- If you're going to think of the NBA as a business, there's something you have to understand: Before the NBA, there were other leagues with elite basketball players and passionate fans, but they all pretty much failed. The team owners in the early NBA, though, were by and large the people with stadiums. They took on basketball as another way to try to fill those stadiums. Until proven otherwise, I think that's more or less the business: Owning stadiums makes money ... basketball is just another thing to sell tickets for. If you think about the business of the NBA like that, then what happens in hoops is a lot like the concert business. And if you see things like that, this article is fascinating. And it talks a lot about how a lot of performers set tickets artificially low (something I have talked about on TrueHoop lately) and economists can't figure out why anyone would do that. Why would Bruce Springsteen give the people in the audience millions of dollars? Here's what I think they're misunderstanding: It's not that you give those people who are in the audience money off. It's that you take money off, and you change who is in the audience. The Boss, as my theory goes, is saying something like sure I could charge $400 a ticket, but then I'd have a bunch of corporate stiffs entertaining clients, and they wouldn't be all that fun and it would make the whole experience kind of boring and tense, almost like sitting in the good seats at an NBA game. See what I'm getting at?
- This off-season the story for Portland has been that they need a point guard and a small forward. They got Andre Miller to play point guard. So, what about the rookie who started at small forward last year? Nicolas Batum is projected as a defensive specialist, but read Jay Aych on the Painted Area about how he played for France vs. Italy: "Nic Batum was quiet for most of the game but was huge in crunch time with 12 of his 20 pts in the 4th & OT. Hit a huge pull-up 3 near the end of regulation, and followed that up with a monster 3 in OT after Italy went up by four. Nic also mixed in some nice drives to the rim. France was even iso-ing him up high late in the game."
- I wrote about guaranteed salaries earlier today. A great point from TrueHoop reader Nick: NBA salaries aren't guaranteed by rule (except first-round picks). Teams have the right to offer non-guaranteed contracts, and often do.
- 832-260-8192. That's Ron Artest's phone number. Really. He has published it and would like you to call. He's going to get a new number soon. But that's a phone he's answering at the moment, in promoting a new artist on his label.
- The Grizzlies have the toughest schedule, and the Magic, Bobcats and Cavaliers have the easiest, according to a sophisticated analysis.
- What happens when a really clever t-shirt is associated with a mediocre player? The tale of Boobie Gibson.
- Howard Schultz and Clay Bennett, immortalized in rap.
- Someone is doing a really good job running a fake Kyrylo Fesenko Twitter feed.
- UPDATE: The first place I've ever seen statistics on how many people actually attend NBA games, vs. purchase tickets. And it comes with all kinds of other must-read insight about attendance and ticket income.
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