NBA Stars Showcase "I Can't Breathe" Shirts

LeBron James, Barclays Center, Brooklyn
(Image: chicagotribune.com)

In the past few days, a number of pro basketball players ahve worn "I Can't Breathe" shirts during pre-game activities. The tops refer to the Eric Garner case, in which an undercover New York City policeman used a fatal chokehold on a man arrested for illegally selling loose cigarettes. The stars included LeBron James (who also spoke out after the George Zimmerman "stand your ground" case), Kevin Garnett, and Deron Williams. The first out of the gate, so to speak, was Chicago Bulls guard Derrick Rose, who wore the shirt at the Bulls' Saturday night game. Today's Chicago Tribune noted the tributes, as well as Rose's role as the first NBA player to go public with the shirt.

Scalped NBA Finals Tix Cheaper in Miami than OKC

For all the talk about the excitement in South Florida about the Miami Heat, the pro basketball team still has a bit of work cut out for itself. Today's online edition of the Miami Herald ran an entertaining, interesting article comparing the supply and demand for scalped tickets to the NBA Finals between Miami and Oklahoma City. Surprisingly, ticket scalpers are getting more money in Oklahoma's state capital than in South Beach. Oklahomans who can't buy their way into home games are flying to Florida, taking advantage of off-season hotel rates, and scooping up Finals tickets.

Don't get me wrong: the tickets are mighty expensive. However, NBA fever has seized Oklahomans and transformed a notorious football state into one where the round ball most fervently matters. Miamians also know that Oklahomans know the way to South Florida. The OU football team was a frequent participant in Orange Bowl games on New Year's Day. The Oklahoma Sooners were characterized as a team that "traveled." In college football parlance, that means the team's fans will attend a bowl game, and spend a lot of money.

It appears that Oklahomans have found a new reason to "travel," support the South Florida economy, and get their money into circulation.

New NBA Franchise Owner Has Tech Roots

Robert Pera
(photo from Forbes, which received it
courtesy of Mr. Pera)

Why do tech zillionaires want to own NBA franchises? Recently, Ubiquiti Networks' boss Robert Pera purchased the Memphis Grizzlies for what ESPN reported was $350 million. That's a lot of money, even for a newly minted billionaire such as Pera. Well, at least he was a billionaire on paper. That status changed earlier this year when the stock value of his firm, Ubiquiti Networks, was cut approximately in half.

Nonetheless, David Stern let Pera join the club, so to speak. The other three tech wizards who can claim ownership of an NBA team are Paul Allen (Portland Trail Blazers), Mark Cuban (Dallas Mavericks), and Joe Lacob (Golden State Warriors).

The San Jose Mercury News ran an interesting profile on Pera, noting his self-made man status and his business acumen.

While Pera is making his introductions in the NBA, so is the pro basketball franchise in Oklahoma City. What Commissioner David Stern probably won't like to discuss is how OKC moved from Seattle.  It's a tawdry story, complete with back room dealings and saddened fans. Les Carpenter wrote in Yahoo!Sports today about the sale of the Seattle franchise and its move to Oklahoma. Included in the meandering, yet interesting article are comments by Shawn Kemp, who was once a star for the Seattle team and now owns a bar in the Emerald City.

Hollywood-Style Accounting Masks NBA Miami Heat's Bonanza

American Airlines Arena, Miami

Today's online edition of the Miami Herald includes a fascinating story about the NBA franchise Miami Heat's money trail. One intriguing angle is how the Heat's revenue sharing, rent, and other financial configurations has managed to leave Miami-Dade holding an empty money bag.

The Herald article noted how fan spending dramatically increased at the Heat's home arena once LeBron James and Chris Bosh joined superstar guard Dwayne Wade to form "The Three Kings." However, that increased revenue did not reach the Heat arena's landlord, the Miami-Dade municipal authorities. Instead, the Herald noted, "the surge in revenues during the Three Kings era has not yet offset the losses recorded in the first years of the waterfront arena...As a result, Miami-Dade has yet to collect rent on the county-owned facility, which is governed by a 1997 profit-sharing arrangement."

The entire story goes into detail about the financial maneuvering, and strongly suggests that Heat owner Micky Arison is raking in the cash on this deal. It's also a cautionary tale about pro sports in general, and how following the money almost always leads to some very interesting, and occasionally dark, areas that ownership and municipalities alike would prefer kept out of the light.

Asking Price for Jeremy Lin Middle School Yearbook in the Thousands

Jeremy Lin

The hype over NBA player Jeremy Lin has me a little intrigued. The mass fascination over Lin has really come out of nowhere. In the space of a couple of games, this formerly unknown Asian-American pro baller and Harvard grad has captured an international audience. While a big deal has been made out of Asians, especially Chinese, watching Lin's performances, his following goes far beyond the Great Wall of China. Why that happened so quickly and so broadly is something I just don't know. However, as I said, the phenomenon does intrigue me.

Apparently, anything Lin touched has become valuable. The San Jose Mercury News reported that enterprising people have put their Palo Alto, California middle school yearbook, complete with photographs including the young Lin, for sale. According the the Mercury News story, the asking price for an unsigned middle school yearbook is over two thousand dollars. You have to double down to get a copy Lin allegedly autographed.

What would you pay for a piece of Harvard's second NBA player?

Miami Fans Put HooDoo on Big D

When the New Orleans Saints made their Super Bowl run a couple of years ago, a few stories emerged about certain locals' use of voodoo to help their team win the championship. Of course, the Crescent City has an historic association with these "underground religious practices," as Wikipedia characterizes it.

