Mike Monroe: Suns owner bent on self-destruction
Web Posted: 02/26/2006 12:00 AM CST
San Antonio Express-News
There were examples of idiocy at both ends of the NBA's ownership spectrum this week.
At one end you had the Knicks, owned by Cablevision-Madison Square Garden, in the person of CEO James Dolan. Dolan signed off on the Steve Francis trade, adding hugely to the league's biggest payroll and enabling Isiah Thomas' spending addiction.
Portland's Paul Allen and Dallas' Mark Cuban have learned fiscal restraint. Dolan and Thomas, it appears, never will.
At the other end of the spending scale, Suns owner Robert Sarver has managed to make a mess of his team's amazing season by clamping down on his wallet even more tightly than he did last summer, when he refused to pay one of his key players, Joe Johnson. Compared to Sarver, the Clippers' Donald Sterling now looks like a lottery winner on a spending spree.
Sarver, it seems, doesn't want to spend what it takes to retain reigning executive of the year Bryan Colangelo, currently being courted by the Toronto Raptors. This, despite the fact it was Colangelo who bailed out Sarver after the owner refused to pay Johnson. The moves Colangelo made — signing Raja Bell, getting Boris Diaw from Atlanta in the Johnson fiasco, and trading Quentin Richardson for Kurt Thomas — probably will make him back-to-back Executive of the Year, even if he departs Phoenix.
The Raptors reportedly are offering Colangelo $3 million a year to make the move from the Valley of the Sun to the Great White North. He is under contract, at $1 million a year, to run the Suns' basketball operations through the 2007-08 season.
Sarver says part of his agreement with Colangelo allows the GM to pursue other jobs, explaining that is why he gave Colangelo permission to speak with the Raptors when they came calling. He was compelled to issue a written statement to that affect after he was roasted by newspaper columnists for allowing the situation to get to the point Colangelo would even consider leaving. Sarver insists he wants Colangelo to stay in Phoenix and is negotiating to that end. He wants Colangelo's answer before Wednesday.
This should be a no-brainer for Sarver: Tell Colangelo to name his price, understanding there are lots of reasons to expect that price to fall somewhere shy of $3 million. The savings in winter attire, alone, would keep it far below $3 million.
Instead, the smart money is on Sarver continuing to lowball, thereby pushing Colangelo up to Canada.
This comes as no great surprise, though. When Sarver negotiated with coach Mike D'Antoni last summer, just weeks after D'Antoni was named Coach of the Year, he treated him with abject disregard for D'Antoni's dignity and accomplishments. D'Antoni's demands hardly were outrageous. Sarver's offers were insulting.
Ultimately, D'Antoni settled for a three-year, $7.5 million deal. That sounds pretty good until you discover it ranks him in the bottom third among the league's head coaches. Of the nine coaches who average $2.5 million a year, or less, D'Antoni is the only one who has taken a team to the conference finals.
Typically, GMs don't get paid the same kind of money head coaches get. Coaches, by and large, don't command the same salaries players do, except for Phil Jackson and Larry Brownhttp://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/stories/MYSA022606.8C.COL.BKNmonroe.2af795e.html
