Dan Gilbert Votes in Favor of a Sonics Move
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.
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8 Responses to “Dan Gilbert Votes in Favor of a Sonics Move”
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Under what conditions should the owners of a team be allowed to move it to another city?
I don’t have a set of criteria, but sometimes it just doesn’t feel right.
The Colts never should have moved from Baltimore. The Browns never should have left Cleveland. The Sonics shouldn’t leave Seattle.
Then again, there wasn’t that much fan support for the Expos in Montreal, and there wasn’t much outcry about the Grizzlies leaving Vancouver. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays don’t have a fanbase so it wouldn’t bother me if they moved. I don’t think there would be much outcry there.
But it really rubs me the wrong way when a move is happening over a stadium / arena because it is an argument between millionaires and politicians over how much the taxpayers are going to put up in addition to what they already pay in ticket prices.
On top of that, this Seattle deal seems extra shady because the purchasers appear to have agreed to make a “good faith” effort to keep the team in town and then contradicted that directly in some emails that came to light. Stuff like, “We never bought this team to keep it in Seattle.”
I guess we’ll see what happens with Howard Schultz’s lawsuit to rescind the sale to the Okla. City group.
How has Gilbert put a lot of money into Cleveland? Indeed, it’s been just the opposite. The guy hijacked the Cavaliers offices, hijacked the Cavaliers employees, and hijacked a ton of tax money from Cleveland, and gave it all to Independence. He did this to a city that Forbes named as one of the 10 fastest dying cities in the country. Gilbert is a sly fox, as most wealthy titans are. He stinks.
He put money in Cleveland by putting an office for his Quicken Loans company in downtown Cleveland. I believe he hired somewhere between 20-30 employees here in Cleveland to staff that office.
That is a very valuable investment, I think.
Craig, that dog won’t hunt. It was, by far, more than offset by all the Cavaliers employees he hijacked out of Cleveland, the poorest city in the entire country according to the U.S Census Bureau, and gave on a silver platter to Independence. That Quicken Loans in downtown Cleveland thing is Gilbert’s idea of window dressing. Sorry.
That dog won’t hunt? Seriously?
The Cavs helped facilitate a revenue sharing program between Independence and Cleveland. Nobody told Gilbert to bring a branch of Quicken Loans here. Just because you dismiss it as “window dressing” does not mean that you are right.
How critical would Clevelanders be if Gilbert didn’t put a state of the art practice facility in a convenient location for the franchise player who happens to live in the Akron area?
Please. Ever hear of a “car?” A few minutes longer isn’t going to kill anybody. It was “convenient” for Gilbert and his wallet. That’s it.
And a “revenue sharing program?” You’ve gotta be kidding me. He robbed a ton of tax dollars from Cleveland, plain and simple. And then, despite his vow not to do so, the guy had the nerve to demand additional tax breaks on top of what he’d already robbed from Cleveland.