David Stern utters the "C" word

[BaltimoreFan]

Every professional sports team makes money.

No they don't. While many teams manipulate their books to "lose money" on paper for tax purposes and stuff, you can lose real money on a team. Ask the NHL.

I shouldn't have talked in absolutes. I'm aware that teams can and do lose money. The Texas Rangers just failed for bankruptcy. I don't follow the NHL closely, but I know Phoenix was having troubles and I'm sure other teams are. I was just addressing the fact that so many fans are shocked to find that losing teams are making a profit. They need to profit in order to exist. If they lost money on a consistent basis they would have to move or fold. A lot of people were shocked by the financial statements leaked a couple months ago for the baseball teams, when really they showed nothing that should be surprising. It would have been a lot better if some big market teams statements were released as well. Then we could compare the profits and expenses to see if small market teams truly were pocketing money.

[mania]

To be fair, the Rangers bankruptcy wasn't necessarily because of the team's lack of profitability (although the financial pages leaked did show a loss), it was an effort by former ownership and MLB to have the sale go through, when they felt the creditors were holding it up.

Of course, it ended up being an awful move in hindsight and cost a lot more money than it would have initially for the present ownership team and held up the sale for months.

The bigger issue with the bankruptcy, bigger than the Rangers ability to be profitable or not, was Tom Hicks overleveraging the team with debt in order to buy Liverpool.

[Viper]

Why don't the Wolves move into the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul? (Aside from the lease issues...)

Between the Wild, the Swarm, high school and college games and tournaments, concerts, and the occasional one-off sports event like the US Figure Skating Championships held there a couple of years ago, Xcel is pretty much booked solid during hockey/hoops season as it is. (And even the offseason too.)

[jrh31584]

Here is a list of the total number of teams in each league that have reached the finals of their respective leagues:

NFL: 30 (I counted appearances in pre-Super Bowl NFL championship games, considered the current Cleveland Browns to be a continuation of the 1946-1995 Browns, and the Ravens to be a new franchise.)

MLB: 28 (including Texas)

NHL: 25 (if you count Winnipeg's WHA championships for the Coyotes)

NBA: 24 (if you count an ABA finals appearance for the Nuggets)

Does this seem like a reasonable measure of whether a league is over-expanded or under-expanded? In general, my rule of thumb for a sufficiently old league (years in existence >= number of teams) is:

0-1 teams have not reached finals: Expansion OK from a competitive standpoint, economics is another matter.

2-4 teams have not reached finals: About right.

5+ teams have not reached finals: If teams are struggling financially, consider contraction.

[pianoknight]

I'm interested to know how the NBA stacks up against the NFL, MLB and NHL in terms of viewership and percentages of sellouts, crowd attendance, etc.

My wager is that there are three types of team out there, based on two criteria: winning and attendance.

Hallmark Teams: They have a long history of success and are generally at least moderately successful even today. Lakers, Bulls, Pistons, Heat...

Cultural Teams: A well-established team with rabid fans. Win/Loss is somewhat irrelevant as die-hards show up every game. Cavs, Blazers, Mavs,

Jazz...

Bottom Feeders: Teams that have horrible records and very small fan bases. Grizzlies, Kings, 'Wolves, Bucks...

====================

Now I'm not a rabid NBA fan, but it seems to me that there are some steps the NBA can take to restructure or shuffle teams to be more profitable. What about consolidating the Timberwolves and the Bucks? Minnesota and Wisconsin are football country primarily, and both of these teams are generally irrelevant year after year.

Also, California is a mess. The Clippers, Kings and Warriors are just too much "suck" to balance out the Lakers' "awesome." Move the Kings back to Kansas City maybe? KC is a big basketball town, and it regularly hosts college basketball tournaments.

[TFoA]

Cultural Teams: A well-established team with rabid fans. Win/Loss is somewhat irrelevant as die-hards show up every game. Cavs,

I really hate to point that out since the rest of the post was pretty decent, but I gotta. That team had absolutely no support before LeBron got there. I think for a few years they were at the bottom of the league when it came to attendance. Then again, it's totally understandable when the face of the franchise is Zydrunas Ilgaukas.

