Who's the NBA's best-managed team?

[Guest_Randy]

Dallas - No way are they an elite organization. They sucked for years, and they still haven't taken it to the level of greatnesses. Not as far along as Sacramento, and Cuban I believe will pull a Whitsitt (if he hasn't already).

Cuban is a guy who thinks the Mavs are his little playtoy -- his hobby.  But he is like a guy messing with the engine on his car -- he is starting to make too many adjustments rather than just let it settle a little.  I think he is on the verge of a HUGE mistake.  It appears to look as if he thinks you can just throw money at a team and make it good -- they will NEVER do anything until they add a defensive stopper to their team.  How good would this team be with Ben Wallace in the middle?  Or to a lesser degree, Theo Ratliff?  And look what they could offer for Wallace -- Walker and/or Jamison, Howard, Bradley, Delk, etc.

[spursfan101]

According to ESPN....

Tuesday, February 3
 
Spurs: The Best Franchise in Sports
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By Peter Keating
ESPN The Magazine


What does it take to be No. 1? "Some skill and some luck," says Spurs spokesman Tom James. He could have been talking about winning last season's NBA championship -- or finishing first in our Ultimate Standings. "Like when we drafted Manu Ginobili, it wasn't even a consideration that he could speak Spanish, but it turns out he's a perfect fit in this city." That's the Spurs: genuinely modest and obsessively focused on community. This franchise's small-town mentality has, over the past six seasons, whipped up the perfect Ultimate Standings machine, a team full of hardworking players that wins championships while its ownership group charges more-than-reasonable prices.

No athlete represents fan-friendly, All-American values more than the NBA's reigning MVP, Tim Duncan.

San Antonio has one of the smallest corporate-sponsor rosters of any pro team. While the average NBA club sells 70 percent of its tickets to companies, the Spurs sell 55 percent of theirs to real people. So it pays for team honchos to determine what fans like, and deliver it to them. In fact, they can't avoid the feedback. "I run into fans all the time, at restaurants, shopping at the grocery store, stopping at the bank," says Russ Bookbinder, the team's executive VP for business operations.

So when the Spurs decided to fight dwindling season ticket sales by moving from the cavernous Alamodome to the smaller (capacity: 18,500) SBC Center in 2002, they matched ticket prices in the new arena to what their market could bear. Result: 19 different price levels, with 5,000 seats per game under $25 and 1,000 for $10 or less. Final result: after losing more than $30M during its last three seasons in the Alamodome, the team turned a profit last year and will again this year.

And fans like what they're seeing from those seats. Spurs coach (and executive VP of basketball operations) Gregg Popovich has substantial input on personnel decisions, and he's surrounded MVP Tim Duncan with solid, smart role players. It's no accident that San Antonio, while scoring well in all aspects of our ranking, positively dominates in the Player category, which reflects fan assessment of their effort and likability. "Avery Johnson and Sean Elliott fit right into that vision, and so did Mario Elie and Danny Ferry," says GM R.C. Buford. "And so do Ginobili and Tony Parker."

With no other major league franchise within 200 miles, you'd think the Spurs organization could relax a bit, especially after an NBA title. But that idea would be as alien in San Antonio as beans in chili. "We can totally self-destruct if we position ourselves out of whack to what the fans identify with," says Bookbinder. "The fans out there are our neighbors and friends, really."

This story appears in the February 16 issue of ESPN The Magazine.  :wub: