Barton Silverman/The New York TimesJeremy Lin’s performance alone did not reflect the impact of Linsanity. The Knicks’ parent company has added about $600 million in market capitalization. In February, during the height of the Linsanity phenomenon, I attended a game at Madison Square Garden between the Knicks and the Sacramento Kings. The tickets cost an arm and a leg. But Jeremy Lin and the Knicks did not disappoint. Lin had just 10 points in 26 minutes of play, but many of his 13 assists were spectacular, a series of flawless alley-oops that sent Tyson Chandler and Landry Fields dunking on the Kings like the guys from Sacramento were the Washington Generals, the Harlem Globetrotters’ perpetually hapless opponents. What was more...
In a statement e-mailed to The Times, Tim Frank, a spokesman for the National Basketball Association, has disputed an analysis by Forbes Magazine suggesting that the N.B.A. turned a $183 million operating profit in its 2009-10 season. Instead, according to Mr. Frank, the league lost $340 million that year and has lost money every year […]
At midnight on Thursday, the N.B.A. locked out its players in what could be the start of a long labor dispute. Some observers, like ESPN’s Michael Wilbon, believe the entire 2011-12 season could be threatened. Such a move would not be without precedent: the N.H.L. canceled its 2004-5 season. But the N.B.A.’s current financial condition is different than the N.H.L.’s in one important respect. Whereas there was almost no doubt that the N.H.L. was in fact losing money in advance of its lockout — player salaries had mushroomed by more than 400 percent from 1994 to 2004, according to independent estimates — the N.B.A.’s claims of financial hardship should be viewed more skeptically. Instead, independent estimates of the N.B.A. financial...
