NBA: A Season Begins : The Lakers, Clippers and More : League Popularity Seems to Reach for the Stars

The National Basketball Assn., which was losing money and fans in the 1970s, is enjoying extraordinary success in the 1980s. Pro basketball, which opened its 43rd season Friday, is America’s fastest growing spectator sport.

“People said that pro basketball would be the sport of the 1970s,” said Alan Rothenberg, Clipper president. “I guess they were only a decade off.”

The league, which grossed a record $300 million last season, has obviously made a startling comeback from near financial ruin. Only 6 of the NBA’s 23 teams made money in 1981-82, but Commissioner David Stern said that 20 or 21 of the 23 teams showed profits last season. And Stern predicts that all teams will at least break even this season.

According to one NBA owner, who asked not to be named, the back-to-back champion Lakers grossed an average of $322,000 a game, which works out to $13 million for the regular season.

The Boston Celtics were second with a gross of $293,000 a game, followed by the Chicago Bulls at $250,000, and the Detroit Pistons at $240,000. The league average was $170,000.

The two worst teams in the NBA were the Clippers, who grossed just $86,000 a game, and the San Antonio Spurs at $78,000.

“This is light years ahead of where we were 5 to 8 years ago,” said Larry H. Miller, owner of the Utah Jazz.

With business booming, the price of established teams has soared. Within the last year, the Portland Trailblazers were sold for $70 million, the San Antonio Spurs $60 million and the Phoenix Suns $44.5 million. By contrast, Donald Sterling bought the Clippers for $12.5 million in 1981.

How much is a really good team worth?

Laker owner Jerry Buss estimated that his team is worth $125-150 million. A league source said that the team might have brought $15-20 million before the current boom. Buss bought the Lakers, Kings and Forum for $67 million in 1979.

Even new teams are bringing record prices.

The NBA expanded to 25 teams this season with the addition of franchises in Miami and Charlotte, N.C. Two more will join the NBA next season, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Orlando, Fla.

The expansion teams paid a $32.5-million franchise fee, an increase of $20.5 million from the NBA’s last expansion 8 years ago, when the Dallas Mavericks joined the league.

The NBA drew a record 14 million fans last season, which marked the fifth consecutive season of record attendance. Attendance has risen 25% since 1980-81. And it figures to rise this season, with new arenas opening in Sacramento, Milwaukee and Detroit. New arenas are also being built in Phoenix, Seattle, New York and Chicago.

“I remember when, if you went to the game and you had a sellout, people went crazy and the players got excited,” said Jerry West, Laker president. “Basketball is a relatively new sport. It’s such a great game that people are finally looking at it for what it is.”

In cities like Los Angeles, where the Lakers have won 5 titles in 9 years, and Chicago, where Michael Jordan smashes scoring records, the NBA has become the hottest ticket in town.

Courtside seats at the Forum, which sold for $15 in 1979, are now $250. They were scalped for as much as $1,500 in the finals last spring. Although seat prices went up $75 this season, there was no drop-off in sales. In fact, there’s a waiting list three times as long as the number of available seats. One woman sold the rights to her seats for $40,000, and that didn’t include the tickets.

Tennis star John McEnroe and heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson offered to do exhibition matches in exchange for courtside season tickets.

“(Going to Laker games) has become the thing to do in a town where the thing to do is very important,” said Joe Smith, head of Capitol Records, who has owned Laker season seats since the team moved here from Minneapolis in 1960. Smith had front-row seats when the team played at the Sports Arena and he has held courtside seats since the Forum opened in 1967.

Smith pays $1,000 a game for four courtside seats, or a total of $41,000 for the regular season, not including preferred parking and a membership in the Forum club.

“I justify it by saying that I don’t gamble or use drugs,” Smith said. “I don’t have a boat or a plane. This is it. But it gets a little harder to rationalize it every year. If I couldn’t afford it, I wouldn’t do it.

