Money Doesn’t Buy These Owners a Clue

While we’re on the subject of the generation gap, there’s the senior end of the spectrum ...

As power corrupts, entitlement spoils, regardless of age. Just as there’s a dizzy bunch of teenage multimillionaires, there’s a new breed of owners even more clueless than some of their predecessors, which is saying something.

Who would have thought anybody would ever challenge the great Ted Stepien of Cleveland, who was such a pigeon that the balance of power was determined by who got to him first?

After he traded the Lakers the No. 1 pick that became James Worthy for Don Ford, the league enacted “the Stepien Rule,” barring teams from trading successive No. 1 picks.

Nevertheless, there’s a new kind of mogul, created by today’s rapt media coverage with CNBC as the businessman’s ESPN, so your modern chief executive thinks he’s not only a genius like Michelangelo but a star like Brad Pitt, with insights that will not only revolutionize the Internet or the coffee biz, but life as we know it.

Unfortunately, now they’re in a business that only looks easy and, worse, actually has that transparency business people talk about, with a simple, universally accepted accounting standard -- the won-lost record.

This is where geniuses go to get humble, those who are still capable of it:

* Mark Cuban, Dallas -- After making $2 billion in about 15 minutes with Broadcast.com, he’s the loudest of them and has the least impulse control, which is saying something.

However, he also turned his franchise around (with Don Nelson, whom he wisely coexisted with, despite their discreet feud), making enough good moves to make up for his bad ones (where have you gone, Steve Nash?)

Cuban is also accessible and funny, although sensitive and prone to lashing back at national writers, who are delighted at the publicity. Cuban also has yet to get past using the referees as a cop-out, as when he recently asked why the defense-oriented Pistons get so few fouls.

Teaching him some basketball, Detroit Coach Flip Saunders noted that Bob Knight’s teams at Indiana, which Cuban attended, played good defense too but were called for fewer fouls than the other Big Ten teams.

* James Dolan, New York -- Insulated from accountability by his corporate position and total lack of clues, with fans still filling Madison Square Garden, he’s free to continue mismanaging the Knicks, who have a $125-million payroll, an $11-million-a-year coach in an internal power struggle with a $5-million team president, and will miss the playoffs for the fourth time in five seasons.

Dolan got his job the old-fashioned way -- his father was the boss -- but proved he could wheel and deal, at least within Cablevision.

Refusing to even acknowledge the team’s failure, he’s largely shielded from the media, although not enough, recently announcing the team had “a goal, a strategy,” noting, “This is how I run my businesses.”

This may be what they call a contrary indicator, signaling a buy on his stock; if he’s right and he still can’t ruin CVI, it must be some company.

* Howard Schultz, Seattle -- The Starbucks magnate created a whole new lifestyle -- he gets $3.50 from me daily and I order in Italian, like everyone else, although I vowed never to -- a coup akin to Walt Disney drawing Mickey Mouse.

Like Disney with the Angels and Mighty Ducks, Schultz thought he would reinvent this game too, only to stumble on the first rule of sports: Winning equals marketing.

A big Democratic donor, he’s falling back on the old businessman’s trick of hitting up the government, demanding a $200-million renovation of KeyArena.

For the perfect principle-betraying touch of hubris, he rejected a ballot issue, with Sonic Vice President Terry McLaughlin telling the state’s House Finance Committee, “We think this is a complex issue with many complex pieces and to yet again try to explain that in a context of a vote is problematic for our organization.”

In other words, you schmoes putting up the money wouldn’t understand.

* Dan Gilbert, Cleveland -- The Quicken Loans magnate, a Detroit resident and former Piston fan, got off to a slow start in re-creating the glory that is Auburn Hills, blabbing his plans to clean house last season so that within weeks of taking over, Coach Paul Silas forced his own firing and the team collapsed.

Then there were innovations like “The Diff,” an addendum to the scoreboard, which not only says Cavaliers 10, Knicks 8, but shows that’s +2. (How did we keep score all those years?)

