Bernucca: Small Market Dilemma is the NBA’s Big Lie

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220px-JoeMaloofByPhilKonstantinThis summer, when your favorite team’s owner or GM tells you a certain player is financially out of reach, here’s how you know he is lying.

His lips are moving.

NBA business is booming, folks. And not just for the so-called big markets. Take a quick look at the conference finals, which feature four teams from middle to small markets collecting millions for every home playoff game.

Take a look at the Sacramento Kings, who were just sold for a record $525 million even though they haven’t been in the playoffs in seven years and play in an outdated arena in a small market.

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Sheridan: Harden Trade Will Haunt OKC For a Long Time

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PrestiWords to live by: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Surely Sam Presti and Clay Bennett of the Oklahoma City Thunder have heard that expression, as both are smart, successful businessmen with good educational backgrounds, although they are a generation apart in age.

Presti is the wise child who built the Oklahoma City Thunder from scratch, taking over at age 30 on June 7, 2007, prior to the team’s final season in Seattle, renting a small apartment with his then-girlfriend near the team’s downtown training facility, then proceeding to dismantle the Sonics.

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Tweets of the Night: Peter Vecsey & LeBron James

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If you had Phil Jackson landing on his feet as President of the Seattle SuperSonics in the “What will Phil do next?” office pool, things may be looking up for you.

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Bernucca: Forget the championship, Thunder want a “sustainable team”

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When the Oklahoma City Thunder traded James Harden on Saturday night, they revealed to everyone that they are a team far more concerned with the bottom line than the top of the heap.

Probably a bit ahead of schedule, the Thunder reached the NBA Finals last season. As we have said before, they were a questionable foul call away from opening a 2-0 lead on the mighty Miami Heat that would have cultivated the doubt and derision that has swirled around LeBron James for the last five years.

And even as the Heat were wiping the AmericanAirlines Arena floor with the Thunder in the clinching Game 5, the conventional wisdom was that Oklahoma City would be back very soon. Its window of championship opportunity was still wide open and would remain that way for several years.

Why wouldn’t it?

The Thunder had a true superstar in three-time scoring champion Kevin Durant. They had another All-Star in Russell Westbrook, whose ceiling still seems limitless. They had the hypotenuse of the “Big Three” triangle – a mandatory component to compete for championships in today’s NBA – in Harden, who won the Sixth Man Award only because he was used as a reserve.

Assembling a three-headed monster to compete for a championship is not just a theory. It’s an axiom. Ask the Heat, who did it so ostentatiously they obscured the fact that other teams have been doing it for years.

Ask the Spurs, who have contended and won for a decade with Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili. Ask the  Celtics, who have done the same with Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen (and now Rajon Rondo). Or ask the Lakers, who have upped the ante to an “Fearsome Foursome” of Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, Steve Nash and Dwight Howard.

All of them looked with some level of envy at the Thunder, whose “Big Three” were all under 25 years old entering this season. Oklahoma City didn’t have a championship window; it had a double patio door.

And owner Clay Bennett, GM Sam Presti and the rest of the braintrust decided to shutter it over a lousy $6 million over the next four years. What a bunch of cheapskates.

In their news release, Presti said the trade “will be important to our organizational goal of a sustainable team.” Huh? Our “organizational goal”? Does that mean the vision is to settle for good because the chance to be great is a little pricey?

And what the hell is a “sustainable team”? Were the Thunder on the verge of Chapter 11 bankruptcy? Do Bennett and his ownership partners have to eat pasta and tunafish if the team doesn’t turn a profit?

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NBA political donations to Mitt Romney and Barack Obama revealed

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NBA owners, players and coaches are taking sides in the 2012 U.S. presidential election, with players and coaches favoring incumbent Democrat Barack Obama and most owners supporting Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

According to research by HoopsHype.com, the largest individual donation was $15,000 (to the Romney campaign) by Michael Gearon of the Atlanta Hawks’ ownership group.

Rockets general manager Daryl Morey donated $8,500 to the Romney campaign (outspending his colleague in Boston, Danny Ainge, by $6,000), and $7,500 Romney donations were made by Pat Riley (Miami Heat president), Herb Simon (Indiana Pacers owner), and Thunder minority owner Aubrey McClendon, who donated $2,500 more than principle Oklahoma City owner Clay Bennett.

Among Obama supporters, Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers and San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich donated $5,000 apiece, as did players Baron Davis, Vince Carter and Grant Hill.

Another notable Obama supporter is NBA deputy commissioner Adam Silver, who donated $2,000. Among owners, Ted Leonsis of the Washington Wizards donated $5,500, and Philadelphia 76ers CEO Adam Aron went into his wallet for $5,000 for the Obama campaign.

A full list of NBA personnel who have donated to presidential candidates can be found here on the HoopsHype site.

Interestingly, from a journalistic perspective, the story of who is giving away their money to presidential candidates was broken overseas with data culled from OpenSecrets.org. HoopsHype is not run by an American, but by a Spaniard living in Madrid. (Full disclosure: HoopsHype.com and SheridanHoops.com are both affiliated with the USAToday Publishing Group.)

“I was reading news about NBA players taking part in Barack Obama fundraisers, so I thought it would be interesting to know which guys were putting their wallet where their mouth is,” said Jorge Sierra, HoopsHype’s editor-in-chief. “Not hard to find since the donations are for the world to see online.

“So far, very little money has gone from the players’ pockets to the campaigns. I was surprised by the amounts the NBA owners are donating, though. It’s not just the presidential candidates, but many other politicians running for office. And that’s not counting the PACs.”

 

 

 

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