“Guys like myself and Jack (Nicholson) and Lou (Adler) are addicts. We’re basketball junkies. We always go to the finals. I plan my schedule around the Lakers.”

In an era when network TV ratings for major league baseball and the National Football League have dropped sharply, the NBA’s TV ratings have risen 45% since 1979-80. Ratings for major league baseball fell 24% in the decade and NFL ratings are down 14%.

CBS, which negotiated a 4-year deal with the NBA in 1983, pays the league $43 million a year for television rights.

Cable TV ratings are also up.

Ratings on TBS, Ted Turner’s Atlanta-based superstation, have increased 53% since they began broadcasting NBA games in 1984-85. Ratings were up 30% last season, and TBS is paying the NBA $23 million this season, $27 million next.

According to a recent nationwide survey, 5 of the nation’s 10 best known athletes are basketball players--Michael Jordan, Julius Erving, Magic Johnson, Isiah Thomas and Larry Bird. Three NFL players finished in the survey and no baseball players made it.

The NBA’s resurgence began when Johnson and Bird entered the league in 1979. When Jordan entered the NBA in 1984, after leading the United States to the gold medal in the Los Angeles Olympics, the NBA had at least one major star each in the West, the Midwest and the East.

“The 1979 (National Collegiate Athletic Assn.) final with Magic Johnson and Larry Bird might have been the turning point,” said Don McGuire, executive producer for TBS. “Magic and Bird went against each other in the ’79 final, which is still the highest rated of all time. They came out of college together and the next thing you know, they’re playing for the NBA championship.

“Everyone can take credit for smart marketing and David Stern being a great commissioner, but to me it all still boils down to that championship game from then on.”

Johnson and Bird brought a new work ethic to a league whose players had been criticized for being uninterested until the final 2 minutes of the game.

“One thing I believe changed was that Magic made it uncool to be cool,” said George Kiseda, a former sports reporter who covered the NBA in the 1960s for the Philadelphia Bulletin.

“There was the Walt Frazier syndrome, that you had to be cool, and about that time the NBA had a bad image. Frazier could get away with it because he was so good. But Magic made it acceptable to look like you were playing hard. Magic and Bird reintroduced the work ethic.

“I remember Magic’s first game (after he had led the Lakers to a comeback victory in San Diego) when he jumped into the arms of Kareem (Abdul-Jabbar) and he was stunned.”

The growth of college basketball has also aided the NBA. The TV exposure that college players get helps to create pre-packaged stars, such as Jordan, Patrick Ewing of the New York Knicks, Akeem Olajuwon of the Houston Rockets and Dominique Wilkins of the Atlanta Hawks.

“These guys are soap operas when they come out of college,” said broadcaster Dick Vitale, a former college and pro coach. “The public has followed their careers in college and they follow them to the pros.”

Yet, not everyone is enamored of the pro game and its stars.

John Wooden, UCLA’s legendary former basketball coach, thinks there’s too much flash in the NBA.

“I don’t think it’s basketball as it’s played in the NBA,” Wooden said. “It’s showmanship. I wouldn’t say that Oscar Robertson or Jerry West were showmen like Magic Johnson or Wilkins are.

“I don’t think players today are fundamentally better, but that doesn’t mean they’re not better physically. A player like Jordan is physically tremendous. But I don’t think he’s as fundamentally sound as Jerry West or Oscar Robertson.

“The dunk is nothing but showmanship. The fans love it but the basketball purist, like myself, doesn’t. But the average fan is what makes it go.”

Stern, who has headed the NBA since 1984, is widely regarded as the architect of the NBA’s resurgence.

“If you have to select one individual who has had the biggest impact on the league, the first one you have to select is David Stern,” said Jim Fitzgerald, owner of the Golden State Warriors. “He’s grown with the league and the league has grown with him.”

