How In The Hell Does The City Of Detroit Still Have A Basketball Team

[Koolaid_Man]

I thought the city was under water...when the world economy tanks and there's fire and brimstone...Detroit will be the first place to go....I hear it's a real hell hole over there...and yet they can afford basketball :lol what gives?

DMC and M>S get in here and do some homework for Kool...:toast

[Clipper Nation]

http://i.imgur.com/3OUqU9m.png

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[playbonner15]

CapriMan's got a point. Place had gone to shit. But apparently the team and the palace were bought by the '159th-richest American with a $2.5 billion fortune'.

[tlongII]

The Pistons have some nice pieces. I love their front line. Drummond, Monroe, and Smith can play with anybody.

[Rogue]

Detroit has sunk into Laker Michigan and the blame is mostly on you, the American people, when even the Americans are preferring to buy Japanese cars rather than ones made in the US.

[PingPong]

Panem et circenses - the most miserable places have the most passioned supporters. See soccer (footy) in África and South América.

[N0 LyF3 ScRuB]

The Pistons have some nice pieces. I love their front line. Drummond, Monroe, and Smith can play with anybody.

It's a horrible front line with no spacing. They look kind of bad when on the floor together. Or at least did.

[The Gemini Method]

Well, if you fleece your own people with an inferior product that cost the public more to upkeep than to utilize, then of course people are going to turn elsewhere. The quality of American cars fell immensely from the 80s-90s and because Detroit put all of its eggs in the automobile industry and it subsequent components, it was going to bottom out. Couple that with mismanagement of the city's resources and corruption at the top of the civic ladder and you have a recipe for disaster. Detroit loves its sports teams and it does lend it some distraction when you have the success you do with the Pistons, Tigers, and Red Wings...

[bdubya]

The amount of dipshittery in this thread is staggering....I'll try to keep it simple:
1) The city doesn't own the team. The team doesn't even play in the city; they play in a whole different county.
2) Detroit is nowhere near "Laker" Michigan. Even if your education was crippled by "made in Texas" schoolbooks, this ain't hard to figure out.
3) Detroit cars were at their nadir in the 80s and 90s. Their quality has gone nowhere but up since then (it would have been damn hard not to).
4) Some decent outside shooting is all it takes to fix the "spacing" problem.

HTH. HAND.

[CavsSuperFan]

I am thinking that the Detroit Pistons exist because they don’t play in downtown Detroit anymore and now are located in the upscale community of Auburn Hills…

I am still confused about the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim located in Orange County California though….

[JamStone]

The Tigers, Lions, and Red Wings still do just fine and all three teams play in downtown Detroit. There's no doubt the economy in Detroit has gotten bad particularly in the past decade. Part of it was because the American automotive industry has been hit hard over the past couple decades with people opting for cars like Toyoto and Honda. But it's not the only reason. There has also been a max exodus out of the city in that time. People leaving the city for the suburbs. But the suburbs on the outstretches of the city still do very well. But with people leaving the city to live on those outskirt suburbs, local businesses have suffered greatly, mom and pop stores, restaurants and such. You add the fact that political corruption by not just one of the former mayors but city council helped exacerbate the political, social, and economic/financial problems the city already started to face, and you see the state of the city these days. In recent years, there have been steps to improve things. Detroit has put their foot into the film industry by offering tax breaks to film production companies. Movies like Red Dawn, one of the Tranformers movies, The Mechanic, Harold & Kumar's Christmas among others were all filmed at least partially in Detroit. The upcoming Superman/Batman movie is also set to be filmed in Detroit. Then you have Dan Gilbert, the Cavs owner, who has heavily reinvested in office space in downtown Detroit. Twitter now has an office branch here. That and GM and Ford have gotten back on their feet. I believe GM has paid back the federal government all or nearly all of the loan they got.

There's no sugarcoating it though. The City is still in bad shape. People are struggling. But there are people who are trying to get things going in the right direction. Local leadership is key. Businessmen like Dan Gilbert and Peter Karmanos have helped. Hopefully in years to come, the City can rebuild and become a better representation of what its citizens want it to be.

By the way, remember back in 2009 when the Lakers won the championship and they couldn't afford a parade? It required donors to hold one. There have been recent articles that suggest Los Angeles is headed towards the same type of scenario as Detroit's bankruptcy.

http://www.lamag.com/citythink/citythinkblog/2013/07/25/going-for-broke-is-los-angeles-headed-in-the-same-direction-as-detroit

It's not just Detroit feeling the weight of debt and economic problems. It was the first major city to file for bankruptcy. But watch in the next few years, it surely won't be the last. And perhaps Detroit will be able to get back on its feet sooner since it was in fact the first.