Stadiums Are Great, Or Not

Something you'll never hear from anyone associated with getting a new sports facility built:

"While the ballpark construction would create 453 jobs during construction, the $49 million total investment would actually create a net loss of 182 jobs citywide.

“If those individuals who put their money into baseball via taxes are allowed to put that money into the private market, that same amount of money would actually yield more jobs,” explains ECONorthwest number-cruncher Abe Farkas."

(From The Portland Mercury, via Field of Schemes).

Naturally, Portland city officials were less than keen to share this sort of news, and tried their best to keep it out of the public's view, but, eventually it got there. And so, naturally, the city tried to explain that the study (which they commissioned) was all screwed up to begin with.

After studying these situations (far too much, honestly) for the past few years, I can see both sides of the argument in these discussions. Certainly, pro sports teams provide economic activity and help keep neighborhoods such as the one surrounding KeyArena viable. Just talk to the folks running businesses in that area these days about how thrilled they are about the Sonics leaving town. Not much.

However, teams also are a consistent drain on public finances, and the bang for the public buck is often a whimper, relatively speaking. In the end, there is no logical argument for throwing money at stadiums - only an emotional one. When times are good, that emotional argument can be persuasive, as it was for the Seahawks and Mariners. When the economy is in a freefall and the state and city are scrapping together bake sales to pay for basic services, though, that argument becomes increasingly flimsy.

And so it is for the Sonics these days. Sure, some of the candidates for the Mayor of Seattle have thrown their two cents in about saving the Sonics, but most of that is posturing and looking to stake a claim to a perceived weakness of the incumbent, Greg Nickels. In reality, none of these people did much to keep the team here when it really mattered (although, to be fair, James Donaldson did more than the rest).

The Sonics are, it seems, not a priority in Seattle these days. Despite the fact that private backers were willing to cough up $150 million towards re-building KeyArena, it didn't happen, largely because the public outcry was not enough to convince legislators that it would be in their political interests to do so. To get a new arena, supporters must overcome two significant dead weights: 1) The fact that arenas and stadiums are not nearly the economic panacea supporters purport them to be and 2) The citizens of this area aren't sufficiently on board.

You can climb the mountain with one of those weights chained to your leg, but with both of them shackled to your ankles, you ain't gonna make it.

30th Anniversary Trivia

In the spirit of the 30th Anniversary of the Sonics' only championship, riddle me this:

Which two participants in the 1979 NBA Finals were the last to suit up for the Seattle SuperSonics?

30 Years Ago: Game 3

30 Years Ago (from what used to be www.supersonics.com)

May 27, 1979

"The Sonics returned home looking to maintain home-court advantage. That wasn't a problem in Game 3, as the Sonics cruised to a 105-95 victory that was in reality more lopsided. With nearly 36,000 fans packing the Kingdome, the Sonics took a lead as large as 17 and were never seriously threatened. Williams again led the way with 31 points, but the big game came from Dennis Johnson, who fell an assist and a rebound shy of a triple-double, settling for 17 points, nine rebounds and nine assists. Sikma had 21 points and 17 boards. On the other side, Washington got 70 points from Dandridge, Hayes and Unseld, but just 25 from the rest of the team. The Bullets shot 25% in the first half, just 33% for the game."

Coach of the Year

Here’s an interesting thought to roll around in your head while debating which active player expends the most pre-game energy on fixing his hair … why is it the best NBA coaches so rarely win Coach of the Year?

I thought of that because of Mike Brown. Not to pick on Brown while he’s down (there are enough other supposed NBA geniuses doing that already), but have you ever seen an NBA coach do less work? Maybe it’s me, but every time they cut to the Cavs braintrust, Brown is standing around while his assistants diagram the plays, leading me to wonder, for what, exactly, is Brown responsible?

Regardless, Brown won the Coach of the Year Award this season, which is a remarkable feat, in that, one, he seems to have done a good job, and, two, it’s only the second time since Phil Jackson got tabbed in 1996 that the coach of the team with the NBA’s best record went home with a trophy.

In fact, in reviewing the history of the award, it becomes painfully obvious that the media seems to prefer the coaches of mediocre teams who overachieved than they do the men who are busy winning championships.

Skeptical? Well, answer this puzzler: From the year I was born (1972) until the year I graduated from high school (1990), guess how many Hall of Fame coaches won the Coach of the Year Award?

If you answered one (Hubie Brown, 1978, Atlanta), give yourself a pat on the back.

