Yesterday, I positied that the NBA, specifically David Stern have been setting owners up to fail. Or rather, that NBA ownership is not a system that’s set up to make money in the first place. When you look specifically at teams that have joined the league since Stern. This would certainly tell you that the system is broken but could it be the league and owner’s own fault?
Let’s look at how we got here with the teams that have come in since Stern took over as commissioner, The Hornets, The Heat, The Magic, The Timberwolves, Grizzlies and Raptors:
George Shinn was somehow a millionaire who wanted to get into sports, not a great business man and sold off whatever he had to buy the team back in 1989. The Miami group it seems to me was led by the city’s sports authority and then a group and then financial backing from the Arison family of Carnival Cruiseline fame. The Minnesota guys were property managers and health club owners, then they got a team and later sold it to a guy who sold wedding invitations. In Orlando, it was William duPont III putting up the money with two brothers and then two years later sold to Richard DeVos. You see a common thread? 23 years after those 4 groups were awarded franchises, none of them are still involved in the league. DeVos and Arison are the only two holdovers and they are worth $5 billion and $4.2 billion respectively. Oh and the Hornets moved.
You look forward a few years from that group of 4 that came along in the late ’80s to the Canadian Expansion of the mid-’90s and you’ll find more of the same. The Raptors were awarded to John Bitove, a businessman who liked sports and had some money but he sold out after 4 years to a group known as the “Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment.” Sounds like he stuck his head out of his office door and said “Anybody want to take this damn team and arena over?” and the Maple Leafs guys said “Sure! We’ve got money from the Maple Leafs to prop this thing up and fill the arena on nights the Maple Leafs aren’t playing our National Pastime!”
The Grizzlies started in Vancouver by the Hockey guy there, Arthur Griffiths but he sold before the team had even taken a player in an expansion draft to John McCaw, Jr. and he sold the Canucks/Grizzlies. He held onto the team for 3 years, thought he had the team sold to another hockey owner, this time in St. Louis but the league squashed it. Then he did sell the team officially to Michael Heisley, a computer salesman who is worth around a billion dollars and he had the team moved to Memphis. The Hornets had also tried to move to Memphis but the league saw fit to have the Vancouver team make the move. It is not clear if the fact that Hornets are found in Memphis and Grizzlies are not factored into their reasoning.
Then you come to the Charlotte Bobcats. This team was promised to the city as soon as it was evident that the Hornets were moving to New Orleans. There were ownership groups vying for the right to own the team promised to the city, should the city decide to build a new arena. Bob Johnson and his group won out. Johnson was a billionaire at that point but a divorce split his fortune in half. He was a business man who sold Black Entertainment Television to Viacom for $3 billion. So if he made 63% of $3 billion, that would be $1.89 billion and split that with his ex-wife and you have $945 million, of which he and his investors, minority owners and investment firm spent $300 million. Yeah, the NBA is a hell of a curse. Johnson brought in new money with Michael Jordan and kept throwing good money after bad until finally the Bobcats debt was too much of a drag on his portfolio’s books. He was going to sell the team after only 6 year to either Michael Jordan or a group led by George Postolos, like his mind was made up and it was going to happen. The rumors are, as deals like this are never made public, that Jordan took on debt in exchange for shares in the Bobcats, thus, swapping places with Johnson, who continues to have a minority stake in the team.
So, over 23 years since the Hornets/Heat foray into the NBA, all under David Stern’s watch, teams have entered the league and been bought and sold at a surprising rate. Each expansion franchise under David Stern has changed hands from the original groups or majority owners, 2 have moved, one is owned by the league and one has won a single championship (the Heat, best location, wealthiest owner of the expansion teams, Pat Riley). If not for Orlando’s surprising luck, being the only team to win the Draft Lottery in consecutive years and one of only two teams to win it 3 times, they might be down here with the rest of the franchises that haven’t really worked since their inception.
Whenever the topic of expansion comes up, and conversely when things are bad, the option of contraction, the NBA starts to look at its fringes. The edges where cities are clammoring to get in, become the teams who are clawing to hang on. It draws an easy target to say this team or that team have only ever been to the playoffs one time (Charlotte), 4 times (Vancouver/Memphis), 5 times (Toronto), 8 (Minnesota) or even 12 (Hornets), 13 (Orlando) and 15 (Miami), out of those 23 years to 7 years. But is it the system, the people, the tools given to these expansion teams or the circumstances that are to blame? That might be a question that one man can answer all by himself and he may be the only one who can answer it. With it turning cooler and the league on the verge of missing games, you might find a short, stocky, New Yorker with a burgeoning beard as that guy.
Andrew Barraclough is Senior Editor for RobertoGato.com, a Charlotte Bobcats Blog on the Fansided Network. Follow him on Twitter @therobertogato and Like the site on Facebook.