Here's how others are seeing the proposal yesterday from Fred Brown and Co.:
-Art Thiel, PI: "Brown in his NBA career spent entirely Downtown, never attempted a longer shot."
-Jim Brunner, Times: "[Port of Seattle] Commission President John Creighton said that while he admires Brown, captain of the 1979 NBA champion Sonics team, as a childhood hero, the Port has no interest in even considering the plan."
-Percy Allen, Times: "Brown said he spoke with NBA commissioner David Stern, who told him 'stop bringing me KeyArena and bring me something else.'"
- Steve Kelley, Times: "If you want NBA basketball in Seattle, their dreams, in many ways, are your dreams. But here's the concern ... The last thing we need is competing groups, fighting for the affections of the City Council, the state Legislature, the NBA and the same potential investors."
- Greg Johns, PI: "Bean and Brown began talking about their idea last summer, but waited to see if other plans gained traction first. They wanted to go public now before the upcoming NBA Board of Governors meeting in mid-April to let the league know there are other viable arena projects in Seattle, even though they admit their own effort isn't aimed at stopping Bennett from relocating his team to Oklahoma."
- Eric Williams, TNT: "More to the point was [Pete] von Reichbauer, who has been working behind the scenes to keep the Sonics in Seattle. "But just as in the advertising world, you have to ask, ‘Where the beef?’ Where is the revenue stream?”
Wednesday, April 2
Tuesday, April 1
$75 Million Reasons
I’m sure the same thought is running through the head of every Sonic fan these days:
The only thing separating us from losing the Sonics forever is $75 million.
Don’t get me wrong, $75 million is a vast sum of money, especially to regular people working 50 or 60 hours a week struggling to make a mortgage payment. $75 million could feed tens of thousands of people in Africa, build homes for hundreds of people in America, or fund the Iraq War for about ten seconds.
But in the NBA, $75 million is chicken feed, bubkus. Heck, David Stern probably spends that much in a month on smugness lessons alone.
Let me illustrate further just how insignificant is $75 million in NBA-land. I’ll give you five words:
Calvin Booth and Jim McIlvaine.
The Sonics spent $67.6 million in salaries on those two bums, and when you figure in inflation, travel costs, health insurance, athletic tape, and the rest, they easily spent $100 million in 2008 dollars on BooMac.
To think that the Sonics would spend the next 40 years in Seattle, if only the city could come up with the amount of money the team spent on two players who contributed absolutely nothing to the team’s fortunes.
Of course, the team could just not spend money foolishly on ridiculous contracts and then plow that savings back into a stadium, but that’s just a silly notion, right?
The only thing separating us from losing the Sonics forever is $75 million.
Don’t get me wrong, $75 million is a vast sum of money, especially to regular people working 50 or 60 hours a week struggling to make a mortgage payment. $75 million could feed tens of thousands of people in Africa, build homes for hundreds of people in America, or fund the Iraq War for about ten seconds.
But in the NBA, $75 million is chicken feed, bubkus. Heck, David Stern probably spends that much in a month on smugness lessons alone.
Let me illustrate further just how insignificant is $75 million in NBA-land. I’ll give you five words:
Calvin Booth and Jim McIlvaine.
The Sonics spent $67.6 million in salaries on those two bums, and when you figure in inflation, travel costs, health insurance, athletic tape, and the rest, they easily spent $100 million in 2008 dollars on BooMac.
To think that the Sonics would spend the next 40 years in Seattle, if only the city could come up with the amount of money the team spent on two players who contributed absolutely nothing to the team’s fortunes.
Of course, the team could just not spend money foolishly on ridiculous contracts and then plow that savings back into a stadium, but that’s just a silly notion, right?
Question
How is it that Fred Brown and Dave Bean (the two B's in the B2 Inc. involved in the new arena proposal announced today) can so casually talk about raising $1 billion for their megaproject, and the city simultaneously have little or no success at raising $75 million to renovate KeyArena?
Since the two B's are so adept at raising cash, perhaps someone could persuade them to use their fundraising skills to raise the $75 million, inasmuch as that amount is a mere 7.5% of the figure they're tossing around.
To put it in perspective, $75 million is to $1 billion as 75 bucks is to a thousand dollars.
Since the two B's are so adept at raising cash, perhaps someone could persuade them to use their fundraising skills to raise the $75 million, inasmuch as that amount is a mere 7.5% of the figure they're tossing around.
To put it in perspective, $75 million is to $1 billion as 75 bucks is to a thousand dollars.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)