Commentary I wrote for the Petros & Money Show on Fox Sport Radio
Here is a little tale of HUBRIS involving none other than the commissioner of the NBA himself, David Stern, whose battles with his own arrogance litter his tenure as the power that be in the NBA. From the draft lottery to the trend of having grown men wear cartoon dinosaurs and flaming horses and angry rockets on their uniforms in an attempt to capitalize on kids’ fondness for the game to the debacle that was the NBA’s dress code, but none of those come close to Stern’s love affair with the idea of keeping the NBA in New Orleans.
Now, New Orleans is a wonderful city, it is one hell of a place, but with the team hemorrhaging money and their punkass now former owner George Shinn making it painfully clear that he had no interest in operating the New Orleans Hornets in a respectable and financially safe way, the NBA has stepped in and seized control of the team with one of their goals being to keep the team in the 504 DESPITE sporting one of the lowest attendance figures in the league, barely being able to fill 13,000 of their building’s 20,000 seats. Speculation has already arisen that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is willing to pony up and buy the Hornets from the NBA AND pay for the relocation to move the Hornets and return the NBA BACK to Seattle, but it seems as if Stern and his cohorts at the NBA offices are going to try and avoid the PR nightmare of “giving up” in New Orleans and drag this one out as long as possible.
This isn’t the first time the NBA has used New Orleans as their pro of righteousness and benevolence. In 2008, the ENTIRE all-star game was one LONG photo-op with Dirk Nowitzki painting a house in the 9th Ward and David Stern and that weird bat-looking guy who does the second round of the NBA Draft hanging drywall in Gretna, and you know what, that was nice of you to do for one weekend, but the city of New Orleans needs and needed WAY more than what you gave them and keeping an NBA team playing in a city as a charity case is almost an insult to the city itself, but it seems as if that is exactly what the NBA is planning to do, regardless of good business sense.
