Adam Silver’s All-Star Break resolution should be: SELL THE PHOENIX SUNS
By Adam Maynes
The All-Star Game is over and the NBA sits in a brief lull before the “second half” of the regular season commences. Commissioner Adam Silver should make one particular resolution for himself and the league: sell the Phoenix Suns.
The NBA set a precedent it never wanted to set by forcing former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling to sell, the franchise eventually being purchased by Steve Ballmer.
The league had never forced an owner to sell before, but, regardless of the reasons why, Adam Silver took a stand on an issue and decided that it was better for the league that Sterling no longer had a role in the NBA and that it was time for the franchise to receive a much needed, and for their diehard fans, much deserved, facelift.
It is time though that Adam Silver and the NBA look to another poor owner and seek a means of relieving themselves of him, not one who seems to have ever made revolting statements about race, (although he has made public statements worth chastising him for), but one who admitted the moment he took over control of the franchise that he “doesn’t know much about basketball,” and for over the past nine years has reinforced that point time, and time, again.
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Unlike the Los Angeles Clippers, the Phoenix Suns had for decades been one of the most prosperous and respected franchise’s in the league. This was in no small part to Jerry Colangelo, but the fanbase became accustomed to a level of competitiveness that all fans of every franchise deserves to feel.
Yet since acquiring the Suns in 2009, Robert Sarver “has caused myself, and the city of Phoenix, a good deal of distress, as we have watched [him] take our beloved [Suns], and reduce them to a laughing stock. All for the glorification of [his] massive ego!”
Yes, that was a quote from George Costanza’s first meeting with George Steinbrenner. No, I will now not get hired by the Phoenix Suns like Costanza was hired by the Yankees.
But the similarities are both stark and similar.
The NBA wants competitive balance, and they now do not have a history of forcing regular bottom-feeders to make certain moves to make themselves competitive – ala the Philadelphia 76ers and the instillation of Jerry and Bryan Colangelo.
In the end though, the league is run by a loosely regulated free market in which teams are allowed to lose and teams are allowed to win and rarely does the NBA step in to force change upon a franchise who has otherwise been allowed to lose.
To that point, there is no doubt that while the suffering of the Phoenix Suns is surely something Adam Silver is aware of, his primary focus in a similar situation is that of the New York Knicks and their terrible owner, James Dolan.