Grizzlies manage to come out ahead on the bottom line

[La Bomba]

Those days of focusing mainly on where the basketball bounces are over.

 

The National Basketball Association -- and particularly small-market franchises such as the Grizzlies -- is increasingly becoming a bottom-line business. Payrolls and salary-cap implications suddenly mean as much as pick-and-roll defenses and slam dunks. It's no longer just a game seemingly played with Monopoly money, as every professional league can attest, given the economy's fragile state.

 

To that end, the NBA began negotiating this week with its players' union on a labor agreement that would replace the one that expires June 30, 2011. Owners want a larger piece of the revenue pie as commissioner David Stern reported that more than half of the league's 30 teams are losing money.

 

The Grizzlies aren't one of them.

 

Despite losing roughly 72 percent of their games over the past three seasons, the Griz function with a balance sheet that is tolerable. Team officials say the Griz are operating in the black, overcoming average attendance figures in the league's bottom third and skimpy overall local revenue streams over the past few seasons. The Grizzlies decline to reveal the profit margin.

 

About the Grizzlies' fiscal state, a team insider said, "we're not satisfied, but we're not hurting."

 

Four words sum up a major why: Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley.

 

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2009/aug/07/state-of-the-grizzlies-balancing-act/