A Columbia-educated lawyer, Stern worked on the Oscar Robertson antitrust case, which led to the NBA’s merger with the American Basketball Assn. in 1976. He left a New York law firm to become the NBA’s first general counsel in 1978 and 2 years later was named to the newly created post of executive vice president. He was unanimously elected commissioner when Larry O’Brien retired.

Stern, with his background, was well-equipped to face the legal issues that threatened to destroy the league.

The NBA faced two major problems in the late 1970s--spiraling salaries and drug abuse--and Stern, working with the NBA Players Assn., moved quickly to defuse both issues.

“David Stern has done a fantastic job,” said Red Auerbach, president of the Boston Celtics. “David Stern was the spearhead. Not that basketball was unpopular before he became commissioner. It was popular. But he gave it another big jump, a real shot in the arm.”

Stern was instrumental in developing the NBA’s salary cap, instituted in 1983, which guaranteed players 53% of defined gross revenue in exchange for limiting salaries to $7.2 million a team.

“People were concerned about investing serious capital (before the salary cap) because there was no way they could calculate what their investment would be,” said Rothenberg of the Clippers. “With the salary cap, their investment wasn’t incalculable.”

Stern was also a driving force behind the NBA’s adoption of a drug agreement with the NBA Players Assn., which went into effect in 1983. It remains the only negotiated drug policy in pro sports.

The NBA’s banned drugs are cocaine and heroin, and players who admit to a drug problem receive treatment at the league’s approved clinic in Van Nuys.

A second violation results in suspension without pay and a third results in suspension from the NBA. Players are eligible to apply for reinstatement after 2 years.

“The league got a little tired of all the drug stuff,” said Norm Sonju, general manager of the Dallas Mavericks. “So we quietly formed a partnership with the players’ association to handle drugs. We have a very good, strong drug program.”

The NBA also has avoided the labor problems that have plagued baseball and football in the 1980s. The NBA hasn’t had a strike, whereas the NFL and major league baseball both have been disrupted by prolonged labor disputes in recent years.

Stern refuses to take all the credit for the NBA’s success.

“When I took over as commissioner in 1984, the ingredients for our turnaround had previously been planted,” he said from his office in New York. “So it’s not a case of before Stern and after Stern.

“But the situation (before he joined the NBA) was that we had teams that were in serious financial trouble and we were coming off a time when people were focusing much attention on the fact that the NBA was a primarily black league and that the drug scandals which have afflicted all sports had gotten their head start in the NBA. So there were questions about our prospects for continued success.

“But we were able to face our possible demise with our players, and I think it made us stronger in the process.

“I think our players are being showcased better because we’ve managed to get rid of the things that fans don’t like to see, which are drugs running rampant, renegotiations, strikes, arbitrations and owners shooting themselves in the feet.”

There has also been a massive transition in league ownership in the Stern era, with 17 teams changing hands. Gone are owners such as the notorious Ted Stepien, who nearly wrecked the Cleveland Cavaliers by trading away their draft picks.

“The teams are in a lot stronger hands,” said Fitzgerald of the Warriors, an NBA owner since 1976, when he bought the Milwaukee Bucks. “I look back on it now and it’s amazing. Only two fellows have been in the league longer than I have, Bill Davidson (owner of the Detroit Pistons) and Abe Pollin (owner of the Washington Bullets). I’ve seen a lot of history.”

The new breed of owners, mostly successful independent businessmen, are more financially stable and keep an eye on the bottom line. Five NBA owners were recently listed in the Forbes 400 and the New York Knicks are owned by Gulf and Western.

“Twenty years ago, the NBA was a mom-and-pop operation,” said Jerry Colangelo, managing general partner of the Phoenix Suns. “The ownership you see today is very strong and very solid and there’s more emphasis on marketing and promotions.”

Stern, who has a keen marketing sense, has aggressively promoted the NBA with a snappy TV advertising campaign. He has beefed up the NBA marketing staff and encouraged teams to market heavily.

“David has a sixth sense when it comes to marketing, which is unusual for a lawyer,” Fitzgerald said.