[mania]

Over the hill Shawn Kemp = BOX OFFICE DRAW.

[KDubK414]

@pianoknight

Extreme "homer-ism" here, or maybe not. The Bucks are not a "bottom feeder" as you said. The team does have 2 Finals appearances (1 World Championship), multiple division titles and playoff appearances in the 70's. During that stretch they have had 3 of the best players in the game in Lew Alcindor/Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Oscar Robertson, and Junior Bridgeman. Also in that time period they only failed to miss the playoffs TWICE. Yeah guys like Kareem and Oscar left towards the end of the decade, but the 80's wouldn't disappoint. Carrying over from the 70's starting in 1979 the team would make a 12 year playoff run ending in 1991. During that stretch the Showtime Lakers and the dominate Celtics were running the landscape of the NBA. The Knicks were a very good team and the Pistons and Bulls were establishing themselves in the Eastern Conference. Not to mention the teams the 76ers were able to put together. The Bucks would win their division 7 out of the 12 years. The 90's got rough, though towards the end of the decade powered by the "Big Three," would return to the playoffs capping that off with a division crown in 2001 and coming within ONE game of making the franchise's third Finals appearance. The 2000's would get rough. The team would only make it to the playoffs three times, all ousted in the first round. Until 2009 when later that season they would make a run in 2010 at the Central Division title coming up short to the Cavs. This was also the start of the "Fear the Deer" era in the teams history, featuring one of the leagues rising stars in Brandon Jennings, and a hopefully healthy and strong Andrew Bogut in the paint.

The Bucks have also had some little known coaches in their history too. Names like Larry Costello who would lead them to the 2 Finals appearances. Don Nelson would then take the helm from him. After Nelly would be Del Harris. Flash forward to the 90's when Mike Dunleavy would take control and build the team that would later return to prominence under George Karl.

If anything the Bucks have as much of a storied history and relevance to the NBA as do some of your "Hallmark" franchises. Granted they don't have the rings other teams do. But, they haven't exactly been a slacker organization.

Just my 2 pennies.

[Jimmy!]

Cultural Teams: A well-established team with rabid fans. Win/Loss is somewhat irrelevant as die-hards show up every game. Cavs,

I really hate to point that out since the rest of the post was pretty decent, but I gotta. That team had absolutely no support before LeBron got there. I think for a few years they were at the bottom of the league when it came to attendance. Then again, it's totally understandable when the face of the franchise is Zydrunas Ilgaukas.

No love for the Daugherty/ Price/Nance/Ehlo Cavs?

I woud love to see one of these "contracting" teams move to Seattle.

/wishful thinking

[TFoA]

Cultural Teams: A well-established team with rabid fans. Win/Loss is somewhat irrelevant as die-hards show up every game. Cavs,

I really hate to point that out since the rest of the post was pretty decent, but I gotta. That team had absolutely no support before LeBron got there. I think for a few years they were at the bottom of the league when it came to attendance. Then again, it's totally understandable when the face of the franchise is Zydrunas Ilgaukas.

No love for the Daugherty/ Price/Nance/Ehlo Cavs?

By the time those guys' run was over in the mid 90s, the support for that team had evaporated. Plus, you know, Jordan had something to do with crushing the hopes & dreams of that team as well.

[Jimmy!]

The Bucks are not a "bottom feeder" as you said. The team does have 2 Finals appearances (1 World Championship), multiple division titles and playoff appearances in the 70's.

Plus they had Sidney Moncrief.

[The_Admiral]

Until 2009 when later that season they would make a run in 2010 at the Central Division title coming up short to the Cavs. This was also the start of the "Fear the Deer" era in the teams history

You're reflecting back on "the beginning of the Fear The Deer era" as if it's anything other than "the Bucks were kinda good last year."

[KDubK414]

Until 2009 when later that season they would make a run in 2010 at the Central Division title coming up short to the Cavs. This was also the start of the "Fear the Deer" era in the teams history

You're reflecting back on "the beginning of the Fear The Deer era" as if it's anything other than "the Bucks were kinda good last year."

