Having watched the events of the past few days unfold, the only conclusion I can draw is that David Stern wants Chris Paul to walk next summer so the Hornets to die a slow death. This would mean the team could be contracted and the revenues from the league can be split 29 (or 28) ways instead of 30. Why else would Stern turn down two extremely generous packages from the Lakers and Clippers? Its the only explanation that makes any sense to me.
I think he's trying to keep Paul there for at least this season so they can find an owner that will keep the team in New Orleans. It would look bad for the NBA to skip town so soon after Katrina.
Yeah. He's got to keep Paul there or get a huge ransom for him to make that team appealing for someone to buy. I think that is his only consideration in all of this, and in the meantime has screwed over multiple teams. Ironically, nobody is going to want to trade with the Hornets now so they probably will die a slow death and still nobody will want to buy them.
7 years? Anyways, the franchise needs to be contracted, I agree. The owners and players will never wish for that, however.
They won't contract, I am nearly convinced that Stern wants to see if CP3 has the BALLS to walk from a $40 million extension to play somewhere else. This is looking more and more like a test of the new CBA to see if it works. DD
This is becoming the top theory in NO....but I think it's mostly out of frustration. If NOH contracts, 29 owners will be out of the ~$10M each they had to chip in to purchase the team. Plus, the NBA's image takes a black eye - the NHL got plenty of bad press when a couple of its teams touched bankruptcy, and the MLB looked bad as the Mets and Dodgers were exposed to be in serious trouble. Folding a franchise is admitting failure, and would impact the values of other teams, especially small markets. Investors would be far less eager to toss money after a purchase. The NBA did try and put in language making it easier for them to fold teams...but that never passed. In short, the NBA literally has nothing at all to gain by contracting the Hornets.
No way they contract. They might be positioning themselves to have an excuse to move to a new town. But, I think they want to end up with 32 teams in North America, so contracting would be heading in the wrong direction.
New Orleans, yes. Toronto, not so much. T.dot is a huge city and is basically the home team for the entire nation of Canada. The current NBA model is all about television eyes. Im sure Toronto is ok in that regard since they also have a TON of international players to raise their overseas profile. I think Charlotte is a good contraction candidate. The franchise has never really had any real support from the locals and is pretty much ignored locally. This whole CP3/New Orleans thing makes me wonder what made George Shinn move to New Orleans anyways? I remember the Hornets being a pretty high profile team in the 90s with Mourning/Larry Johnson, then Glen Rice, and later Baron Davis/Mashburn (Not to mention their awesome jerseys and Starter jackets). Wikipedia (i know) says they were tops in attendance 8 out of their first 10 years but then ended up finishing last in attendance for the 01'-02' season. I remember the local fan base being pretty disgusted with George Shinn but I can't remember the circumstances...
Here's what I think the NBA owners gain from a contraction: - Increased franchise values. With fewer available franchises, they become a scarcer resource and hence demand should increase - Greater share of BRI. For all league-wide revenue streams such as TV contracts, each team will now receive a bigger piece - Bigger cut of revenue sharing Same logic as before, but now its the smaller teams benefiting from the stream of revenues (and luxury taxes) from the big market teams - Better overall standard of play Now with less teams, the league should be better, with more rest, stars spread over fewer teams and more sold out games. I think there's several compelling reasons to contract at least one or two teams and don't see why New Orleans wouldn't be a leading candidate. The recent events just add (bucket loads of) fuel to the fire.
This is not the first time I've seen one of you guys calling for Toronto to be contracted. Is there any solid reason other than the fact that the past two years have been bad? The team is very solid in terms of support and attendance, and just got bought by two of the biggest companies period in Canada.
This and it also must have something to do with the sale of the franchise. The only thing consistent with the NBA's demands is that they want to take on little to no salary cap. Bima, in his tweets, seems to think this has implications on the sales price of the franchise. -I wonder how the NBA would react to a potential CP3 suitor in Orlando if it meant keeping Dwight Howard with the Magic? Would they allow CP3 to be traded to Orlando for a bag of rocks?
It's the opposite actually - Stern drew a sort of post-katrina line in the sand about keeping the Hornets in NO and even though they (and the bobcats, I never understood the whole "you deserve another team because george shinn was a jerk!" strategy, since Charlotte isn't really an NBA town...) probably should be shut down, the league would lose to much face if it happened.
