I think this is a pretty reasonable take. If you don't know anything about basketball and don't have a driving desire to run a team, then for the betterment of the team, take your cash and get out of the way and let someone else take it. Makes a lot of sense to me. Dave Bing would have made a nice lead for a group to buy the team, but he's needed elsewhere. Joe is an interesting choice too. The upside is there is an opportunity to get new owners with a passion for the game. Of course, the downside is that they may not want to stay here.
Barkley is looking for a new spot for a casino How bout the 89 Pistons conglomerate?... Does Laim still own the box company?
Will this pending sale effect Joe's decisions... would he have to go into cost reduction mode to attract a buyer (see other teams that went up for sale). From Langlois: Karen Davidson, the wife of late Pistons owner Bill Davidson, released a statement late Wednesday confirming what ex-minority owner Oscar Feldman had earlier told Crain’s Detroit Business – her intent is to sell the Pistons. She spoke informally to reporters at halftime of Wednesday’s win over Boston and confirmed the same. Once the process gets put into motion, it’s going to take a lot of poring over the books to accurately assess the value of the franchise given the uncertainty of the times. What doesn’t seem uncertain to me is the future of the Pistons in Detroit. David Stern wouldn’t allow the Pistons to leave this market unless it was an absolute last resort. He signed off on Seattle’s transfer to Oklahoma City only because the team was bleeding money due to an unfavorable lease and the apparent lack of civic interest in remedying the situation. That isn’t the case in Detroit. The Pistons own their own building. And The Palace – still recognized as one of the finest arenas in the NBA – would be a major selling point to any prospective buyer. That’s why the media speculation that the Red Wings and Pistons will soon be looking to share a downtown Detroit building rings hollow. Whoever buys the Pistons is almost certainly going to be attracted by the moneymaking potential of The Palace – and the moneymaking potential of The Palace is largely undermined when you remove its primary tenant, the Pistons. And now and into the foreseeable future, the political will to sink $300 million into a new arena in Detroit – which is what I’ve been told it would take by people who know the business – simply isn’t close to being there, unless a private buyer wants to build it out of his own pocket. And good luck getting a bank to finance that today.
I told y'all last year that this economic crackup was gunna be big. We're just starting this. We're nowhere near the climax.
