BUCKS BLAZE TRAIL FOR SMALL-MARKET TEAMS
BULLS OF THE WEEK
As recently as 2015, the Milwaukee Bucks were without ownership committed to the city for the long term or an approved arena plan. Five years later, they have two-time NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo under team control to play at the Us$558-million Fiserve Forum — opened in 2018 — for another five years.
It's a huge statement for the Bucks organization and it's a rallying point for all small to mid-market teams that never seem to be able to hold on to their stars, let alone attract bigname free agents.
In the process, Milwaukee made the 26-year-old Antetokounmpo — the 15th pick in the 2013 NBA draft — the highest-paid player in league history, with a five-year “supermax” extension worth US$228 million.
In a world in which sports fans have become numb to skyrocketing salaries, the US$45.6 million per year that the “Greek Freak” will earn through 2026 is still astonishing.
As disappointing as it is to NBA teams that were building their financial plans around a bid for the six-foot-11 Antetokounmpo in free agency next summer, it's a relief for the Bucks. It's also a sign that the NBA business model — fuelled by a nine-year, Us$24-billion national television deal with ESPN/ABC and TNT — is working for more than just the big-market teams in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
BEARS OF THE WEEK
There is barely a baseball fan alive who believed the Cleveland Indians would still be called the Cleveland Indians by the end of this new decade. The Major League Baseball club has been under close scrutiny for years, particularly during the past six to 12 months in which the same awakening that caused corporate partners of Washington's NFL franchise to force a name change caused Cleveland to at least study its options.
Yet few would have predicted that the club would on the one hand conclude that its nickname was offensive, but elect to use it for another year while it pursued a new team brand. It's such a boneheaded, tone deaf, lame response by the club.
The principled and smart play would have been to follow in the footsteps of Washington in the NFL and Edmonton in the CFL and immediately suspend use of the nickname, go generic for one year, and then usher in a new era the next season. That would have shown decisiveness and respect for those who believed the term “Indians” should go the way of the dodo bird.
It's true the most offensive aspect of Cleveland's team branding was its now-defunct mascot, the cartoonish Chief Wahoo, but the name had become at least as geographically and historically passé as text books chronicling the discovery of the Americas by Christopher Columbus.
In my view, Indigenous branding in sport is yet another case study of the axiom that it isn't always what you do, but how you do it. The word “Redskin” is patently racist and the term “Indian” is at best outdated and colonial, while names such as Warriors, Braves, Scouts and Chiefs — done properly and in consultation with Indigenous groups — can stand the test of time, even as a term of respect. Same for the Indigenous-themed primary logos of the Chicago Blackhawks and Vancouver Canucks of the NHL.
What Cleveland is doing with its nickname, however, only belittles those who feel it's time for a change. Now.
The Sport Market on TSN Radio rates and debates the bulls and bears of sport business. Join Tom Mayenknecht on Saturdays from 7-11 a.m. for a behind the scenes look at the sport-business stories that matter most to fans.