The NBA is not my favorite sport. In no particular order, I prefer the following sporting events to the NBA - MLB, NFL, Golf Majors, College Football, International Football (soccer), Association Football (soocer), the Olympics (both Winter and Summer), Tennis Majors, March Madness, and NCAA La Crosse. Just kidding on last one.
Even in my teens, when the Sonics were good and the Mariners and Seahawks sucked (See 1992 Seahawks Team for a laugh), I was more into the Mariners and Seahawks. It isn't like I am unfamilar with Derek McKey and Michael Cage, but I could rattle off a long list of Seattle athletes I like better than Gary Payton, Shawn Kemp, and Jim McIlvane.
As to why I do not like the NBA that is another story for another day, needless to say whether the Sonics return to Seattle or not isn't really something I am all jazzed about (For the record, 10 years in SoCal and I'm not about the Lakers and Clippers). Honestly, I do not care that much.
The Seattle ownership group has offered a ridiculous amount of money to the Maloof family. In a perfect market, the Maloofs would sell the team in a heartbeat for this amount of money. It is literally a deal they cannot refuse. Further, and unless the Sacramento group matches the offer all the other league owners benefit. If a team in Seattle is worth $625 million, a team in Los Angeles, even a shitty one like the Clippers is worth at least $1 billion. (I shudder to think what the Yankees or Cowboys would be worth in this market). In essence this offer probably makes every other ownership group in the United States and Canada wealthier.
So this begs the question as to why the NBA would block a sale which makes them wealthier in an instant? I do not know the answer. One possible answer is the NBA is creating a bidding war, hoping the offers will get higher and higher, perhaps increasing the value of their teams even more. I think that the former is a side benefit. The real answer is control.
Unlike most businesses, an owner of a North American sports franchise cannot move the team unilaterally. The players they employ are acquired via a draft. They monopolize the venues they play in (and don't pay for). An owner cannot sell a franchise to whoever they want. And even better, these leagues have largely figured out how to have our Universities pick up the tab for player development (mainly football, but all sports draft a lot of college player - this is completely unheard of in Europe in all sports).
One doesn't need to be on Harvard Law Review (University of San Diego, non law review is sufficient) to figure out this seems like an anti-trust problem.
Wow, that was a long introduction, but I'm going to try to make some legal sense of the whole situation in a few parts. Our discourse is sports law starts over 90 years ago in a Supreme Court opninion by the great Oliver Wendell Holmes. It is probably the worst SCOTUS opinion this side of Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson.
The opinion is Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v. National of Professional Baseball Clubs et. al.
The jist of the opinion was professional baseball was not interstate commerce so it was exempt from anti-trust laws. In 1919 (three years before this opinion), there was an famous "trade" of a certain player between a team in New York and a team in Massachusetts. This sale was for $125,000, not even chump change now, let alone in 1919. And at that time, teams played against each other against teams in other states, and even played in something called the World Series. The players got paid. The Philadelphia A's won three World Series between 1910-1914. However, their owner the immortal Connie Mack decided his players were too expensive, and decided to re-build with a younger team. Does that sound familar? Marlins fans can take solace that Mack after 15 years built another dynasty and the A's appeared in consecutively in the 1929, 1930, and 1931 World Series winning it twice.
Long story short - Professional sports is interstate commerce.
Next, we are going to skip ahead a few years to Jim McIlvane's best friend, free agency.
Friday, May 10, 2013
Thursday, May 2, 2013
May 1, 2013 - Killers Concert Review
I've been a Killers fan since their debut in 2005, however until last night I had not seen them live in concert. Perhaps the most bizarre part of the concert, was when I was walking in, they had just taken the stage and were playing "Mr. Brightside" as their first song with the lights on. Never seen that before.
After that, the lights went down as is normal and the show proceeded. The band sounded great all across the board - They played with a lot of energy, and I was very impressed with Bradon Flowers stage presence, he was able to keep the crowd engaged and really seemed to enjoy performing and not there just to cash his quite large paycheck.
The set list had 19 songs. The inclusion of "Jenny was a Friend of Mine" as the first encore was a pleasant surprise. I was sort of expecting "All these Things That I've Done" to be an encore (it was the last song of the main set) largely because it has an "encore-ish" feel to it - I can't really explain what an "encore-ish" feel is except to analogize to my many Depeche Mode concerts.
To the best of my knowledge "Everything Counts" has been the final encore for the vast majority of Depeche Mode concerts since the Music for the Masses tour. While it is a great song, it doesn't crack my top ten list of any DM song list, perhaps not even top 20. It does however have sort of an "epic" (maybe the more appropriate musical term is anthemic) feel both in its pace, arrangement and lyrics. The chorus especially is great to sing a long to. So I think it makes sense to end a concert with an energetic song like that, where the entire crowd can sing "The grabbing hands, grab all they can, all for themselves afterall, Everything Counts in Large Amounts......" And since they have been doing it for so long, it is pretty much expected by the fan base (Cure is similar with the Forest, though I would not categorize the Forest as anthemic).
"All These Things....." has they same sort of feel in its pace, arrangement and lyrics - And almost anyone remotely familar with pop music over the past 10 years can sing "I've got soul, but I'm not a Soldier...." Perhaps, the Killers plan their set list to be a little unexecpted like that and if so, good for them, it is always good to mix up the songs a bit - though in my opinion, I do not really like a slow paced song to end a show, I like to go out with a bang.
Anyhow, I'd have like to seen "Sam's Town" included in the set list, I think it is one of their very best songs, and would play very well live. I perused their most recent set lists from previous shows and they appear to have played it a few times on this tour - perhaps next time. Also, it appears they have been mixing in a cover song or two per show - at this concert, it was "I Think We Are Alone Now" - Props to shopping malls and Tiffany. I liked it.
All in all very good show and I look forward to seeing the Killers in concert next go around - only slight negative is that when the songs from the new album are played alongside the past songs, it is pretty obvious that Battle Born is inferior to their previous efforts, so hopefully this is just a result of the obvious fact that it can be difficult to make every album excellent.
After that, the lights went down as is normal and the show proceeded. The band sounded great all across the board - They played with a lot of energy, and I was very impressed with Bradon Flowers stage presence, he was able to keep the crowd engaged and really seemed to enjoy performing and not there just to cash his quite large paycheck.
The set list had 19 songs. The inclusion of "Jenny was a Friend of Mine" as the first encore was a pleasant surprise. I was sort of expecting "All these Things That I've Done" to be an encore (it was the last song of the main set) largely because it has an "encore-ish" feel to it - I can't really explain what an "encore-ish" feel is except to analogize to my many Depeche Mode concerts.
To the best of my knowledge "Everything Counts" has been the final encore for the vast majority of Depeche Mode concerts since the Music for the Masses tour. While it is a great song, it doesn't crack my top ten list of any DM song list, perhaps not even top 20. It does however have sort of an "epic" (maybe the more appropriate musical term is anthemic) feel both in its pace, arrangement and lyrics. The chorus especially is great to sing a long to. So I think it makes sense to end a concert with an energetic song like that, where the entire crowd can sing "The grabbing hands, grab all they can, all for themselves afterall, Everything Counts in Large Amounts......" And since they have been doing it for so long, it is pretty much expected by the fan base (Cure is similar with the Forest, though I would not categorize the Forest as anthemic).
"All These Things....." has they same sort of feel in its pace, arrangement and lyrics - And almost anyone remotely familar with pop music over the past 10 years can sing "I've got soul, but I'm not a Soldier...." Perhaps, the Killers plan their set list to be a little unexecpted like that and if so, good for them, it is always good to mix up the songs a bit - though in my opinion, I do not really like a slow paced song to end a show, I like to go out with a bang.
Anyhow, I'd have like to seen "Sam's Town" included in the set list, I think it is one of their very best songs, and would play very well live. I perused their most recent set lists from previous shows and they appear to have played it a few times on this tour - perhaps next time. Also, it appears they have been mixing in a cover song or two per show - at this concert, it was "I Think We Are Alone Now" - Props to shopping malls and Tiffany. I liked it.
All in all very good show and I look forward to seeing the Killers in concert next go around - only slight negative is that when the songs from the new album are played alongside the past songs, it is pretty obvious that Battle Born is inferior to their previous efforts, so hopefully this is just a result of the obvious fact that it can be difficult to make every album excellent.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)