed as 18-year-old high school graduates were barred from entering the workforce because of a new collective bargaining agreement.

Hunter had said he was against Stern’s proposal to raise the NBA’s minimum age entry from 18 to 20 and in fact, he was against raising the age minimum at all. But in the 2005 agreement Hunter traded off 18 year old entry for other benefits which meant that Oden, Durant and for the foreseeable future any talented high school senior who had the ability would not be eligible to play in the NBA under the terms of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Had the agreement been in place in 1995, Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant and Lebron James would have had to sit out a year or go to college or go to Europe or play for the Harlem Globetrotters (like Wilt Chamberlain did until he became NBA eligible) or in the Continental Basketball Association. There was not a minor league option for either Garnett or Bryant in those days.

Lebron has been an NBA selling point since the day he declared himself eligible for the NBA Draft and just in case you haven’t noticed, after Lebron arrived in Cleveland in 2005, the Gund Brothers sold the franchise to Michigan businessman Dan Gilbert for $375 million. It’s doubtful that the Gunds would have been able to get that much money for the team without James.

Stern had no problem using the high school graduate James in marketing opportunities and James’ marketing partners had no problems that he was 18 and barely out of high school. Stern has never had any problems with the great 18-year-olds who bring back a return on the investment. It’s the ones who don’t that cause difficulties.

But all 18-year-olds do make decisions. Some are good, some are bad. That’s life. Major League Baseball signs 18 year olds, Freddie Adu played in Major League Soccer at 14, the National Hockey League draft includes 18-year-olds, and there are younger people on the tennis and golf tours. An 18 year old can join the military and vote and is considered an adult.

Because sports is filled with emotion and rationality is never applied to the business, you end up with inequities like the NBA barring 18-year-olds and the National Football League having a rule where entry players need three years of college before joining the group.

In 2004, the NFL went to court to in an attempt to stop Maurice Clarett and Mike Williams from entering that year’s draft because they had not been in college and playing football for three years since high school graduation which was and remains the league rule for qualification to play. A lower court found in favor of Clarett and Williams but a three judge panel appeals court which included Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor overturned the lower court ruling and reinstated its rule.

Stern has rattled off numerous reasons when asked about the age minimum including how he didn’t want NBA scouts in high school gyms or how some parents of an 11 year old said that their son was going to be in the NBA and other hard to believe rationales. But he never addressed the real reason the he and his NBA owners wanted the age restriction.

Money.

NBA owners had rolled the dice on a number of players like Taj McDavid, Leon Smith and Korleone Young who came out of high school and were busts. Jermaine O’Neal floundered on Portland’s bench during his first contract, and then became an all-star with Indiana when Portland ownership decided not to pursue him when his contract ended. Portland did all the research and development on O’Neal and Indiana got the benefit. Chris Antsey, Kendrick Perkins and Kwame Brown did not become All-Stars but there are many who are drafted at 19, 20 and 21 in the same boat.

It was not the rookie contract that bothers Stern and the owners, it was the second contract. O’Neal showed nothing in Portland, yet his original contract was up when he was 21 and he had ability, the question then becomes what do I pay him and for how long. The Toronto Raptors had the same problem with Tracy Mc Grady. Orlando signed Mc Grady

The thinking was this. If Stern and the owners could push back the age minimum, they could also push back the time when a player could become a free agent whether it was restricted after three years or full free agency after four seasons. It’s easier to evaluate a slightly older player when it comes to offer that player a second contract. They would also get free research and development from colleges and universities. Players can get better or worse in the college game and NBA owners didn’t have to pay them millions to learn the business.

It’s all about money.

Only a handful of 18-year-olds are good enough for the NBA.
So Oden and Durant are deprived of making a few million at the age of 18. They will get their fair share, if they choose to do so, starting at the end of June when they are drafted. But what if they suffered career threatening or ending injuries in their year at school? Would the NBA care? Probably not. Maybe someone would take them on the second round where there is almost no financial risk.

It’s all about money.

Oddly enough Oden had a knee injury and doctors in Portland shut him down forcing him to miss his rookie season with the Trail Blazers.

Some teenagers are circumventing the NBA and have or are heading to Europe where there is no age restriction. The NBA does not have to pay for research and development in European leagues. One 17-year-old, Jeremy Tyler is skipping his senior year at San Diego High School to try his hand in Europe. Last year, Brandon Jennings decided to skip college ball after high school and sign with Lottomatica Roma. Jennings spend a lot of time on the bench because the team didn’t want to spent time developing a player who was going to be there one year only and head to the NBA. In a sense the European leagues are experiencing the same problem that major college programs are witnessing with star players coming in for one year and then departing.

The threat of Congressional hearings over whether a few talented players who are 18 and recent high school grads who cannot work in the NBA will probably not change Stern or his owners minds about their rule. Congress cannot impose workplace conditions on the NBA although a great deal of Stern’s success in turning around a moribund league that was on the ropes in 1983 was because of the 1984 Cable TV Act and the 1986 Tax Act. But Congress can pressure Stern and the National Basketball Players Association to revise the present collective bargaining agreement or suggest that 18-year-olds should be brought back into the league as part of the next bargaining pact.

Stern is, of course, a lobbyist and knows his way around Washington and the Congress. The House Judiciary Committee would be his first stop if there is a hearing. It would be interesting to hear Stern’s reasons for keeping 18-year-olds out and if one of those reasons is the economics of developing a player.

evanjweiner@yahoo.com