My Gchat comrade Ethan @SherwoodStrauss slapped up an interesting post on Warriorsworld.net late last week. To summarize Strauss’s own summary of a Tim Kawakami interview with new Warriors owner Joe Lacob in the Mercury News, Lacob basically said that that owning a pro franchise was a license to print money. It was a statement that Lacob’s new colleagues around the NBA probably didn’t appreciate. After all, David Stern (as Strauss points out) has been on a PR crusade to promote his wildly successful sport’s financial failures.
This meme is, implicitly at least, a condemnation of Stern’s own abilities. How can he mismanage a league with more young, relatively clean cut stars than any time since the mid 1980s? How can a league with an asset worth as much to a franchise as LeBron James–according to Forbes his departure lowered the franchise value of the Cavaliers by at $85 million–be losing $400 million dollars each year?
Well, unlike the MLB, which had its dirty financial diapers paraded on Dead Spin, the NBA has kept its books completely closed. So we don’t have a very clear picture of how Stern’s accountants came up with this number.
But Lacob’s comments shed some light on the NBA’s shadowy math. About owning the lowly Warriors, who have a dysfunctional front office and a number of players allergic to victory, Lacob said:
“This is an incredible business opportunity. Turning this into a winner No. 1 and running this business better in certain ways… Look, sports franchises appreciate 10% a year on average over three decades, the last three decades. There’s no reason to think this won’t appreciate in value. So that is the least of my worries. We will make money on this team in appreciation of value.”
Unlike James Dolan, Joe Lacob knows a
