LOCKERROOM:How soon before we see the London Eastenders, or pine for a time when Leeds weren't the Yorkshire Emmerdales?
IF YOU are a Leeds United fan these days, well have another cup of hot gravel. Aye, tis grim up north. We are watching our team disintegrate under the chairmanship of Ken Bates, the artist formally known as the prince of darkness. Bates and a cabal of mystery investors – how bad can they be, to insist on their anonymity like that? Nazis holed up in Argentina? Friends of Dennis Wise?
Not much for a Leeds fan to laugh at then, except the tantrums of Liverpool and Manchester United supporters who feel they have the sporting right to follow clubs which will be owned by billionaires whose vanity vastly exceeds their common sense.
Ideally a top-five Premiership owner should be somebody who has made a lot of money in business but who wants to buy, at great cost, into a business where the rules of business cease to apply. The owner shall for some reason throw many, many millions at a manager and his many, many minions, trusting them to purchase that mysterious combination of overpaid millionaire footballers whose results will be sufficient to stop fans spitting at the billionaire owner.
Naturally, if there are to be five or six of these clubs financed on this basis they will screw the game for everybody, including themselves, because no matter how much money is spent six clubs can’t be in the top four. And no matter how much money is spent only one club can win the Champions League.
Oddly, last year that club was one which is owned by its fans. You would think all fans would want to follow the Barca model, but most would rather suck at the teat of a billionaire and then bellyache when things go wrong. Thus there are fewer than 30,000 loyal and passionate Celtic-till-they-die fans at recent games.
People need to be careful with this dependency on billionaires. The nature of the beast? It bites back. Look at the NBA play-offs which started the other day. The line-up is a series of exhibition cases of money ruthlessly interfering with tradition.
First up the LA Lakers versus the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Lakers are old money. In 1963, the Lakers, then of Minneapolis (where their nickname made sense) deserted their market of 1.6 million residents and hitchhiked to LA which back then had 7.8 million residents plus Jack Nicholson. The Lakers now share the city (or market, twice the size of the 1963 model) with the Clippers, who played as the Buffalo Braves from the early till late 1970s, then as the San Diego Clippers till 1984, before hitting LA where they waited tables until they got their shot at the big time.
As for the Oklahoma City Thunder? For somebody who only occasionally catches up on the NBA, they still take getting used to.
In 2006, the Seattle Supersonics franchise was flogged to a posse of Oklahoma City investors for $350 million. The new ownership group were required under a “good faith, best effort” promise to arrange a new arena, lease or venue in the Greater Seattle Area within the first 12 months of their tenure. The Oklahoma owners spent most of that time looking for the city of Seattle to pay for a premises from which they might run their business. Seattle said no thanks. So the Supersonics left town and went to Oklahoma.
Elsewhere, the San Antonio Spurs play the Dallas Mavericks in this year’s play-offs. From their foundation in 1967 until 1973 the Spurs were the Dallas Chaparrals, but the city of Dallas loved the Chaparrals in the 1970s the way it loved democratic presidents in the 1960s. Of course, you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone, and once the Chaparrals had flown Dallas started pining for a team again.
In 1980, the NBA said that, yes, Dallas could have a team because some rich men had come together and agreed to finance same. One of the rich men was James Garner. To most of us Garner was the man always getting punched on the nose in the Rockford Files, but in an earlier incarnation he played the lead in Maverick. Thus the new franchise became the Mavericks. How soon before we see the London Eastenders, or pine for a time when Leeds weren’t the Yorkshire Emmerdales?
Whom should we root for in the battle between the Denver Nuggets and the ridiculously named Utah Jazz (why not the Utah Mormons or the Salt Lake City Osmonds)? Denver of course. Nuggets they are and Nuggets they remain. Well, Nuggets since 1974, which in American pro sports terms in the Jurassic era.
The Jazz began life, of course, in New Orleans (a city which before long will surely host a team called the New Orleans Hurricanes), but they moved to Utah in 1979.
The Chicago Bulls are playing the Cleveland Cavaliers, of whom more anon. The Bulls, though they may seem mossed over with tradition, are actually the third NBA team which Chicago has sworn its heart to. Originally there were the Chicago Packers, who morphed into the Chicago Zephyrs and then for a while the Chicago Stags (never won anything but their parties were great).
Funny, the Zephyrs breezed out of Chi-Town to set up shop as the Baltimore Bullets who became the Capital Bullets who became the Washington Bullets. Bullets were actually a make of sneaker made in Baltimore and the name had belonged to a previous Baltimore hoops team. In other words, the name meant something. In 1997, though, the franchise succumbed to politically correct objections to their nickname and became the Washington Wizards – the American capital of course being the site of the actual Hogwarts.
As for the Cavaliers and their superstar, LeBron James? Absolute bluebloods and a frightening lesson to us all. The Cleveland Cavaliers have a history which stretches into the mists of time, all the way to 1970 in fact.
What is interesting about the Cavs is their effect on Cleveland. Four years after they were founded the Cavaliers, in not very Cavalier fashion, fled downtown Cleveland for the suburb of Richmond where the middle-class whites lived. Richmond was nearer also to another white population centre, Akron, and drew fans from there. Their move was one of many death blows to inner-city Cleveland.
Twenty years or so later the Cavaliers were lured back to downtown as part of the Gateway Project to revitalise the area. There they have stayed. And why wouldn’t they?
It goes on. The Atlanta Hawks play the Miwaukee Bucks, which must be confusing for Milwaukee folk of a certain vintage. When the Lakers fled to LA their nearest rivals were the St Louis Hawks who are now the Atlanta Hawks but were previously the Milwaukee Hawks for a few years in the 1950s. Before that they were the Tri Cities Blackhawks and before that again the Buffalo Bisons.
The Charlotte Bobcats, meanwhile, come up against the Orlando Magic. The Magic have been in Orlando since their invention. The Bobcats was the franchise handed to Charlotte after their beloved Hornets fled to New Orleans in 2002.
So it goes. Tradition and loyalty to home don’t mean anything to millionaires. They follow the markets and the time must be approaching when a billionaire owner gets ticked off with moaning fans and drags a team out of its base and into a new era that, for now, we just don’t get.
