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April 16, 2008
The Bell is Ringing
Supersonic Soul
The very same sound of subsidies being sucked up by NJ Nets team owner Bruce Ratner can be heard in other cities fortunate enough to host an NBA team.
...what is happening to the Sonics in Seattle is happening – on another level – to all NBA teams in all NBA cities.
In New Orleans, where a city bludgeoned by unspeakable tragedy is paying $7.5 million a season in taxpayer money to keep the Hornets from fleeing. You read that right. The Hornets, a team owned by a man, George Shinn, whose net worth of $100 million neglects to include his $275 million basketball team, receives nearly $8 million every year from the people of New Orleans.
...
It is happening in San Antonio, where the model of success for the NBA, the Spurs, turns around and asks the city for more concessions and more money, less than five years after receiving a brand-new building, the same building they received because the brand-new building they received in 1993, the Alamodome, was obsolete within a decade.It is happening in Brooklyn, where the subsidy figure for the Nets’ Atlantic Yards project has now reached the $2 billion mark, and shows no sign of stopping.
All of this has been occurring while America is in on the verge of entering (if it has not already entered) a tremendous recession....
Posted by lumi at April 16, 2008 4:31 AM