18 years, and one Hall of Famer. Does that not strike you as a little odd? Lenny Wilkens takes over a team (Seattle) destined for the top of the 1978 NBA Draft, takes them to the NBA Finals, and that’s considered an inferior achievement to Hubie Brown getting the Hawks to 41 wins? (And, yes, I am aware that voting takes place before the playoffs but, bub, the Sonics won 47 games that year, so, you know, they weren’t exactly crapola during the regular season).

Or, try this angle: Del Harris, Don Chaney, and Cotton Fitzsimmons have a total of four awards, while Jerry Sloan, Jack Ramsay, and Chuck Daly (all HOFers) have zero. None.

Or this one: Mike Dunleavy has won as many COY’s as Phil Jackson.

What?

In fact, if you study the entire history of the award, you’ll see that of the 47 recipients, only 12 are in the Hall. Granted, two active coaches (Gregg Popovich and Don Nelson) will undoubtedly receive their due from Springfield some day, but even adding Pop and Nellie only brings the total to 16, well short of 50%.

As a comparison, if you look at the winners of the MVP Award over the same time frame you’ll see that 100% of them are in the Hall of Fame (minus active players, naturally). As far as I can tell, every single MVP winner since 1962-63 is in the Hall of Fame. Which makes sense, because generally the best player wins the award, and the best players tend to be, well, the best players.

Not when it comes to coaches, though. Instead of rewarding the Coach of the Year, writers and broadcasters prefer a guy who turned a lottery team into a first-round-of-the-playoff-exit team to a guy who guided a team to 64 wins. Call me crazy, but shouldn’t we be rewarding the Coach of the Year with the Coach of the Year Award?

I suppose there are two conclusions you could draw from this overly long diatribe:

1. Coaches are underrepresented in the Hall of Fame, and henceforth some of the fellows who won the COY and should be in the Hall are, in fact, not.

2. The media does a crappy job of picking Coach of the Year Awards

It’s probably a little bit from Column 1 and a little bit from Column 2, but it seems to me that perhaps the media ought to revisit how it selects COY winners, with more of an eye for the best coach and less of an eye for the best turnaround job.

One More Time

I mined this topic once before from a different angle, but if the Nuggets manage to knock off the Lakers and advance to the NBA Finals, it is entirely possible that they will play 24 playoff games this season.

Why is this significant? Because Juwan Howard, who had a cup of high-altitude coffee with Denver earlier this year, has played 23 playoff games in his career.

Chesapeake, McLendon Could Use Some

I’ve avoided any comments about our friend Aubrey McClendon recently, which may be good news to people who want to read about basketball on a basketball website.

But with news from Gerson Leason Group’s Michael Lynch that Chesapeake Energy is planning to sell $1 billion in assets in the near future, and further news that Chesapeake is expected to sell another $1.5 billion in 2010, I couldn’t help but mention it.

Bear in mind that Chesapeake is not selling these assets because the company wishes to further pad its bank statement. Rather, it is because portions of their more than $12 billion in debt financing are coming due soon, and with natural gas prices lagging, a stock price still off more than 50% from the highs of last summer, and the CEO embroiled in lawsuits … well, they need the money.

And, even more importantly, as Lynch points out:

the worldwide financial collapse which has impacted all nations coupled with a self-inflicted shale gas glut in the U.S. has seriously jeopardized the entire natural gas industry. Close observers think the market weakness will extend into 2010 and based on what is known about the planned LNG worldwide expansions, could last a decade [emphasis added]. That is why it is imperative for the shale gas drillers to align their budgets with their cash flow and prepare for inevitable bond maturities.

In other words, despite the optimistic statements from Mr. McClendon, it will get better before it gets worse. And, considering the Sonix rank at the bottom of the league in revenue, and that Chesapeake may very well be bought out by BP any month now, you’ve got to wonder, how much longer will he be able to continue subsidizing this team?

This Might Make Your Head Hurt

Consider, if you will, the role the Denver Nuggets franchise has played in the life of one George Karl.

The Nuggets, have, thanks to an infamous series from 15 years ago, served as the millstone around Karl's neck, the very emblem of his playoff failures. It could be argued that the Sonics' continued first-round playoff debacles in the years following that Denver series may not have happened were it not for the three-game collapse Seattle suffered at the hands of the Nuggets, inasmuch as they planted the seeds of doubt into the minds of the entire roster, not to mention thousands of anxious fans.

And, if Seattle doesn't suffer those failures, basketball historians look back a bit more fondly on George Karl's tenure as a head coach, correct? In fact, if Karl's Sonics had won a couple more playoff series, he doesn't get fired by Wally Walker, doesn't take over the Bucks, get fired by the Bucks, and then get hired by the Nuggets.

All of which leads us to last night's stirring win by Denver - now coached, obviously, by George Karl - over Los Angeles. For if the Nuggets are to pull off a series victory over the heavily favored Lakers, it might be enough to propel Karl into the Hall of Fame, as the list of NBA coaches who have guided two separate franchises to the Finals is about as long as the list of David Souter's girlfriends.

And so, you might argue, if Denver is to pull off the upset, the Denver Nuggets would be - simultaneously - the franchise that held back and then propelled George Karl into the Hall of Fame.

George Karl: Hall of Famer?

While watching Tuesday’s agonizing Laker win against the Nuggets, I overheard an interesting comment from Jeff Van Gundy. I’m paraphrasing here, but the gist of it was:

“A guy like George Karl, you talk about those other guys [the trio was in the midst of discussing coaches], and George Karl is a Hall of Fame coach.”

Quite a bold pronouncement, no? I’m sure Van Gundy was speaking more off the cuff than he was providing a cogent, nuanced argument, but regardless, it’s one I had been thinking about for the past few days.

Specifically, where does George Karl – wearer of funny ties, most intriguing coach in Sonics history, resident grouch – rank among the NBA’s all-time coaching greats?

Karl is a Gene Mauchian character. With no ring on his finger, he lacks the cache of such renowned “winners” as Gregg Popovich, Phil Jackson, or Chuck Daly. A wonderfully successful regular season coach who revitalized five different franchises (Cleveland, Golden State, Seattle, Milwaukee, and Denver), Karl has, sadly, proven incapable of capturing the brass ring.

And so it is that, rather than lounging on the patio with the Auerbachs and Rileys, Karl is relegated to the kitchen with such lesser-knowns as Cotton Fitzsimmons and Rick Adelman. But is that a just scenario, or is his greatness being overlooked?

To make the case for Karl as a Hall of Famer, one could easily turn to his regular season accomplishments. He’s 10th all-time in victories, and almost everyone ahead of him is in the HOF.

Only ten men have coached as many regular season games as Karl, and take a guess as to how many have a better winning percentage.

Would it surprise you to find out that the answer is two? Or that those two – Jerry Sloan and Pat Riley – are both in the Hall of Fame?

With plenty of years left in his career, Karl now has more wins than Hall of Famers John Kundla and Alex Hannum, combined.

Fine, you say, but Kundla and Hannum are poor comparisons from a different era. What about someone who had a career of a roughly similar length to Karl in the same era, how would your boy match up then?

Well, if he lost every game for the next two and a half seasons, Karl would still have a better career winning percentage than legendary Hall of Famer Jack Ramsay. How’s that for a matchup? Further, even if Karl’s Nuggets flame out against the Lakers this spring, he’ll still have a better playoff winning percentage than the former Blazer coach.

Yes, the critics say, but Karl never won a title, so how can he deserve to go into the Hall?

Well, Jerry Sloan never won a title as a coach, his winning percentage is only marginally better than Karl’s (.602 to .592), he’s got a losing record in the playoffs (94-98), and he only managed one more conference championship than George, despite the fact he’s coached an extra five seasons. And Sloan’s in the Hall, right?

Or Hubie Brown. Sure, he’s great on tv, but he wasn’t all that great as a coach (70 games below .500, no conference titles, .368 playoff winning percentage), and he’s in the Hall, right?

You hear all of that, and you start thinking, hey, maybe Van Gundy’s on to something, maybe George Karl does deserve to get into the Hall. Top 10 in wins, brought five different teams to the playoffs … I know he doesn’t act or look like a Hall of Famer, but, geez, when you look at those numbers, it’s hard to argue, right?

Well, that’s one side. Here’s the other.

Of all the coaches in NBA history who have won 933 games (Karl’s total at the end of this season), the only other two without a title are Don Nelson and Jerry Sloan.

And while his regular season winning percentage ranks 12th all-time, cheek and jowl with Daly, Sloan, Kundla, and Sharman, his playoff winning percentage is a pedestrian 33rd, alongside the likes of McMillan, MacLeod, and Silas.

