Y
Yahoo! Sports - NBA -
Guest
The Atlanta Hawks, as Yahoo Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski reported in great detail on Wednesday afternoon , are an abject mess. The majority owner has announced plans to sell the team in the days following a corporate seppuku that resulted from the release of misguided and inflammatory emails. The team’s general manager has been called on by those in and outside the organization to resign after it was revealed that he made shameful “scouting” statements about swingman Luol Deng. And the team’s most vocal minority owner has made no secret of his insistence that both leave the organization completely. The only feel-good story to pop out of this mess is a TMZ-sourced report that states that longtime Hawk All-Star and current broadcaster and team employee Dominique Wilkins would like to step up to the plate with a bid to buy the team. Seems obvious. Perhaps a little too obvious. We’ll let TMZ go from here : Multiple NBA sources tell us ... Dominique is "extremely interested" in becoming the next owner of the Hawks -- and has already been pre-approved for ownership by the NBA. We're told Wilkins -- who has amassed his own small fortune over the years -- has partnered up with a "very well-known businessman" who believes Wilkins would be the best person to lead the Hawks back to NBA glory. The problem here is that, in 2014, it takes more than a “small fortune” to come through with the needed capital to make a deal like this happen. The Sacramento Kings, working with an outdated arena in a tiny market and in the midst of a nearly decade-long playoff drought, recently sold for $535 million . The Milwaukee Bucks, working in a (literally) leaky and outdated arena, on their way toward compiling up the NBA’s worst record last season, still sold for $550 million . And in spite of absolutely no leverage, as the NBA was forcing its sale, the Los Angeles Clippers were recently sold for $2 billion . The Hawks won’t factor to secure Clipper-like money, not with the third-worst attendance in the NBA last season, but the Bucks and Kings price tags only figure to be a starting point as current majority owner Bruce Levenson looks to sell. CNN recently discussed just how high the bidding could go : Patrick Rishe, a professor of sports business at Webster University, estimates the Hawks will go for more than $700 million, though probably less than $1 billion. He said the Philips Arena in Atlanta is a much newer and better facility than those in Sacramento and Milwaukee. Rishe also thinks that if the new owners can't solve the team's attendance problem before the current lease expires in 2018, the Hawks could move to an open market such as Seattle, Las Vegas or Kansas City -- although all of those are significantly smaller than Atlanta. "If the new management is able to create a turnaround, there's a better chance they stay. If that doesn't happen, there's a high likelihood that they'll leave," said Rishe. This is where things get even dicier. Not to the levels of an owner complaining about too many African-Americans on the Kiss Cam or the GM insisting that duplicity and insincerity are two prominent traits of an entire continent’s habitants, but NBA-level dicey. There are plenty of Hawks fans in Georgia, and it’s a well-liked city that free agents don’t mind signing up to play for. The Hawks have never drawn well, despite some notable exceptions , and a new ownership and regime change wouldn’t figure to change that. It’s a football town, one that regularly features very good or even great Hawks and Atlanta Braves baseball teams playing to half-filled audiences. That’s the hook, here. Would an ownership group led by Dominique Wilkins spur enough interest to turn the team’s fortunes around in the attendance department? Tough to say. Atlanta fans didn’t even come out in droves to see Wilkins as a player (as high as eighth in the league in attendance once, typically in the low teens, one time ranking last in the league in attendance in a year that saw ‘Nique average 29.9 points per game), so why would his increased role as a Hawk executive change anything? It’s not as if Wilkins isn’t already present. He’s a fixture on the sideline providing analysis for the Hawks’ TV outfit, and though his title of Vice President of Basketball Operations is largely ceremonial, that doesn’t mean he isn’t already the most visible person in a previously-anonymous crew of Hawk players, coaches, and executives. Kansas City, Las Vegas and especially Seattle could serve as three potent moneymaking outfits for a potential buyer, and though the NBA would be loath to lose a franchise in the jewel of the south, it would have a hard time arguing against those miserable bottom lines. Fans have just never come out to Atlanta Hawk games in consistent, driving numbers. It takes more than a sea of red during a lone playoff game in spring . You need season ticket holders for November and December. Out of nowhere, the Atlanta Hawks are the NBA’s biggest problem. Who could have seen this coming? Certainly not Hawk fans. They’re not even in the arena. - - - - - - - Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
Continue reading...
Continue reading...