Miami's version of the dark arts comes from Haiti, and is called vodou. Now, fans of the Miami Heat are buying vodou items to help the team win the NBA title. It's a breath of fresh air in a sport dominated by footwear endorsement packages.

The Miami Herald has the story. The photograph is by my wife, the fine art photographer Amy Becker.

Hoop Royalty Aims for Anaheim

The Kings, an NBA team that currently calls Sacramento its home, intends to move to Anaheim. The KTLA.com story provides some details. The report does mention that there's some bickering going on between certain Sacramento interests and the Kings' owners, the Maloof brothers. However, the current wisdom is that the Maloofs' version of basketball royalty will be heading to Orange County.

One suspects the bros, shown in the photograph, have a bigger prize than Anaheim in their sights. (After all, they would have to share the LA market with the high-profile Lakers and somewhat sinister Clipper ownership.) One of the Maloofs' corporate entity is based in Nevada. Perhaps some Las Vegas investors have the money and persuasive skills to encourage the Maloofs to move the Kings or whatever their Anaheim alias will be. Then those same investors will have to convince the NBA that pro ball deserves a place on the Strip.

Then the team can truly be called the High Rollers.

Jerry Sloan

Jerry Sloan, the coach of the Utah Jazz pro basketball team, abruptly resigned this week.

Sloan will be missed. He was a great coach. His teams always seemed to have more wins than losses, even though Sloan often worked with B-level talent. Salt Lake City, a small, remote, decidedly Mormon and Caucasian market, was not a place where ambitious African-American basketball players wanted to make their names. Sloan coached the players he had, and typically made them better players. He didn't write self-aggrandizing books, as Phil Jackson and Pat Riley did. Sloan wasn't a telegenic coach, like Rick Pitino or the smug Mike Krzyzewski. He didn't invent a highfalutin' "system," reinvent the jump shot, or leverage the past to monetize the present.

He is the only coach to win 1,000 games with one NBA team. That's approximately 300 more than Boston Celtics legend Red Auerbach, to give you a feel for the scale of the accomplishment. Sloan's teams played the way he played -- hard. Sloan, a two-time All-Pro guard, loved the game, and he always appreciated what it gave him. He made his name as a player with the Chicago Bulls, and his personality completely meshed with the Windy City's fans demands for toughness and desire. He remains very much respected in Chicago, and no one held against him his losing record as Bulls coach. (The b&w photo shows Sloan the player with Bulls' teammates Norm Van Lier, Chet Walker, and Bob Love.)

He came close to winning a championship with the Utah Jazz. It took a Michael Jordan-led Chicago team to beat Sloan's squad in consecutive seasons. The Jazz were never close to an NBA crown after that. As a consequence, there won't be an NBA championship on Sloan's resume. However, he can take solace from his induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame while he was still coaching the Jazz. An active coach's induction is a rare honor; in Sloan's case, it's an entirely deserved one.

Ironically, Sloan was never named NBA Coach of the Year.

Maurice Lucas

Maurice Lucas, one of my favorite pro basketball players, recently passed away at age 58. The cause of death was bladder cancer.

He died in Portland, Oregon, the city where "Luke" made his NBA mark as a key member of the TrailBlazers' only championship team. He was the team's power forward, leading rebounder, a capable scorer, and on-court bodyguard for Bill Walton and Portland's other finesse players. He was an iconic figure in a city and region as distant from Lucas' childhood in Pittsburgh's Hill district as possible.

Lucas' rise to the pro game, his adventures in it, and his life after it, do not lack for colorful anecdotes. The New York Times ran Luke's obit, but managed to distill most of the jazz out of his story. The Oregonian ran his obit, a memoriam from their basketball beat writer, and features interviewing people who knew Lucas well: his former coach Jack Ramsay and current Portland coach and former teammate Nate McMillan.

I only saw Luke's game via TV. However, I loved reading stories about him. David Halberstam's excellent The Breaks of the Game offers a wonderful, understanding portrait of Lucas. The author describes, among other things, Luke's days as a star Marquette University player. The college team's coach was Al McGuire, whom Halbertstam noted was the rare coach who "played five" -- that is, five African-American players on the court at the same time.

Halberstam also describes Lucas' time with the Spirits of St. Louis, an aptly named American Basketball Association team. The team's roster included Moses Malone, Marvin Barnes, Don Cheney, M.L. Carr and was coached at one point by Rod Thorn. The radio announcer was Bob Costas. The RemembertheABA link has more very entertaining stories and rare player photos.

It's easy to think that Luke's style of intimidating play doesn't really fit into today's pro game. While that notion may be desirable for the NBA league office to promote, today's game is just as harsh as it was in Luke's day. Players fight and work hard to physically and mentally intimidate their opponents, just as Luke did. The dirty work just wasn't as expensive when Lucas was in his prime as it is today.

Luke said as much to the current Portland team, a good, talented squad that Lucas helped coach and guide. The Oregonian's beat writer relates this story, and it neatly characterizes Lucas and an era:

During the 2008 season the Blazers got intimidated by a screaming, posturing, trash-talking Kevin Garnett in a loss at Boston. Rookie Greg Oden was on his first NBA road trip, and his eyes were wide as saucers after the game.

Lucas, then a Blazers assistant, walked past and said that nobody trash-talked like Garnett during his career. “Back then,” Lucas said, “it was only a $50 fine for punching a guy in the mouth.”

I will never forget the looks on the faces of the young Blazers.