On the dark side
The guy who owns the controlling stake in the L.A. Lakers basketball team is dumping it after only 10 months, at a 25 percent profit. The news has rocked the sports world, and everyone's trying to figure out why the deal is happening. One plausible theory is that the seller is in legal trouble with federal securities regulators, and he can get out of it by selling the team and applying the proceeds to correct whatever wrongdoing he may be engaged in.
Nobody but the seller knows for sure what the motivation may be for the quick flip, but whatever the reason, the sale is an extraordinarily dark story. And more depressingly, the buyers of the Lakers are a member of the Kushner family, affiliated of course with the Trump crime family; and the Disney CEO who persecuted Jimmy Kimmel.
In normal times, such an ugly ownership roster would be great news for Portland Trail Blazer fans. It would give them one more reason to hate the Lakers. But when you look at the predatory loan shark who just bought the Blazers, Portland really can't talk that kind of trash.
Maybe once the season starts, we'll get caught up in the actual games and forget how sleazy the business of pro basketball is becoming. But in the meantime, the NBA is starting to look more than a little like a creepy underworld syndicate. If the Blazers do leave town, as is rumored to be the plan, it will be an act of purification.
But we're a Big League town!!!!!
ReplyDeleteRight up there with Oklahoma City.
DeleteAnd Tacoma
DeleteThe Kushner's seem to be running the country now (or at least acting so on behalf of even more shadowy characters). Jared is sent off to "negotiate" on behalf of the US in every ill-fated foreign adventure we've gotten into, while wasting by now trillions of dollars of tax-payer money. I'm not even sure that is legal, but who cares about that any more.
ReplyDeletePro sports is a great way to launder money with little to no regulations in how everything is financed and expended- as long as they pay taxes on time. So no wonder they always shake down the cities to build the arenas under threat to leave. Every league has banned towns from owning teams, with the one grandfathered exception being Green Bay. Selling the Lakers that quickly looks like he might have just been a placeholder or good old fashioned blackmail.
The Trumps wouldn't sic the SEC on a guy to force him to sell them something, would they? "Nice little baseball team ya got here, it would be a shame if something happened to it." (He also owns the Dodgers.)
DeleteI'm personally choosing to use this as hopium that Mr. Subprime figures out a way to flip his ownership to someone who actually wants to run a NBA team. Maybe the Lakers sale can net him enough profit to slink away forever before his next payment is due.
ReplyDeleteIf China doesn’t become part of this scramble. It might be a house of cards.
ReplyDeleteMaybe flip the Blazers to some Chinese consortium. The CCP already controls the NBA anyway. Don't believe it? Let some player feature Winnie the Pooh on his sneakers and see what happens (again).
DeleteWhy can't the Fire be the Moda anchor tenant, and we do the renovations to accommodate women's sports-??
ReplyDeletePortland is being recognized nationally as important to women's sports, there's a training facility being built in Hillsboro for the women's teams, and investors want to get in on the wave of women's sports teams & their arenas being built.
For all the talk about "diversity & equity" from our State & local govts, it's rather pathetic that I've never heard it suggested during all this Blazer drama that we ditch the repo guy & private-equity-funded NBA, and create a "first-class" WNBA facility for our team. Women's sports have arrived, and Portland is still treating them like they're 2nd-class.
Pa-Leeze. I good high school boys team would whoop an all-star WNBA team. Nothing wrong with being a fan of the Fire, but its like foolishly thinking the Timbers can hang in the Premier league.
DeleteI'm not a 'fan of the Fire' or any other professional sports, I'm looking at this from the standpoint of an opportunity for Portland to jump-on a new & rapidly-growing industry, and get away from what has become of the NBA.
DeleteBut your misogyny has been noted.
You misspelled "reality"
DeleteThe Winterhawks regularly sell-out the Coliseum and used to do numbers in the Rose Garden as well. They're all high school kids. The worst team in the NHL would terrorize them, yet they move tickets in this town. So spare me the nonsense about a good high school team whooping the WNBA all-stars therefore no one wants to watch them. It's untrue.
DeleteJust because you disagree with something doesn’t make it misogyny. It’s just common sense to recognize that men are bigger, stronger and faster than women so of course a men’s basketball team would beat a women basketball team. In fact I believe this happened with a professional women’s soccer team and a boys soccer team in Australia a while back. But your pandering to women has been noted. And by all means be sure to complain about MAGA when the Dems lose - yet again- in the next election cycle when voters in the swing states reject them due a complete refusal to act like they have anything remotely resembling common since.
ReplyDeleteI just found out the Kushners are trying buy the commercial side of FIFA by bribing every team with 20 million dollars to vote for a thing called FFE:
ReplyDeleteFIFA is proposing a new entity called FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) that will control the commercial side (including broadcast rights, sponsorship, ticketing and licensing) and the operational side (planning, setting up and delivering tournaments) of what it currently does with its own competitions, including the World Cup and the Club World Cup.
Although the initial proposal says this group will have a "non-controlling" interest, what usually happens is with more bribes and pressure they'll secure a controlling interest. Is there anything these crooks wont try to buy up? And who is really bankrolling these guys?
I've been trying to articulate my feelings on all this. NBA franchises used to be owned by local car dealers and such. That's all changed in the last decade. Now they're either being scooped up by oligarchs or by dudes who know how to move numbers on an Excel sheet, but don't know much else. The guy in Phoenix got the money to buy HIS franchise by using stock in his company as collateral. The stock has lost 90% of its value since the transaction. Dundon has some REALLY shady dudes backing him.
ReplyDeleteI think I'm out on the NBA. These owners aren't interested in winning. They only want asset appreciation. Very soon it's going to start showing in the product. I don't have time for that. You can catch me at the Chiles Center this season. For less than the price of a lower-level ticket to a Blazer game, I can catch a whole season of women's hoops on The Bluff.