RE: Dave Kindred, Who needs the players

["Shawn Roth" <ufpdev!shawnr@uunet.uu.net>]

Mark,

	I thought I agreed with most of your original message, but after reading
this one I'm not sure.


Jim,

This will be my final post on this matter, b/c I know people tend to get
tired of it when the list is for basketball talk, not ideology.  If anyone
wants to discuss it off the list that's fine.

This is my major point if people don't want to read this whole thing:

Owners greed for more profit + Players wanting huge salaries (deserved or
not) + ridiculous "operational costs" like Pat Riley or Rick Pitino making
$15 million/year = pricing the fan like me and my friends & neighbors out
of being able to watch pro basketball live. And I think that sucks.

I agree here, but just the basic idea of high prices, not the fact that
everyone wants to make money, if the owners can't make money they won't run
teams.  A professional team in any league is an investment, and without a
good return-on-investment there would be no professional leagues.  Maybe
that is OK with you, but pro sports is part of America and so is making
money.   So if an Owner isn't making money, what he should do is shut his
mouth and sell the team to someone who can.

>I think this is a silly argument by Paul (No personal attack here, just
>my opinion) I have responded to each section.  I think this debate has
>to much emotion involved at the expense of reality.
>
>Here is Mark Piotrowski voicing the opinion he is entitled to:

These are actually my ideas (mark Piotrowski) that you quote throughout
your reply, not Paul's.

Jim, I have a feeling that you and I just have fundamentally different
beliefs on the nature & ethics of profit, capitalism, etc.  I don't believe
that the owners are entitled to mega-proftis b/c what makes $$ for the NBA
is the players playing basketball, period.  That's all I care to see.  I'm
just so tired of hearing about the owners' "right" to make a profit
becoming the most important thing.  I'm tired of it in the NBA, at
workplaces around the country, everywhere.  That "right" (which I don't
think is a right) has taken precedence over everything else.  What about my
right to see a basketball game for a reasonable price?

I don't think that owners are entitled to mega-profits.  They don't do
anything except put their money into the league.

You don't think that investing your money is a big deal???  Could you afford
to lose all you money if the NBA went belly up.

  And they don't do this
out of the kindness of their hearts, they do it to make money.  I get tired
of hearing the arguement "Without the owners there would be no NBA".  OK,
in the most narrow sense the NBA might not exist w/o the owners, but
Basketball would exist w/o the owners and that is what I care about.

The NBA WOULD NOT EXSIST without the OWNERS, like I said before, someone has
to own the teams, no matter 	what the league.

If the benificent owners didn't do us such a favor and own teams,
basketball would still exist.  It wouldn't be the NBA it might be the
Basketball Association of America or something, but Jordan and Grant Hill
and Jason Kidd and Dana Barros would still play basketball and I'd still
love to watch them.

Who runs the BAA?  Who pays MJ to play?  Who owns the arena?  Who does the
marketing?  Who makes the TV deals?

 Yes, "the game is bigger than the players".  But I just
have to disagree that they didn't "build this league".  I would pay $10 to
watch 5 Celtics play 5 Bulls in the park by my house b/c I love to watch
the game.  A Mercer dunk, a Kenny A. pass, Bruce Bowen's hustle, Travis
Knight's...well never mind Travis Knight.  That is what built the league.

I would pay $10 dollars to watch them play in the playground, because
without the NBA you wouldn't know who they were!

Before you say that Jordan or Hill and Kidd wouldn't play w/o the owners'
capital, let me say that there is an alternative to the NBA madness of
Owner greed.

The Green Bay Packers are a community-owned team.  This is has been so
successful (look how loyal Green Bay fans are & their success over the
years in a "small market") and so threatening to the rest of the owners in
the NFL (who are just as greeedy as the owners in the NBA) that they have
said that no other teams can go this route.  The NBA is said to either have
a rule already prohibiting it or is considering passing one.

The whole community-owned thing is nuts.  What does that solve?  Someone
still runs the team, and they have to get permission to sell stock in the
team if they need to raise more capital.  Also, Green Bays fans have only
been real crazy since they have become real good.  When they were average in
the 80's you didn't hear all these stories about the cheeseheads.

They seem to win, players wan't to play there and they have some of the
most rabid fans, despite the fact they probably play in the coldest
imaginable city for football, their a "small market".  Imagine that!

Once again, players have only wanted to play there since they have gotten
good.  Credit Brett Favre with that.

Another example is baseball in Cuba.  Now before you scream about Communism
and defectors, etc., let me say that I realize the conditions in Cuba are
not great and that people leave under great risk (we can debate the why's
of this all day I'm sure).  The best baseball players in Cuba play baseball
for a living, don't get rich off of it, love to play the game, make it
affordable for fans to watch the games AND regularly kick the US's ass.  I
know there are people like Livan Hernandez and Ariel Prieto who defect b/c
they want the riches of an American athelete, but there are scores more
that stay in Cuba b/c they don't need that.  I'm just using this example as
a means to illustrate that there is such a thing as wanting to play and
watch a game for the love of the game & to be able to make a modest living
(a liveable wage) doing it.

Have you ever listened to Sammy Sosa?  He has said that Cuban born players
want to live the American Dream, and baseball is a good way to get noticed.
Granted they do play to play, but they all wouldn't mind being paid.  Cuba
is not baseball utopia.

The game, the beauty of basketball played by the best players in the world
is what I'm interested in and that certainly can exist without the owners.

One final time,  HOW?

that's it, over  & out,
mark piotrowski


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Mark Piotrowski
Registrar,
Northwestern University Prosthetic-Orthotic Center
345 E. Superior St.
Room. 1712
Chicago, IL 60611

(312) 908-8006
pio@nwu.edu
www.repoc.nwu.edu/nupoc/nupoc.html
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