It's not over yet. It has just begun. We'll see where it goes from here. In 10 years it could be more of what we saw in the 70's and 80's. Or it could be more of what most of the 90's were like. I was merely trying to point out that the Bucks aren't a kicking post or whatever you want to call them.

The basis of this thread was about the *c-word* And who should/shouldn't be. To say that the Bucks are a team that could easily be is flushing 40+ years of tradition and solid basketball here in Milwaukee down the drain.

Two areas where I think it could be possible is the arena issue here. Like a previous poster said here, the Bradley Center is in the grey area where it's not old enough to be totally obsolete. Yet, at the same time is considered aged and not fancy enough or isn't on par with the newer amenities of others out there now. They have listened though and tried and still try to help. Playoff and winning basketball should help that process out. The second is, the weather sucks during basketball season. I agree 100%, I hate the winters here too and have been here my whole life. But it does suck in other cities too, especially the other 6 around here. So in that sense it's basically an excuse.

[MadmanLA]

I agree about the Bucks...I wouldn't classify them as bottom-feeders either. Yeah, they've been pretty mediocre over the last 17-18 years (with sporadic playoff appearances in between), but they are one of the winningest franchises in the history of the Association (sixth-best win-loss percentage all-time). I consider Milwaukee one of the NBA's traditional cities (with the NBA being there dating back to 1951, with the Hawks), with a pretty proud basketball history. I grew up there in the mid-80s, and the fan support has always been there.

My Clippers, on the other hand, can be considered "bottom-feeders", despite the fact they play in a very large market and have been profitable in Los Angeles since the day they moved from San Diego. That alone is why the Clippers won't depart, either by re-location or contraction.

Personally, I don't think this contraction idea would ever happen...the owners would catch beyond relief from the Players Association. Not to mention the loss of players' jobs, but also the loss of jobs of coaches, scouts, support staff and so forth.

[Sport]

Cultural Teams: A well-established team with rabid fans. Win/Loss is somewhat irrelevant as die-hards show up every game. Cavs,

I really hate to point that out since the rest of the post was pretty decent, but I gotta. That team had absolutely no support before LeBron got there. I think for a few years they were at the bottom of the league when it came to attendance. Then again, it's totally understandable when the face of the franchise is Zydrunas Ilgaukas.

Thank you. Win/loss is totally relevant to Cavs fans. That's why they showed up in the Lebron era and that's why they averaged 11,000 a night the year before he got there. The Cavs don't have fans. The Cavs had people who were into the trend of going to Cavs games because they had the best basketball player in the world and thought the Cavs would be the team to end their championship drought. The buzz around the Cavs this year is non-existant. They don't have rabid fans at all, moreover, any city would've behaved the same way they did had that Cavs team played in their town.

I just hate this revisionist history (and I hear it all the time) that puts the Cavs and their fans into that level of team supporters. They were a horrible fanbase before Lebron James and they'll be a horrible one afterwards. This current Cavs bunch reminds me a lot of the teams that were around before Lebron arrived and I expect the fans to support them in the same way.

[The_Admiral]

The Bucks won't be contracted or relocated until Herbie departs this mortal coil, and even after that they'll probably stick around as one of those teams with a reliable little core of diehards but no perennial mainstream popularity in a crowded sports landscape. I like the colors they wear, but other than that I don't think I really care if they stay or go. They've been so forgettable for so long. I don't consider them a rival or anything.

[Lee.]

I've always looked at the Bucks as the team you go see when you can't afford Bulls tickets.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

I wonder if anyone ever plays as the Bucks in a video game. Why would you?

[Still MIGHTY]

I wonder if anyone ever plays as the Bucks in a video game. Why would you?

To see how many points you can score as Brandon Jennings?

[IceCap]

I wonder if anyone ever plays as the Bucks in a video game. Why would you?

I suppose if you're from with Wisconsin you might. Other then that....I donno. Though I should talk. I doubt anyone outside of southern Ontario plays as the Raptors.