July 30, 2002

RAPTORS DOOMED TO FOLLOW LEAFS DOWN BRIDESMAID PATH

      Basketball fans in Toronto should prepare themselves to feel the same heartbreak suffered annually by fans of the hockey team, destined for a lifetime of committing financial and emotional support to a franchise that wants to make money, not win championships.  With the discarding of Keon Clark ownership has clearly shown that the Raptors will be managed with the same strict business sense that has hamstrung the Leafs for so many years. 

      Fiscal responsibility is the motto these businessmen constantly bray about; money is more important than wins.  Ownership will continue to take the fans’ money without a care or concern for where it comes from.  The goal is obvious--to own a playoff-calibre team.  They want a team that is good enough to keep the attention of its trusting fans through a long season--a team that can accumulate as many profitable playoff home dates as possible.   They want to make money.  They do not want a championship-calibre team.  That would cost them much of their playoff booty.  They want a team that is exciting, perennially competitive; a team that goes deep into the playoffs every year.  But a team that inevitably falls short.  Ownership wants to ensure that in both sports…Toronto stays competitive-- but never wins.

      Leaf fans have not sniffed a championship for 35 years.  For most that is a lifetime.  Year after year the organization tells the fans that they will try to win, and year after year the organization fails to make good on that promise.  And then they raise ticket prices.  They reach into the pockets of the fans and remove whatever is needed to keep the profits high.  Why not?  They have very little to worry about.  The gullibility of Leaf fans is legendary.  Harold Ballard didn’t even try to be competitive and still the fans handed over their money.  This off-season though, has been different.  Heavy criticism has been levelled at Leaf management by the fans for their half-hearted approach to the construction of the team, and for the abrasive manner in which they have dealt with the criticism.  Dimitri Yushkevic accused the organization of not trying to win as he left town, an accusation ownership quickly denied.  Leaf fans believed Yushkevic.  Perhaps Leaf fans are finally awakening to the deception ownership has been pulling on them all these years.

      Raptor fans don’t carry the same emotional baggage that Leaf fans do.  They don’t have decades of failure dragging them down and blinding their judgement.  Chances are greater that they will follow in the footsteps of their Blue Jay counterparts.  The Blue Jays won consecutive major league baseball championships and were the first franchise ever to pass the four million mark in home attendance, but now the Jays routinely play in front of crowds smaller than that of the Raptors or the Leafs.  The reason-- bad management, mediocre players, and a general dislike for baseball’s business practices.  Basketball, like baseball, is not woven deep into the very being of Toronto’s sports community.  The basketball fans, like the baseball fans, will not continue to pay when they discover that they are being cheated out of their money.  Toronto sports fans have shown that the Leafs are the only sports franchise in town capable of getting away with such a con job.   

      By tossing Keon Clark out with the bath water Raptor ownership is saying that they will make more money without him.  With a probable luxury tax on the horizon GM Glen Grunwald admitted on the Fan 590 that ownership told him they would not pay the fine that would probably be levied against them if they signed Clark.   The problem with that reasoning is that nobody knows what the luxury tax figure will be until the end of the season when the league’s accountants can work their way through the figures.  The line from Raptor camp was that they feared having to not only pay the player, but to also have to pay the league.  This exposes the true intentions of the Raptors and gives them the luxury of having a financial barrier to hide behind to continue their con game.  Salary caps, luxury taxes; they are implemented as barriers to maintain competitive balance.  They are not lines drawn in the sand—you can cross over them.  If the proposed tax were added onto Keon’s proposed salary the Raptors would probably pay around six million dollars.  Six million dollars!  Certainly a lot of money when Lee Majors flashed across our television screens, but today, with the hundreds of millions of dollars each franchise spends and earns each season six million dollars is mere pocket change.   The Raptors are cutting it right along the proposed, and dotted, line.  Instead of having Keon Clark and keeping together a team that would be one of the favourites to win the Eastern Conference the Raptors signed Nate Huffman (?) and now hope to be a solid playoff team. 

      How long will the sports fans continue to support owners that try to squeeze every last dollar out of them?  How long will it be before they see that each year, when ownership talks about striving for a championship, it is one big fat lie?  When will the fans realize that when ownership talks about budgets and spending caps being the reason for falling short of a championship it is blatant subterfuge?  And when will these owners realize that they own sports franchises, not insurance companies or motor vehicle manufacturing plants?  In sports business is half of the equation.  The other half involves competition and winning a game.  That’s the half the fans are interested in.  But it’s become apparent that ownership just doesn’t care about the fans.

      Sports franchise owners who value the dollar as well as the competition are welcome in the sports business.  Those that value competition more than money can only screw themselves; but those that value the dollar and not the competition screw the fans. 

      Those are the owners that should not own a sports team.