What an interesting NBA draft we had last night. There were some surprise picks and a couple draft day deals to add spice to a display of perhaps the deepest draft class in NBA history (if you believe Dickie V. and this blog author is inclined to...). First Ray Allen (and a second rounder that would eventually be Glen "Big Baby" Davis) was dealt for the #5 pick (Jeff Green), Delonte West, and Wally "World" Szczerbiak. Off topic, does Wally Szczerbiak have the hardest name to spell in the history of the League? Probably not, but he's in the top 5% for sure... Later in the draft, we learned that the Blazers had shipped Zach Randolph to the New York Knicks in a comically bad deal : Randolph, Fred Jones, and Dan Dickau for Stevie "Franchise" (Killer) and Channing Frye. This deal just speaks to how desperate Portland actually was to move Randolph. I believe the team had a mandate to have him moved by the draft so that they could announce a "New Era" to the Portland faithful. They got it done, but they surely could have gotten more for a young 23/10 power forward. Things should still work out for the Blazers, as this should be a clear case of addition by subtraction. Still, I was dismayed to see them sell so low as a Portland fan and basketball buff. Portland now mulls buying Francis out of his $33 million contract and letting him walk, meaning they basically got Channing Frye for an All-Star caliber forward. Paul Allen certainly has the cash to erase Randolph's contract with a shrug, but I think his team could have found a way to move the player while getting something more useful in return...
You might wonder where I'm going with this, as I've yet to really break ground on my title up there : "The Importance of a Good Owner"... Allen came up, so let's start there. If you watched the draft coverage carefully, you saw several shots of Paul Allen getting into the action in the Trailblazers "draft war room. " He's right there with GM Kevin Pritchard, Nate McMillan, and the entire Blazer brass. When he buys - yes, *buys* a first round pick from the Phoenix Suns for the second year in a row, you see him emphatically pumping his fist for the war room involvees. In the wake of the Blazers stellar '06 draft, we learned that buying a late first rounder from Phoenix and drafting Sergio Rodriguez was Allen's call. I would bet that the same is true for Rudy Fernandez, the second Spaniard to be acquired by the Trailblazers in two years. Rodriguez impressed in limited minutes last year, showing flashes of potential future stardom. For those of us who immediately went to "YouTube" to watch highlight reels of Fernandez pulling freaky reverse dunks on International competition - well, at least my eyebrows went up. If I was a Phoenix fan, I'd be upset. This kid looks like a young Manu Ginobili, and Phoenix passed up on him and a host of other talented kids so the team's owner, Rob Sarver, could get a 3-odd million dollar bonus.... and there you have it : The Good (Allen), The Bad (Sarver), and The .. Ugly? Surely it can't get any uglier than selling off your team's first rounders two years in a row to the upstart Trailblazers, right? Surprisingly, it gets much worse than this. Ugly has several guises when it comes to bad ownership, and I'd like to entertain you with two examples. One highlights the extreme inertia and indecisiveness of split ownership, as illustrated by the Atlanta Hawks. Second, we look at the sad story of the Seattle SuperSonics, whose city and fans were fully betrayed by their former owner and now face the threat of losing the team forever.
I want to start out by saying that I like the Atlanta Hawks. I always have, I was just starting to watch NBA games when Larry Bird and Dominique Wilkins had their legendary scoring duel. I remember watching the now fabled slam dunk contest between 'Nique and Jordan in 1988 and thinking that Wilkins was robbed. Jordan's dunks were certainly extraordinary, but none could approach 'Nique's power and inexplicable body control on those windmill throw-downs. I may be in the extreme minority, but I wasn't even that impressed by Jordan's "free throw line dunk" at the end - he didn't even take off from the free throw line! This was clearly home cooking!
