The Grizzlies always seem to be a step behind the rest of the NBA AP Photo/Matt York
When we stop and think about the sports fans of Detroit, where I am based, are pretty lucky we have pretty good ownership for our teams beyond William Clay Ford (Detroit Lions) one of the worst owners in all of sports. When we take the time to really think about it the other Detroit based sports owners are above the average, unfortunately the same cannot be said for other cities.
SI.com recently published their annual list of best/worst sports owners. They broke it down by sports and for the NBA had the worst owners listed like this:
1. Donald Sterling-LA Clippers
2. Cablevision/James Dolan-New York Knicks
3. Michael Heisley-Memphis Grizzlies
4. Chris Cohan- Golden State Warriors
5. Robert Johnson/Michael Jordan- Charlotte Bobcats
For the most part I agree with these five picks. Without question they are the worst of the NBA ownership club, but I would jostle the lineup a little bit.
Let us take into consideration that this is not Jordan’s first time in an ownership role and to be perfectly honest both have been complete failures. I think if someone ruins more than one team he is obviously a worse owner than someone who only ruins one team. Two is greater than one.
With that in mind let us look at James Dolan and the pitiful state of all of his major sports portfolio. This guy owns the Knicks, the New York Rangers, and Madison Square Garden. This guy clearly knows how to make money, but he let Isaiah Thomas run this team into the ground. The Knicks today are as devoid of talent as the NFL’s Detroit Lions after years of mismanagement. What a sad state of affairs. His Rangers do not fair all that batter.
I put Donald Sterling and Chris Cohan in the same category for whatever reason they just cannot get their tams to sustain nay kind of success. For some unknown reason they cannot acquire or keep marquee players to help their teams win.
In the case of Cohan his team can draw, they were easily in the top ten of NBA attendance for this prior season. They average almost 19 thousand fans a game. Why they cannot put a deep playoff run together is really a mystery.
For the Clippers it seems only people who cannot get Lakers tickets care to show up for their home games (played in the same building). The Clippers only average around 16 thousand fans per game and have had a lot of talent over the years but they get sick of not winning and move on leaving the team in a continual rebuild mode.
I think Heisley is the victim of karma. He bought the Vancouver Grizzlies after promising to keep them there, and later moved them anyway. His repeated salary dumps, most notable Paul Gasol last year, have left his fan base unengaged. There is little surprise they struggled to draw 12 thousand fans on average in the season just completed. Heisley doesn’t care about winning and that is not one fans want in their sports owners.
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