What is marketing?

“Marketing is creating a persona,” said Rothenberg of the Clippers. “It’s being aggressive with the corporate sponsors and the public, rather than just putting players out there on the floor, giving them a basketball and saying, ‘Go play.’ It’s creating a whole package and selling the luster of the team.”

Occasionally, however, marketing campaigns can backfire. The Clippers built their sales campaign around Danny Manning, but they’ve had to pull back because they haven’t been able to sign him.

Buss is the godfather of marketing in the NBA. Many of his ideas have caught on with other teams. He re-scaled the ticket structure and added show-biz touches, such as the Laker Girls.

“The NBA wasn’t marketed before, it was exhibited,” Buss said. “We realized it was an entertainment business. The NBA has always had stars, but the product wasn’t properly marketed. The Lakers put some showtime into the sport.”

Stern is responsible for the formation of NBA properties, which last year grossed $300 million, a 70% increase from 1986-87, through the sale of team and player T-shirts, NBA and team jackets and other items.

“When the Celtics played in Spain (earlier this month), every kid was wearing a Celtics’ T-shirt,” said TV broadcaster Vitale, who made the trip. “It was just awesome.”

Stern’s next goal is to tap the potentially lucrative European market, expanding the sale of league-related items and adding more TV games overseas.

“In 1992, when many of the trade markets between the Common Market countries come down, there will be 320 million potential NBA fans in Europe, Asia and South America,” Stern said. “So there seems to be room for growth in the most international of all sports.”

Although business is booming in the NBA, there are clouds on the horizon. Stern and NBA owners realize that the league can’t just continue to grow.

“We can’t sustain the kind of growth we’ve had,” Stern said. “We’ve got to begin decelerating. We had a lot of ground to cover to catch up. And now we have to be in a position to consolidate those gains we’ve made and get ready to tuck into a situation where our growth is going to be more modest. But I don’t think it’s going to come for another 2 or 3 years.”

Some owners, particularly those in small and medium-sized cities, are also worried that they won’t be able to compete with big-city teams because of the the new collective bargaining agreement, which was worked out last spring.

It gave veteran players unrestricted free agency, enabling them to sign with the highest bidder. And small-market teams, with limited TV and radio revenue, are worried that they will be outbid by the giants, the Lakers, Celtics, Chicago Bulls and New York Knicks.

“The new collective bargaining agreement makes me nervous,” said Miller, who has owned the Jazz since 1985. “It assures the continued wild growth of player salaries over the next 6 years. And I don’t think revenues can keep up with salary costs.

“Nothing lasts forever. . . . Even though we feel like we’re riding high at some point, we’re going to have to face reality. And I don’t mind telling you it’s a scary thought. I know I’ve had trouble sleeping at night because of it.”

FINAL 1987-88 NBA STANDINGS WESTERN CONFERENCE Pacific Division

W L Pct. GB x-Lakers 62 20 .756 x-Portland 53 29 .646 9 x-Seattle 44 38 .537 18 Phoenix 28 54 .341 34 Golden State 20 62 .244 42 Clippers 17 65 .207 45

Midwest Division

W L Pct. GB x-Denver 54 28 .659 x-Dallas 53 29 .646 1 x-Utah 47 35 .573 7 x-Houston 46 36 .561 8 x-San Antonio 31 51 .378 23 Sacramento 24 58 .293 30

EASTERN CONFERENCE Atlantic Division

W L Pct. GB x-Boston 57 25 .695 x-Washington 38 44 .463 19 x-New York 38 44 .463 19 x-Philadelphia 36 46 .439 21 x-New Jersey 19 63 .232 38

Central Division

W L Pct. GB x-Detroit 54 28 .659 x-Chicago 50 32 .610 4 x-Atlanta 50 32 .610 4 x-Milwaukee 42 40 .512 12 x-Cleveland 42 40 .512 12 Indiana 38 44 .463 16

x--Playoff participant