To get a better picture of Karl’s “greatness,” I crunched the numbers for the 50 coaches with the most regular season games, taking into special consideration four factors: Playoff Winning Percentage, Regular Season Winning Percentage, Conference Titles, and Championships. I further multiplied their career wins times winning percentage to give a truer indication of their accomplishments, divided the results by five to bring the total into a more manageable figure, gave each coach five points for a conference title, and finally 15 points for a championship. Add it all up, and you’ve got a list of the best coaches in history. (See chart accompanying this article for the complete numbers).

As expected, Phil Jackson is the top dog, with Riley, Auerbach, Popovich and Wilkens rounding out the top five. (Yes, Auerbach is ill served by his lack of “conference titles,” inasmuch as there were no conferences during his era. However, even if we give him credit for eight “Division” titles, he still falls short of Jackson. Regardless, any chart with Riley, Auerbach and Jackson as the top three can’t be all wrong, can it?).

Not surprisingly, the majority of the top ten are Hall of Famers, with the exceptions of active coaches and KC Jones, making him the only member of the Celtics not to be in the Hall (a little anti-Boston humor there).

In reality, the most comparable coaches to Karl are Don Nelson and Rick Adelman, neither of whom are in the Hall of Fame, although I’d have to imagine that eventually Nelson will be enshrined, considering that next year he’ll pass Lenny Wilkens for the most wins in NBA coaching history (or, at least Golden State fans hope he will; Nellie needs 24 to pass Wilkens).

Adelman, like Karl, has a strong regular season pedigree (even topping George in winning percentage), has taken multiple teams to the post-season, but is 0-for-Career in winning a championship.

For both gentlemen, barring a title run in the future, they will need to rely upon the length of their careers to gain access to the Hall of Fame. Unfortunately for both of them, the NBA landscape is littered with proficient coaches who couldn’t capture that one glorious season which catapulted them into the league’s upper class.

And so, to answer Jeff Van Gundy’s statement from Tuesday: Is George Karl a Hall of Famer?

Maybe someday, but not today.

Magic Thoughts

A few things I was thinking after Wednesday night's surprising Orlando win over Cleveland:

1. I agree, in the long run, Rashard Lewis' contract is going to be a killer for the Magic and as soon as Dwight Howard is done with his rookie deal, Orlando will be in for a world of hurt. So, yes, Otis Smith overpaid for Lewis and all that. But, look at it from Smith's perspective: What's the shelf life of an NBA GM? 4 years? Maybe 5? So, let's assume Smith looked at it that way two summers ago. He's got a young Dwight Howard just reaching his prime, and the one thing he needs to make his team contend for a title is a versatile PF/SF who can hit 3's. On the market is a still-young Rashard Lewis who fits the bill perfectly. Granted, Smith went overboard on the contract, and offered an extra year when he didn't need to, but considering that he thought that Lewis would be the one piece to complete the puzzle, it's somewhat understandable.

And, as to what happens in a few years, well, let's say Smith doesn't sign Rashard Lewis and the Magic continue their parade of 35- to 45-win seasons ... pretty good odds that Smith wouldn't be around, either.

2. A good reason for a Sonic fan to root for Orlando and Denver - it's exactly what David Stern doesn't want to see this June. Naturally, the Lakers are the A #1 choice to be in the Finals, and while LeBron doesn't have the ratings appeal most people think he does, a matchup of Kobe v LeBron is ratings gold. A matchup of Dwight Howard against Carmelo Anthony in two mid- to small-range markets? Not so much.

3. How glad are the Magic that Billy Donovan changed his mind?

4. More than anything, I'm happy as heck for Rashard Lewis this morning.

Win it for George

How long must a man stand outside the door before they let him in?

How long must he submit applications before he gets approved?

Surely, surely, George Karl asks these questions every year.

On the one hand, Karl is a remarkably successful head coach. He’s been on the plus side of .500 nearly every year of his coaching career. He’s taken five different teams to the NBA playoffs, and most of those squads were languishing in mediocrity before Karl brought his unique blend of enthusiasm and nastiness on board. Instead of Jordan or Shaq or LeBron, Karl had World B. Free and Joe Barry Carroll and Ricky Pierce, and yet he still got those clubs into the playoffs.

A starter at North Carolina and a draftee of the Knicks, the gritty Karl parlayed a modicum of talent into five years as a professional basketball player, not a bad accomplishment for a 6’2” kid from Pennyslvania. He followed that with one of the best stretches of coaching in CBA history, with the Montana Golden Nuggets and Albany Patroons, including a remarkable 50-6 record for Albany.

