Mark Cuban getting his players too comfortable

Well, the wealth of the owner does make a difference. For people like Cuban and Allen, owning an NBA team is like a prestegious hobby. So, naturally they want to win at all costs. Most of the other teams are owned by people or even partnerships that are in this for business. They don't normally want to sacrifice their profit margin for the sake of winning it all at any cost. If the team can win by the normal course of getting better by drafts and trades they will probably spend some limited extra amount for a short time though.

Am I the only one to believe that the Jordan's first retirement had something to do with money/respect? Remember how Falk equates respect with money (don't tell me the excuse about his father, spending the time with family, wanting toplay baseball, supsended by the league, etc.). Jordan was locked into a eight year contract for a $28M or something. Reinsdorf as usual was adamentally against renegotiating contracts (ala. Pippen). Even after he came back he had to play out the last year of his contract for like $5M. Also I remember how Riensdorf regretted having to pay him $30M, $33M, $36M for the next three years despite winning it all. May be his willingness to break up the team had something to do with economics? So they purposely pushed out Jackson to make it hard for Jordan to return? Krause simply became the fallguy to take all the blame? The last two years the owners must have made more profit because they cut the payroll expenses and the tickets were still almost sold out.

The Blazers are very much about business and think winning is part of that. The blazers and the rose garden are not just owned by Allen but by a conglomerate of 15 companies. They have made a profit every year since they hired Whitsitt except for the lockout. Forbes magazine reported 2 years ago that they were the 3rd most profitable sports franchise. That survey listed the Blazers as No. 1 in all of the NBA in net profit and revenue generated, rather amazing, considering they play in one of the smallest markets.

Whitsitt: 'All that matters at the end of the day is net operating profit,' he said. 'I think we all agree that the better your team is, the better your revenue will be.'

It's odd that you mention this because from the reports I've seen the Blazers have the highest profit margin of any NBA team. I saw a report saying that they were making something like 36.8 million a year. I don't know what the average NBA team makes in profit but I remember hearing that it was significantly lower than that. You would think that if the team with the highest payroll can make that much then teams with pay rolls of 50 mil could make 60 million a year. So when people complain about how Paul Allen is trying to 'buy a champoinship' it makes me sick.

That is because Paul Allen has hundreds of millions invested in just about every single secondary facet of basketball in the Portland area and they include EVERYTHING when saying the team is profitable while not actually showing the books so the Blazers could be making $36.8 million while all the other parts of the basketball organization are losing $70+ million.

There are just a ton of ways to cook the books. Since Allen owns the parking rights he can simply give employees of other parts of his empire 'silver' season parking passes that he chooses to value on the Blazers books at $5,000 each. And if he wants to get cute he can even send out 3 times the passes as available slots or give employees in Kansas passes as a 'benefit.' He owns the cable company so they can be paying the team anything he chooses for the broadcast rights. He can have his own companies showing commercials on his station paying whatever he chooses, and some or all of these fee's can be passed along to the team, even if it was 3 times market value. He has like 500 employees attached to the Basketball wing of his empire where most teams have 30-60, how is he counting their salary and secondary costs (insurance, social security and federal taxes, 401k contributions, etc)? How is he counting the transportation costs of the team, if he is calling that a separate entity and only charging the team $1 a year you could certainly save over $3-5 million right here that could be called profit by the Blazers, and if you have real creative accountants (you couldn't be THIS obvious about it) you could get a corporate tax break because that other 'company' is losing money.

Really if you think about it there are literally dozens upon dozens of ways to move a million here five million there and unless the books were ever opened up you just would not be able to say if it is happening or not but does anyone really believe the Blazers, the basketball team themselves, generated for the team over $150 million dollars this year?

The average team makes about $500,000 to $800,000 per home game. On a 20,000 seat facility the Blazers would have to be making about $3,000,000 per home game, do even the Knicks with their $1,500 or the Lakers with their $1,000 plus court side tickets turn $3 million a game, or about half that?

They probably could if they had half a billion or more invested in secondary companies, that just isn't realistic for most teams, even if they have the money to spend because the entities with the secondary rights have to want to sell those rights. Even with all of Allen's money it took him like 10 years to get everything in place, he was not just always spending a ton on the Blazers before he had the cable, parking, ect rights.

Here are some salary numbers for the Blazers, everything beyond the 2000/01 season is JUST the contracts they are already committed to today, in many cases they will need to pick up more players to fill out the 12 man roster.

Season Salary

1995-1996 $23,926,000 (out in the first round) 1996-1997 $24,900,000 (out in the first round) 1997-1998 $27,786,719 (out in the first round) 1998-1999 $53,350,000 (WCF's, 7 season before out the first round) 1999-2000 $73,898,705 (WCF's) 2000-2001 $85.9 million (14 players under contract) 2001-2002 $80.1 million (10 players under contract) 2002-2003 $85.4 million ( 7 players under contract) 2003-2004 $55.9 million ( 4 players under contract) 2004-2005 $12.5 million ( 1 player under contract)

I believe the luxury tax starts in the 01/02 season at around dollar-for-dollar over $52 million, so maybe you tack on another $30 or so million after the tax and filling out the roster bringing them up to $110 million.

In 02/03 Bonzi Wells just might be a max contract player that takes them to 8 players at $95 million, add the tax and filling out the roster and we could be talking about $120+ million in payroll.

Only the Mavs (Cuban says he is going to spend to win) have a chance to come anywhere close to that kind of spending the other high ticket teams will probably be in the $60-75 million range (after the tax).

Before the luxury tax is added in, which will inflate the Blazer gap against the league even more, I only see one other team two years out (the Knicks) that's within $25 million of the Blazers committed salary (and only two that are within $30 million).

The Blazers didn't just find some marketing secret that lets them fiscally spend more, they have an owner that lets them spend MUCH more through his deep pockets.

Go Sonics,

Fact with numbers to back it up or theory?

Does he? I think the city has a hand in there.

he can simply give employees of other parts of his empire 'silver' season

None of the cable companies in the portland area are 'Charter'. Charter is local down here but only for a couple of months and as far as I know until he boght Falcon this year he did not have cable companies in Oregon.

He does not own a station. He has tried though. He did just move the games to the radio station he owns, but that does not work for the last several years.

The advertizers are the same as always from before he owned them, Franz bread, US bank, Freddies, Nike. I can think of no sponsers of Blazer games that can be clasified as Allen's companies.

Where do you get your figures?

That one could be since he does not use a charter plane. He owns 'Blazer One' the special equiped Boeing 757 he had built for the team. Still costs to maintain and fly it.

and if you have real creative accountants (you

How does he account to the some 15 companies and other interests that own the Blazers and Rose Garden? It is not just his toy.

Do you know if Forbes when they list the franchise profits use the same criterias for each team and limit it to ticket sales? 20,000 seats with a sell out comes out to about 800,000. Are you saying no other team counts concessions, advertising, sky boxes, local TV rights, etc as profit?

That too.

Laurel T