Kori Ellis
05-22-2005, 12:15 AM
Mike Monroe: Owners the source of dough-re-mi
Web Posted: 05/22/2005 12:00 AM CDT
http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/basketball/nba/spurs/stories/MYSA052205.4S.COL.BKNmonroe.29955ae17.html
San Antonio Express-News
There is no more than a month left in an NBA playoff season that has produced play so compelling and enjoyable to watch, everyone associated with the league should be grinning, ear to ear, about the future of the pro game.
Instead, the league has lobbed the first stink bomb in what now looks to be a smelly summer of labor strife that, once again, threatens to destroy the very sort of brand loyalty that can only be garnered by games like the Spurs' and Suns' series clinchers and Reggie Miller's emotional farewell game.
The players' union had reneged on several key items on which they already had agreed, commissioner David Stern and his chief lieutenant, Russ Granik, told us.
The agents were to blame, they inferred.
Another lockout may be required, they implied.
Billy Hunter, executive director of the players' union, reacted angrily. He called "repugnant" the suggestion that he, a black man, had been swayed from previously agreed-upon points by a predominantly white group of powerful player agents.
And this after both sides in the effort to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement had promised, just a couple of months ago, there would be no public posturing this time around.
Unless, it appears, it suits one side's purpose.
Further, this was after Stern had reminded everyone, ad nauseum, that there is no agreement that is not an agreement in full. Partial agreements, he has reminded us, mean nothing until both sides agree to everything.
Fast forward to Seattle. There, after the Spurs eliminated the SuperSonics in the Western Conference semifinals and put the focus in the Great Northwest squarely on the future of that franchise, we found Sonics majority owner and coffee baron Howard Schultz promising Sonics fans he would walk the financial tightrope between fiscal responsibility and on-the-court glory without slipping off the wire into the abyss.
The Sonics reportedly will lose about $17 million this season. That seems like a whole lot of dough-re-mi until you consider that Schultz and fellow Sonics owner John Stanton are billionaires.
See, Stern and Granik are pushing for more "cost certainty" for their owners in a new collective bargaining agreement — they want to shorten the maximum number of years in a contract from seven to five, and the maximum raise for a "Larry Bird" free agent from 12.5 percent per year to 10 percent — when most of the owners see their teams as toys, not businesses.
Paul Allen, who owns the Trail Blazers, has his own Boeing 757 (plus a second 757 for the Blazers) and two Gulfstream G5s. His latest mode of can't-live-without-it transport: His own submarine.
Allen squanders on player salaries, too, and Stern feels compelled to save him from himself.
Schultz finds himself in a predicament in Seattle because he took a hard financial line last summer with coach Nate McMillan, who did such a superior job coaching the Sonics, he now can command much greater compensation than he clearly would have accepted at this time one year ago had Schultz only offered him a reasonable extension.
McMillan loves living in Seattle, where his son, a high school sophomore, already has been a key player for a team that has won back-to-back state championships. He likely will return to Seattle, no matter how much the Knicks offer him, since it appears he is the latest best candidate on Isiah Thomas' dynamic list.
So Schultz tries to balance a relative lack of cost certainty against a re-energized fan base that would drown him in a giant mug of decaf macchiato were he to chase off all his free agents, starting with Ray Allen, with low-ball offers.
Says Schultz, as quoted in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: "It is a fragile balance, trying to be fiscally responsible, trying not to lose too much money and at the same time do the right thing for the organization and the fans. We're going to try and do that in a way that keeps this thing going. We don't want to take a step backward. And we're not."
Schultz's emotions were on public display during Game 6, when Post-Intelligencer columnist Art Thiel described his antics as "evoking a barefoot Yosemite Sam on a hot griddle."
That kind of emotion is why he and other NBA owners overpay players. Their teams aren't investments. They are expensive toys, just like a personal submarine. And any billionaire who buys a team believing he can earn an annual profit didn't do his due diligence.
