Sacramento Kings moving franchise to the OC, CA.

Heaven help the Thunder's gate receipts if there is another oil bust.

 

Owners and leagues brought a lot of this on themselves by paying exorbitant salaries. Now it's a challenge to keep up with the next guy.

Gosh, sports was a lot more fun back in the 1970s-80s.

 

They can pay the exorbitant salaries because professional sports franchises are subsidized. on a league-wide average, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars per team, by free arenas from the taxpayers.

I could pay the guy who mows my lawn* a hell of a lot more if I didn't have to pay my mortgage.




*-actually that's me but the story works better if I'm paying "some guy" to do it.

 

Yeah, that's my point. As one local Seattle official said in the sonicsgate.org movie, the NBA teams have more than enough money to build their own arenas. But, hey, if you can get someone else to pay for it with just a little bit of whining, why not?

The economic structure of all major pro sports is a complete joke. I have no idea why the public continues to subsidize it either through ticket sales, approving tax use for construction or anything else.

Maybe the NFL and NBA will both have a lockout and we can all realize life will be just fine without these clowns. One can dream, eh?

 

Right now the Thunder has everything working for it. It's still relatively new, and they have Durant and Westbrook. That's a tough team not to like.

Sacramento was selling out Arco Arena with guys like Wayman Tisdale, Danny Ainge and Jim Les. Don't even get me started on Harold Pressley, Joe Kleine and Lionel Simmons.

I'll bet that team went almost a decade without an all-star and they sold out every game.

 

You seem surprised that there are no plans in this economy to build an arena for a team that doesn't exist, and that the worst team in baseball isn't drawing.

 

remember the source

 

And, of course, JC never bothers to explain what his genius would have done or provide us any insight into anything.

 

The Thunder situation is very comparable to the Colorado Avalanche in the 1990s: unlike the vast majority of relocated franchises, the Avs were very good right from Day One, winning the SC in their first season in Denver and remaining a top contender for about the whole next decade, and the joint was packed.

In recent seasons the team has gone to shit and -- who'da thunk it -- attendance has sunk like a rock (now 24th in percentage of seats sold). Same thing will happen in OKC once the team goes bad.

 

That's what we used to say abot the Kings: All those sellouts, and just think of what would happen if they were any good! IIRC, they made the playoffs their first year in Sacto., but not again for a long while.

 

That's true with pretty much any team in any market. I remember when the Blackhawks and Bruins didn't draw well. Every team is going to have its ups and downs.