Hammered for his misadventures, Gilbert became the first NBA owner to move press row off courtside and said he missed the exemplary objectivity of the business press, perhaps forgetting those stories about Enron giving pundits across the political spectrum $50,000 to $100,000 fees.

In a major comeback, however, Gilbert courted key members of LeBron James’ entourage as well as James, and looks to be on track to sign his franchise to an extension.

* Paul Allen, Portland -- The Microsoft co-founder and world’s sixth-richest man, built the Rose Garden, put it into bankruptcy so a consortium of insurance companies had to take it over, and just hit the city up, citing heavy losses -- the result of years of letting General Manager Bob Whitsitt run the payroll up to $100 million worth of bandidos.

Allen just gave a moving interview -- to his public relations staff for the team’s website -- in a move reminiscent of Redskin owner Dan Snyder going above the heads of Washington media outlets.

Even NBA Commissioner David Stern, who stands by his owners, isn’t going for this one, saying if Allen wants out, he can find buyers.

* Robert Sarver, Phoenix -- Jerry Colangelo, who built the team as coach, general manager and owner, was hoping for a silent partner when he cashed out for $401 million.

However, after star turns dressing as a gorilla and a chicken (flapping his wings at San Antonio Coach Gregg Popovich for sitting Tim Duncan out of a late-season game), Sarver refused to extend the contract of Colangelo’s son, Bryan, the reigning executive of the year, who left.

With their old family philosophy and everyone in the organization tied to the Colangelos, Sarver might as well have surrounded the arena with tanks and ordered everyone out.

Faces and Figures

Boston fans chanted, “USA! USA!” at Allen Iverson, after he’d failed to make the cut to be one of the 24 invitees who’ll try out for the 2008 Olympic team.

Jerry Colangelo, the team’s boss, said they need distributors, but shunning Iverson while taking an apprentice such as Luke Ridnour was as unconscionable as excluding Isiah Thomas from the 1992 Dream Team.

Iverson was blamed for everything that went wrong in Athens in 2004, but Paul Pierce got much of the blame for the 2002 World Games debacle and still got an invitation.

This process still involves symbolism, hence the anachronistic invitation of college players, such as Christian Laettner in 1992 and J.J. Redick and Adam Morrison this year, and Iverson has earned more respect than that.

Still Shaq after all these years: Shaquille O’Neal turned 34, averaging career lows of 20.1 points, 9.3 rebounds and 30 minutes, acknowledged he’s “much older” and “a little bit slower” but claimed he’s “much smarter,” adding that this Miami team “has a little more talent” than his three Laker champions and anointed Antoine Walker “our missing link.”

Coach Pat Riley, agreeing (as if he had a choice): “Shaq is very smart in what he’s doing in dropping the weight and getting down to a point that’s going to extend his career. I think he understands that, even though he won’t admit it.”

Meet the new boss: Houston’s Yao Ming, 25, is averaging career highs of 21 and 10, and is at 28 and 14 since the All-Star break.

Coach Jeff Van Gundy: “He’s without question the best regular-season center in basketball.... Some other guys [read: O’Neal] will maybe play better in the playoffs at times, but he’s the best regular-season center in basketball, and the reason is, he comes to play every night.”

Still Robert Horry after all these years too: Suspended two games after appearing to bite Dallas’ Jerry Stackhouse, the Spurs’ secret weapon said he was only snarling at Stackhouse.

“I’m not going to bite a guy,” Horry said, “unless it’s the end of the world and that’s the only thing I got to eat.”

Here comes his 19th nervous breakdown: Utah owner Larry Miller, spoiled by years of low-budget success with Karl Malone and John Stockton, threw one of his twice-yearly fits, telling his players they were prima donnas, etc., but denied threatening to fire Coach Jerry Sloan.

Nevertheless, after insisting it’s Sloan’s job as long as he wants it, Miller added, “Let me tell you what the $64 question is: Jerry only knows one way, and the question is, can that way blend with 18-, 19-, 20-year-old kids? Do they buy into it?”