Jared Max: Dolan's Knicks Are The Biggest Ripoff In Sports
By Jared Max
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Why do Knicks fans continue to attend games?
If I were a Knicks season-ticket holder, I would take to Linkedin and Craigslist: "Seeking hungry college graduate looking to use his marketing degree to earn a few bucks." I would hire someone to sell my seats, offering 20 percent of all revenue. I would cut my losses — as it appears the Knicks have started to do, trading J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert.
While some fans will buy this fool's gold — believing a salary dump is a positive sign and reason for optimism — there is no proof that this team knows how to build a winner. The Knicks stepped in fertile poo with Linsanity, then destroyed the only semblance of team chemistry they'd known for nearly a decade. This organization is inherently sick; it makes the NHL's breeding ground for mumps seem sterile.
"No, but it's different now. Phil Jackson is here."
And?
I wouldn't count on a former coach who has tried to retire several times (and who turns 70 in September) to display earnest ambition to detoxify this cancerous club. Remember, the Zen Master walked away from basketball three years before the Knicks grasped at a miracle, throwing a $60 million, five-year contract at their once-popular, late-1960s and '70s player. With all due respect to one of the game's brightest minds, Jackson is not the Knicks' savior. An 11-time champion head coach, he won the NBA Coach of the Year award only once. Jackson needed super-freak talents like Jordan, Kobe and Shaq to guide his sleigh. He's not going to get it done in New York with Carmelo Anthony as his centerpiece.
Sell your Knicks tickets now!
Last year, I purchased a substantial number of shares in a stock that I believed could be a golden ticket. Following the market's close one afternoon, I learned that the company I'd invested in was under investigation by the SEC. Trading was halted. For three weeks. Knowing the fortunate insiders would snag all the lifeboats from the Titanic, I was cooked. The stock plunged. Yet, even after taking a bath on paper, I still chased the stock, purchasing more shares at a fraction of the cost I'd originally paid. While I own several thousand lumps of this coal today, it's more valuable to keep than sell.
Knicks season tickets are not.
Detailed in a New York Times story this past weekend, we learned that on the secondary market, tickets to two-thirds of the remaining Knicks homes games this season are selling below face value. World's Most Popular Arena? Not exactly. Official attendance figures state the Knicks are the NBA's fourth-greatest attraction this season. But what the team boasted as its 178th consecutive sellout Sunday versus the Bucks was hardly SRO at MSG. Sold out attractions don't make deals with online discount sites like Groupon and Living Social.
It is fitting that the pro basketball team that calls Manhattan its home is as overpriced as the city itself.
Driving the lower level of the George Washington Bridge the last couple weeks, I have likened myself to a Knicks fan. As I swerved each day to avoid a manhole-sized missing chunk of pavement from the left lane, mid-span, I asked myself, "Why do I continue to do this?" Oh, yeah. I have to go to work. There is no choice but to pay the toll.
If James Dolan cares about keeping his Knicks customers, he might consider ingratiating himself by offering a token of appreciation. In addition giving free Optimum cable/WiFi for one year to every Knicks season ticket holder, Dolan should create exchange packages — deals for fans who'd rather spend their time more productively this winter than watching his miserable basketball team in person. It's not like he'd have to spend any real money. He could offer tickets to Rangers games and Billy Joel concerts.
Six games since they cracked 85 points, winless at Madison Square Garden since November 22, the Knicks are in the midst of their worst stretch in the team's 69-season history. While they've lost 10 games in a row at home for the first time, Monday night's loss in Memphis increased their overall losing streak to 12 games, tying a team record. Now 5-32, the Knicks have the NBA's lowest winning percentage. Even worse than the 76ers. Dead last.
The Knicks' road to nowhere became no clearer last night because two passengers were removed from their blue and orange cash clunker.
Dolan is the same guy who spent $100 million in vain in 1998 trying to save the bankrupt electronics chain Nobody Beats the Wiz, only to close its doors permanently five years later. The way Dolan buys and trades NBA players reminds me of a rich bachelor who lacks sense of fashion or design but buys fancy new clothes and furniture weekly. He still looks like a schlemiel, and his 46-bedroom mansion remains less inviting than many government subsidized studio garden apartments.
Sell your tickets, Knicks fans.
Sell them quickly.
Jared Max is a multi-award winning sportscaster. He hosted a No. 1 rated New York City sports talk show, "Maxed Out" — in addition to previously serving as longtime Sports Director at WCBS 880, where he currently anchors weekend sports. Follow and communicate with Jared on Twitter @jared_max.
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