Again, I digress (I can't help it, I'm a habitual digress-er). The Hawks - their draft, yes. The story is actually not the draft, but what proceeds it. Prior to the draft, the Hawks reportedly have a deal on the table to bring Amare Stoudemire to Atlanta if they in turn ship their #3 and #11 picks to the Wolves (with the third part of the deal landing a disgruntled KG in Phoenix). The Hawks have been a constant in the draft lottery as of late, and they are stocked with young talent as a result. This is a team that doesn't need to get any younger... They need a point guard, but don't necessarily need to get one out of the draft. Virtually every team in the NBA needs an Amare Stoudemire. With no disrespect to Al Horford, the promising young forward taken by the Hawks with their #3 pick (which they obviously kept), there are only two players in the 2007 draft that are a likely to make an impact equal to or greater than Stoudemire's. In the East, and paired with former teammate Joe Johnson, Amare Stoudemire probably leads the team to the playoffs next year. So why didn't the deal happen? It's quite possible it never was going to happen anyway, but several reports indicate that a dispute in Hawks management led to inertia and eventually a failure to act. To add insult to injury, this is also clearly not the first time such a story has unfolded involving the Atlanta ownership. A parallel story in the 2007 draft relates how the Hawks management could not reach agreement on taking Horford with their #3 draft pick until the 11th hour, with one disgruntled part-owner still trumpeting Yi Jianlian as the best choice (and quite likely for reasons other than winning basketball games, as Jianlian and his huge Chinese fan-base means dollars). Steve, a friend of mine and Hawk fan, related his envy of Portland's good ownership and management situation. For his sake, and other true Atlanta fans, it would be much better if the Hawks could just have one owner (even one like Sarver...).
Finally, I want to visit the potentially tragic saga that has become the Seattle SuperSonics. The franchise, which as enjoyed a great deal of success since its inception in the 1966 (including a championship in 1979), was purchased by a group headed by Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz in 2001. For many at the time, this seemed to make perfect sense. Schultz had made his millions in Seattle, and seemed committed to carrying on the franchise's legacy in his now hometown. However, when the city refused a handful Schultz's proposals to build a new NBA arena for the Sonics because of the cost that it would place on tax-payers, Schultz made good on a threat to sell the team. I want to step away and comment that there are numerous examples of teams getting arenas built after wrangling with local politicians - often for years or even decades. Schultz may have been chagrined at being rebuffed by the same city leadership that agreed to terms with Seahawks owner Paul Allen relatively quickly, but did he expect anything less after the city had just invested in two "state of the art" sports facilities (The Seahawks Qwest Field and it's neighboring Safeco Field, home of the Mariners, built in 2001)? Naturally, the city balked at pouring money into another facility (which would translated directly into profits for Schultz, one of the richest men in the region). As peevish and uncommited as Schultz may rightfully come off, this is not the worst of it - Schultz did not just sell the franchise, he sold it to an owner from Oklahoma City bent on moving a franchise to his home town (one who had recently organized to host the Katrina-displaced New Orleans Hornets, with some thinly-veiled motives to try and keep the franchise in Oklahoma City if possible). Here lies the true betrayal of Schultz, who quite likely disenfrachised fans who have grown up with the Seattle SuperSonics, watched them win championships, lose championships, produce NBA legends... Schultz's business decision, delivered not without a certain measure o
f spite, netted him a cool $100 million and the revulsion of most sports fans in the city of Seattle. This blog auther, a lifetime Portand Trailblazers fan but also a true fan of the NBA, has avoided Starbucks ever since (yeah, the mediocre, expensive coffee was probably enough in the first place...).So now we finally have it: The Good (Paul Allen), the Bad (Robert Sarver), The Ugly (The Belkin-hamstrung Hawks), and The Really, Really - well, Awful (Howard Schultz). Good owners don't just matter, you might argue that they're as important of a factor as anything when it comes to a successful professional sports franchise.
-Jet out
(Photos - Paul Allen : AP, Al Horford : AP, Howard Schultz, Business Week, Unknown photographer, Gary Payton, Shawn Kemp : Sam Forenchich, NBAE/Getty)
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