Business Blog: Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

What do you do when the person who’s blocking the success of a business is the one who owns the business? How about if they own the hometown team?

In most industries, it’s not a big deal for anyone but the employees. They suffer under the benighted regime, and then at last they leave, or the place closes up shop. For good or ill, that’s what privately-owned companies are like.

It’s a little different, though, in the business of sports, because Royals fans in Kansas City can’t arbitrarily start attending another team’s games — it’s 250 miles to St. Louis, after all — and lifelong New York Knick fans aren’t going to switch allegiances to another team. They might stop caring, or they might start wearing bags over their heads, but they’re not going to start rooting for the Nets or the Celtics.

The core problem for the Knicks starts with their “Governor,” James Dolan, who is both CEO of Cablevision and Chairman of Madison Square Garden. Dolan may have his strong suits in those other roles — I don’t know. But if this New York Observer article is to be credited, he’s an outright disaster as the Knicks chief, especially given the continued faith he has put in his general manager and head coach, Isiah Thomas.*

Life in Knicks Hell

. . . The stories from the reporters are endless: layers of institutional paranoia; public relations officials who openly eavesdrop on private conversations with executives and players; the threat—and implementation—of cutting off reporters who are perceived to be critical of the team. . . .

“We have three people here tonight,” said Mr. Vaccaro of the New York Post on Monday night. “That’s 16 inches of copy and 16 inches of free space for the Knicks to sell their product, for better or for worse. To make those three stories as difficult as possible to write seems counterproductive to me.” . . .

In a column on Sunday, Mr. Vaccaro wrote: “Take the Jets, who now sit at a relentlessly unremarkable 2-9 after Thursday’s brutalization in Dallas. They do not inspire much of anything within the souls of their fans. They’re just bad. … The Knicks? They inspire something else. They inspire anger. They inspire hatred. … There is an unmitigated loathing for this team, for the men who run the operation. … Knicks fans hate these Knicks. HATE them.”

Yet nothing can be done so long as Mr. Dolan won’t acknowledge the problems (including, one would hope, his own culpability in causing them) and take steps to fix them.

The Royals, while not known for brutalizing reporters, also languish under a benighted ownership regime. David Glass made beaucoup d’argent as CEO of Wal-Mart, but has not shown any grasp of how to run a ball club. This sense of desperation was captured nicely yesterday in a blog post by K.C. Star columnist Joe Posnanski.**

Sigh

. . . These, to me, have always been the most depressing days to be a Royals fan. It’s those days when some other team (always some other team) makes a huge deal, a big signing, a franchise-changing moment. . . . every so often the reality of this whole thing just slaps you right in the face. The Royals had to borrow, steal, beg, plead and overspend to get a middle-aged corner outfielder with moderate power and a reputation. Jose Guillen could not even get into the Boston Red Sox lineup. He’s the Royals big signing this offseason.

The circumstances of these two teams are very different. The Knicks play in the country’s top market, they have a gigantic payroll, and they are mired in controversy stemming from Thomas’s trial for sexual harrassment this summer. The Royals bear no whiff of off-the-field controversy, but they play in a small market with a paltry budget in a sport where the teams to beat include the, uh, highly capitalized Yankees and Red Sox.

But each team is at the same crossroads: if they don’t change their ways, they’re doomed to failure and more failure. Maybe this means that the Knicks and the Royals need new owners; at a minimum, it means that the current owners would have to change their ways radically.

But who’s gonna tell the owner that he’s the source of the team’s problems?

~

* Sports fan footnote 1 – I’m 100% with Bill Simmons on this one: Thomas was one of the greatest crunch-time players ever, and is routinely underrated in discussions of the greats. While I hated his Pistons teams of the 1980s at a visceral level, there’s no denying that Thomas put many daggers through the hearts of many opponents. The problem is that, as an executive and coach, he mostly puts daggers through the heart of his own team. He did it with the Pacers, and he’s done it consistently with the Knicks. Without any personal rancor against the man, who richly deserves his place in the Hall of Fame for his playing skills, it’s clear that he ought to be fired — and indeed that he must be fired if the Knicks are to move forward.

** Sports fan footnote 2 – For my money, Joe’s the best baseball writer in the newspaper business. Read him, love him.