And yet (you knew this was coming), Karl has seen his share of frustrations. To wit:

21 NBA seasons, no championships
2002 FIBA World Championships, lost to Yugoslavia
2 Real Madrid seasons, no championships
5 CBA seasons, no championships
2 seasons, San Antonio Spurs, assistant coach, no championships
5 seasons, San Antonio Spurs, player, no championships
4 seasons, University of North Carolina, no NCAA championships

And it’s not as if he was with lousy teams all those years. The Sonics’ failures are already all-to-familiar to our readers, but don’t forget that the Bucks went from being a #1 seed to watching the playoffs on television under Karl’s watch, that the Nuggets lost in the first round after winning their division, that Real Madrid won seven titles in less than two decades, but none under George, that the Spurs parlayed two consecutive first-place finishes into two consecutive early exits, that the Tar Heels fell short in the ’72 Final Four …

The ultimate knife in the back had to be Karl’s experience in Madrid. He was unable to guide the team to a title during his two-year run, grew dissatisfied with the situation (shocking, I know), quit mid-season to return to the NBA, then watched Real Madrid captured the Saporta Cup in his absence, something they had been unable to do during his tenure.

Of course, it could just as easily be 1991, when Albany went 28-0 at home and 50-6 overall … and didn’t even make it to the CBA Finals. Instead, they lost in six games to Wichita Falls in the semifinals.

That’s how it is with George Karl, though: Studying his coaching career is akin to studying the history of modern Italian warfare. The talent and passion are there in abundance, but the results always fail to materialize.

Pair Karl’s experiences with those of Phil Jackson, his coaching nemesis for the next fortnight. The Zen Master saw success as a collegiate athlete, as a professional with the Knicks, as a head coach in the CBA (two titles), then finally in the NBA (nine more). By my count, Jackson, now a Hall of Famer, has won 13 championships in his career.

George Karl? One.

In 1970-71 the Tarheels won the NIT.

That’s it.

Nearly 40 years ago, George Karl got to win the last game of his season and he hasn’t done it since. 40 years, man! An entire generation has been born, gone to school, graduated, gotten married, had children, and slouched towards middle age since Karl called himself a champion.

So, with that in mind, tell me, just please tell me, you’re rooting for George this year. Forget Kobe, forget Carmelo, forget Phil, forget all of them.

Instead, remember the Sonics losing to the Nuggets in 1993, remember the debacle with Wally Walker, remember the Bucks falling to the Sixers in 2001, remember how the 1991 Albany Patroons managed to go 50-6 during the regular season and lost the title, remember the Spurs losing year after year in the ABA playoffs … remember all of that.

Then, fellow basketball fan, ask the basketball gods to smile just this one time onto George Karl’s lumpy, looking-more-like-WC-Fields-every-day physique.

He’s earned it.

George Karl and Phil Jackson, A History

NBA Cares

There are any number of aspects of the typical NBA broadcast which get under the skin of the average viewer: timeouts in the final minutes that pour water over what should be the hottest part of the game, ads for shows that you have no interest in watching but are forced to endure ad nauseum, Reggie Miller … the list is endless.

But today I’ll nominate another candidate for the Stop It Already Museum: NBA Cares.

Is it me or does the league have a serious case of self-congratulationitis? I’ll grant you that the NFL and its similar United Way spots are a bit gratuitous, but those are 1) humorous and 2) paid ads, unlike the NBA Care spots which are 1) boring and 2) apparently gratis, as they show up as segues into live action.

Further, I can see the logic behind the NFL’s spots, in that they promote a charity – the United Way – which everyone can agree provides a service.

But what is the logic to promoting NBA Cares, other than to show how wonderful the league is? As far as I can tell from my limited viewing this spring, the majority of the spots show individual players painting graffitoed walls, reading books to second-graders, and making chit-chat with people in soup-kitchen lines. There is no specific action the ads – and, let’s face it, that’s what these are – command the viewer to take; no charity name, no organization, no website.

Hey, NBA, we get it. You care about “the community,” whatever that ambiguous phrase means. Good for you.

Granted, I’m a bitter Seattlite with a Paul Bunyon-sized axe to grind with the league, but this sort self-adoration stuff irks me to no end. What is the point, other than to flaunt the league’s bloated self-image? I suppose there is some merit to these bits of fluff, but I’ll be damned if I can see what it is.

I guess the seeds of disgust were planted for me when the NBA went to New Orleans for the All-Star Game, gave David Stern a paintbrush to show how much the league “cared” about helping the city … then watched the local team attempt to extort the same city to build a new practice facility to the tune of $20 million, or risk watching the team leave.

What does the NBA care about? Well, I can think of one thing.