2025-26 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

This is a very naive take IMO - cities traditionally have certainly been screwed by owners (see how the Rams leaving St Louis killed any economic benefit that city got and Charlotte is case study of how an owner took a city and squandered teh good will and still got to keep a franchise. only business when you can completely squander a franchise and you still make money on the sale). The tax base goes often to suburbs and not the city itself in anyway as the suburb is often miles away from the city the teams get a huge benefit from being associated with

Almost every professional sports team not just NBA even when they've sucked for not just years but decades made money and have a built in fan base that will spend money on them because they were associated with a city (see the Cubs, Red Sox, the Bears, Knicks, etc.). There are very few teams whose fan bases are not just based in a city - probably the Lakers, Cowboys, and Yankees in US sports reach this level.

 

He had a signed contract by both the team and himself. It is what it is. Next year is a different story.

 

And these super duper stars Lebron, Jokic, Steph, Kobe were all underpaid relative to the value of their franchise due to the CBA. Not a real free market - now the players did agree to this contract so as you note players should live up to their contracts and Lebron for any criticism has lived up to every contract he's played.

 

the regular fan has been priced out of lakers games for years now anyways. i haven't been to a game in person since lebron's first season in LA and even then, it was one of the last regular season games in the nosebleeds

the energy at staples will never again be close to what it was back in the 2000s. go back and watch horry's game winner in 02 and check out how loud the arena was after he made the shot. the influencers and suits who show up to the games these days are on their phones for most of it

 

I spent good money on the last Lakers/GS game - a bit surprised on how many GS (or really Steph fans were there). Steph is a generational player obviously but with a Laker team with Luka, Lebron, Reaves wasn't expecting that

I think this speaks to people being priced out and lot of season ticket holders are in the business of reselling. Steph fans definitely with the bay area thing tends to be higher socio-economic threshold

 

Yeah, even for anyone going, it's such a better experience having the person next to you celebrating an and-1 instead of taking a selfie to update the gram lol

I've stopped going to sports regularly too, had season tickets for years with my local club. It just began to be impossible and definitely not value for money to go to sports events. I still celebrate Luka's stepback 3s in my living room though lol