The owners of all NBA teams voted last week whether or not they approved of the Sonics’ proposed move to Oklahoma City. The vote was a landslide 28-2 in favor of allowing the move. The only two dissenting voices were the Portland Trailblazers, owned by Seattle Seahawks owner Paul Allen, and Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks. That means that for whatever reason, Dan Gilbert, owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers voted to approve the proposed move.
Now, I don’t want to jump to conclusions about what Gilbert’s reasoning was in voting this way. He might be friends with some people in the new ownership group. He might be looking to make sure he maintains all the autonomy that he can as an owner of a huge sports franchise like the Cavaliers. If he doesn’t support one ownership group’s rights then they might not support his rights at some point in the future should he decide to do something. Those are all points of conjecture because I honestly don’t know.
What I do know is that Gilbert is not in tune with the desires of Cleveland fans on this issue. Gilbert is based in Detroit, and he has done a very good job of ingratiating himself to this community. He purchased the Cavs and put lots of money into the team, the arena, and the city in general. He put a satellite office of his Quicken Loans business in the city and hired employees to work there. These contributions to Cleveland cannot be understated.
Still, I think that he has a few things to learn about Cleveland sports fans. Most of us feel defined by the loss of the Cleveland Browns. We feel defined by the outrage, the petitions signed, the testimonials before government, the moral victory of keeping our team name, the horrendous start to expansion and everything else that went along with Art Modell moving our team out of the city. And these same Cleveland sports fans who feel defined by this occurrence in the NFL are the ones who are paying the ticket prices and watching the commercials and buying the food and jerseys at Quicken Loans arena to support Gilbert’s Cavaliers team.
For him to fall in line with the rest of the other 27 owners who voted to allow another city’s team to be ripped out from under them as he represents Cleveland is a travesty.
Again, I don’t know his reasoning. I just can’t imagine the excuse that he could come up with that I would find acceptable. I find it embarrassing to think that someone who wants so much to be accepted by the city of Cleveland and who needs the city of Cleveland to remain successful would so misjudge the way he should have voted on this issue. I know he wasn’t elected by us, but in a sense we elect him year to year based on the team, the arena, and yes, even our sentiment for him personally as the owner of our team.
With that in mind, I would love an explanation and I would love for Cleveland fans to express how unhappy we are to be included in the group that was willing to have Seattle’s team ripped from their city. As we in Cleveland know, it is always the fans that pay the most when a team moves, and we know only too well how high a price it is.
