on the NBA lockout

I’m convinced by the argument that’s been cropping up lately, and have been convinced by it for a number of years… Professional sports teams aren’t supposed to be turning a profit.

These team owners are all incredibly rich before they buy the teams, and they buy them for the thrill of it, the narcissism of it, or the vicarious athletic satisfication of it. Or something along those lines.

The teams are playthings for these owners, and thus it seems to me like a selfish affectation when they complain about resulting financial losses.

Here’s a good sample paragraph along these lines, by Malcolm Gladwell:

“But most of all professional sports owners don’t have to behave like businessmen. For every disciplined and rational operator like the Patriots’ Robert Kraft or Mark Cuban, there is also someone like Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder. Snyder was a brilliant entrepreneur, who at the age of 36 sold Snyder Communications — the marketing company he built from scratch — for an estimated $2 billion. He has subsequently run the Redskins like a petulant 14-year-old fantasy owner. Snyder Communications was a business. The Redskins are a toy. The former he ran to solely maximize profit. The latter he runs for his psychic benefit — as a reward for all the years he spent being disciplined and rational. And it is one of the surreal qualities of professional sports that they are as welcoming and lucrative for those owners who chose to behave like 14-year-olds as they are of those owners who chose to behave like grown-ups.”

Perhaps the most striking thing about this paragraph is its reference to (Dallas Mavericks owner) Mark Cuban as a “disciplined and rational operator.” That just goes to show how vulnerable memory is to significant events. We all spent a decade thinking of Mark Cuban as the ultimate fun-but-adolescent team owner, screaming at referees and insulting opponents’ players in the newspapers. (Indeed, I believe he had to apologize to a player as recently as last year, though I don’t remember who it was at the moment.)

What happened? Dallas won the NBA championship in June, against all expectations, and Cuban somehow behaved like an adult along the way. So now he’s a “disciplined and rational operator.” OK. I’ll play along with that.

Don’t get me wrong; I’ve always liked Cuban. But the part I liked was neither disciplined nor rational. He was the teenage’ish wildman cashing in on business success to have the time of his life as an NBA owner, and we all enjoyed his crazy stunts. That’s how these owners should all be. If you’re a billionaire, there’s no room for penny-pinching with your hobby, especially when a whole city is emotionally invested in your hobby.