Remember that next time anyone tells you the players make too much dough-re-mi.
Web Posted: 05/22/2005 12:00 AM CDT
http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/basketball/nba/spurs/stories/MYSA052205.4S.COL.BKNmonroe.29955ae17.html
San Antonio Express-News
There is no more than a month left in an NBA playoff season that has produced play so compelling and enjoyable to watch, everyone associated with the league should be grinning, ear to ear, about the future of the pro game.
Instead, the league has lobbed the first stink bomb in what now looks to be a smelly summer of labor strife that, once again, threatens to destroy the very sort of brand loyalty that can only be garnered by games like the Spurs' and Suns' series clinchers and Reggie Miller's emotional farewell game.
The players' union had reneged on several key items on which they already had agreed, commissioner David Stern and his chief lieutenant, Russ Granik, told us.
The agents were to blame, they inferred.
Another lockout may be required, they implied.
Billy Hunter, executive director of the players' union, reacted angrily. He called "repugnant" the suggestion that he, a black man, had been swayed from previously agreed-upon points by a predominantly white group of powerful player agents.
And this after both sides in the effort to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement had promised, just a couple of months ago, there would be no public posturing this time around.
Unless, it appears, it suits one side's purpose.
Further, this was after Stern had reminded everyone, ad nauseum, that there is no agreement that is not an agreement in full. Partial agreements, he has reminded us, mean nothing until both sides agree to everything.
Fast forward to Seattle. There, after the Spurs eliminated the SuperSonics in the Western Conference semifinals and put the focus in the Great Northwest squarely on the future of that franchise, we found Sonics majority owner and coffee baron Howard Schultz promising Sonics fans he would walk the financial tightrope between fiscal responsibility and on-the-court glory without slipping off the wire into the abyss.
The Sonics reportedly will lose about $17 million this season. That seems like a whole lot of dough-re-mi until you consider that Schultz and fellow Sonics owner John Stanton are billionaires.
See, Stern and Granik are pushing for more "cost certainty" for their owners in a new collective bargaining agreement — they want to shorten the maximum number of years in a contract from seven to five, and the maximum raise for a "Larry Bird" free agent from 12.5 percent per year to 10 percent — when most of the owners see their teams as toys, not businesses.
Paul Allen, who owns the Trail Blazers, has his own Boeing 757 (plus a second 757 for the Blazers) and two Gulfstream G5s. His latest mode of can't-live-without-it transport: His own submarine.
Allen squanders on player salaries, too, and Stern feels compelled to save him from himself.
Schultz finds himself in a predicament in Seattle because he took a hard financial line last summer with coach Nate McMillan, who did such a superior job coaching the Sonics, he now can command much greater compensation than he clearly would have accepted at this time one year ago had Schultz only offered him a reasonable extension.
McMillan loves living in Seattle, where his son, a high school sophomore, already has been a key player for a team that has won back-to-back state championships. He likely will return to Seattle, no matter how much the Knicks offer him, since it appears he is the latest best candidate on Isiah Thomas' dynamic list.
So Schultz tries to balance a relative lack of cost certainty against a re-energized fan base that would drown him in a giant mug of decaf macchiato were he to chase off all his free agents, starting with Ray Allen, with low-ball offers.
Says Schultz, as quoted in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: "It is a fragile balance, trying to be fiscally responsible, trying not to lose too much money and at the same time do the right thing for the organization and the fans. We're going to try and do that in a way that keeps this thing going. We don't want to take a step backward. And we're not."
Schultz's emotions were on public display during Game 6, when Post-Intelligencer columnist Art Thiel described his antics as "evoking a barefoot Yosemite Sam on a hot griddle."
That kind of emotion is why he and other NBA owners overpay players. Their teams aren't investments. They are expensive toys, just like a personal submarine. And any billionaire who buys a team believing he can earn an annual profit didn't do his due diligence.
Remember that next time anyone tells you the players make too much dough-re-mi.