Roof That Peach

Forbes Magazine, which ranks sports teams’ financial value in the so-called big four every year, on Wednesday released their NBA team value rankings. Forbes was founded by the Forbes family, and the magazine was stewarded for years by billionaire Malcolm Forbes, a closeted homosexual and father of onetime U.S. presidential candidate Steve Forbes. In addition to the massive yacht with matching helicopter that I once saw in Hong Kong harbour, he also owned a private jet called the Capitalist Tool. This has absolutely nothing to do with what this post is about, so I digress.

Thanks to the Great Recession we’re currently living through, it’s no surprise most sports teams – particularly those in the somewhat overpriced NBA – took a hit financially over the last year. The Raptors, unchanged from last year are the 11th most valuable NBA franchise in Forbes’ calculations, with a current value of $386 million (all figures U.S.).  However, like many other franchises, this is down from last year’s value — appraised at $400 million in 2008. Unsurprisingly, the Lakers ($607 millon) and Knicks ($586 million) headed up the list. According to Forbes, the Raps had higher revenues than the Miami Heat, while 12 of the 30 NBA teams lost money. Interesting read either way.

While many say the NHL is the one league that can gain the most from a bad economy, to put things into perspective, the Maple Leafs were earlier ranked by Forbes as the most valuable NHL team at $470 million, well behind the values of the Lakers, baseball’s Yankees ($1.5 billion) and for that matter, only $84 million ahead of their Raptor housemates. But to really put things into perspective, consider how light years ahead the NFL is in terms of money: The Al Davis-decrepit Oakland Raiders are the lowest-valued NFL team at $797 million, which is significantly more than the highest valued NBA and NHL teams, and all but three Major League Baseball franchises.

But back to ball and hockey, the more you think about it, the similarities between the Knicks and Maple Leafs are striking: Lots of money; Centrepieces of “sports media juggernauts.” Cities that have appointed themselves the cultural home of their respective sports, albeit thanks in part to a lot of media-manufactured bullshit, because those cities happen to be the media capitals of their respective countries (although there is no hockey equivalent of Rucker Park or Alphabet City in Toronto); Loyal, if not idiotic, fans who continue to pay top dollar despite neither team having won anything since Richard Nixon was the biggest name in politics – even though they both had nice little runs in the nineties. I will give the Knick fans one thing though – they are loud and savvy, unlike the mausoleum experience felt at a Leaf game. But I guess that’s just New York and Toronto.

The short answer to this is “Who gives a rat’s ass?” but the longer, socially responsible answer is a multi-layered, deep analysis about whether homosexuals could ever play professional sports out of the closet.

The answer: No.

The reason: Most athletes are not brain surgeons. Add the machismo and the ridiculous amount of tail thrown their way, and anybody who swings from the other side of the plate is not likely going to be welcomed into a naked locker room with open arms. Unfortunate, yes. A serious problem? Not really. If you consider athletes to be so important to society that their political views on sexual orientation actually matter, then you are a complete idiot. I like to believe that for most people, this sort of thing – the private business of others – doesn’t really matter at the end of the day. However, there are exceptions.

The NHL? There’s hardly any non-white players in the league, let alone admitted non-heterosexual players. Not to say hockey players are rednecks – that’s a stereotype, like my friend questioning my manhood because I had a Rick Astley song on iTunes.

UPDATE – Burke’s son Brendan died Feb. 5, 2010 in a car crash in rural Indiana. Deepest sympathies to Burke’s family.

All hell’s been breaking loose in Canada the last few days because it seems a couple of pro sports teams may have got their H1N1 flu vaccine shots while the rest of the citizenry were forced to wait in lineups while the usually impeccably-organized government tried to figure out exactly how much of the serum they had in the middle of an opportunistic political fight.

So in other words, this is just the medical inoculation equivalent of a line outside Toronto’s Cheval or New York’s 10ak.

The Calgary Flames started this a few days ago, now it’s Toronto’s Leafs and Raptors. But before turning this into a class struggle evocative of the French Revolution, try to keep in mind that while advised for certain people, these flu shots are voluntary for the general public. Wealthy businesses (teams) however, whose performance (and tens of millions in investments) is based on the need for good health, may have an understandable ability to make line-jumping connections in a situation like this. In my opinion, it’s much ado about nothing.

Links:

http://www.thestar.com/sports/basketball/nba/raptors/article/721433–leafs-raptors-get-shots-amid-vaccine-shortage

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/basketball/nba/2009-11-05-2135466519_x.htm

For some unknown reason this song had been in my head for two days, and I was starting to get real aggravated. Then I searched for it on YouTube, and I was treated to ’80s Euro gold and it was so overly mellow that my foot fell asleep: