[閒聊] On the market or not, Bobcats need fixing
For weeks, NBA ownership and front office sources insisted that it was just a
matter of time until Charlotte Bobcats owner Bob Johnson made official what
had been privately held: He was selling his failing franchise.
“He’s been quietly feeling the market out for buyers,” one league
executive said.
Yet, the economy crashed, a recovery appears a long way off, and finally
Johnson told the Associated Press on Monday, “I’m not selling the team.”
In these tumultuous times, Johnson probably felt he didn’t have a choice.
This isn’t the economic climate to get maximum return on your investment. He
’s lost tens of millions of dollars with the Bobcats, and truth be told,
little suggests that’ll subside soon.
With so much mismanagement and miscalculation under Johnson, Charlotte’s
return to the NBA has thus far been a disaster. In the past several weeks, he
’s cleared some 40 employees out of his marketing and business departments,
leaving little infrastructure beyond his suspect basketball operations.
So far, Johnson, pro sports’ first African-American majority owner, has done
little to validate the enthusiasm that met his $300 million purchase of the
expansion Bobcats in 2003. He’s the self-made man who built the Black
Entertainment Television empire that made him $3 billion in a sale to Viacom.
Two years ago, he turned his basketball decisions over to an absentee partial
owner, Michael Jordan, who appears to be following the same sloppy script
that doomed him with the Washington Wizards.
Several Bobcats employees are so skeptical of Jordan’s priorities, a source
says there’s a running joke that the greatest player ever had something to
do with the league office scheduling the Bobcats in the Super Bowl cities of
Miami and Phoenix the day after the 2007 and 2008 games. No one is ever sure
when and where they’ll find Jordan around the team – never mind scouting
the colleges or overseas – but they know Jordan never misses that Super Bowl
week party.
“He’s going to be more involved, I think, this year than he has been in the
past because he’s got the coach here that he wants,” Johnson said in the
interview with AP.
Jordan needed Larry Brown, and Brown needed Jordan. One was an absentee
executive, and the other, an obstinate, self-destructive coach. After a
winless preseason, Brown has already undertaken his usual routine of
privately disparaging the roster and demanding upheaval.
“Like always with Larry, he hates the players he has and covets ones he doesn
’t and then once he acquires them, hates them equally,” said one longtime
league official.
For someone to suggest that Brown hasn’t gotten his way already, though,
would be erroneous. On draft night in June, sources said, Jordan and general
manager Rod Higgins had decided to take Stanford 7-footer Brook Lopez with
the ninth pick. There was even a call made out of the Charlotte war room to
send word to Lopez’s representatives that commissioner David Stern would
soon be calling his name at Madison Square Garden.
Despite the fact that Texas point guard D.J. Augustin never worked out for
the Bobcats, Brown still wanted to pick him. He was down on Raymond Felton,
the ex-Tar Heel guard, and used the final moments until the pick was due to
lobby his bosses for Augustin.
So, Augustin turned out to be the choice, and Lopez would go 10th to the New
Jersey Nets. If Brown hated having Isiah Thomas as his talent evaluator with
the Knicks, he’s sure to loathe MJ. Jordan is responsible for drafting Kwame
Brown with the No. 1 pick, Adam Morrison with No. 3 and trading Richard
Hamilton for a Carolina crony, Jerry Stackhouse.
“[Jordan] recognizes that he now has had two years of putting the Michael
Jordan stamp on the team,” Johnson told the AP. “So it’s sort of his team
that he has to now prove can do what he expects it to do. He’s very much
focused on his basketball obligations here in Charlotte.”
It’s never good when the owner feels the need to convince people that the
executive running his franchise is serious about the job. You’d kind of want
to assume that. Welcome to the Bobcats’ dysfunctional world.
The way Johnson has run the Bobcats, there’s as much uncertainty about his
commitment to the product. “He thought it was enough to just plop down his
$300 million for the expansion fee, and he never realized the kind of
resources beyond that it took to be a viable NBA franchise,” one ex-Bobcats
official said. “He didn’t understand the market place, that Charlotte is
really a small town where people want to believe you’re a part of the fabric
of the place. He’s miscalculated a lot of things.”
Just a week ago, Johnson had an embarrassing interview on CNBC, where he
sounded far too flippant about his franchise – even disconnected. He called
his former No. 1 pick, Sean May by his father’s name, “Scott,” called the
basketball court a “field,” and only half-jokingly mocked Jordan, saying, “
I gave Michael Jordan a blank check and he exceeded it.”
Before the segment was over, the host asked his advice to wealthy investors
in America. He sure didn’t sound like someone who wanted to keep his
basketball team. “Here’s what you do: You buy beachfront assets like the
NBA. There’s only 30 NBA teams. Buy an NBA team.”
Whatever Bob Johnson is saying now, there are still plenty of people in the
NBA who believe it’ll be his failing franchise on the market.
--
╔═══╗╔═══╗╔═══╗╔═══╗╔═══╗╔══╗ ○
║██◣╝║██◣║║██◣║╚███║║███║║██║ /╰ ★ ── ●
║█▅█╗║█▄▊╝║█▅█║║ ◢◤ ╗╚ ██ ╝║██╚╗( ＼/
║█▅█║║█◥◣║║█ █║║█▅◣║╔███╗║███║
╚═══╝╚═══╝╚═╚═╝╚═══╝╚═══╝╚═══╝ nyctenvoy
--
※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.cc)
◆ From: 140.113.228.83
Hornets 近期熱門文章
PTT體育區 即時熱門文章