“It’s a business.”
How often have you heard these words from management, other fans, or talking heads in the media?
This phrase is rarely used when something good happens—it’s more often used to explain an otherwise unpopular trade, the departure of a free agent that the team was unwilling to pay, or occasionally, an increase in ticket prices.
And this has always been the case. The NFL and NHL, and especially Major League Baseball can trace their roots back to essentially amateur club activities. That’s not quite the case with the NBA. The Basketball Association of America (BAA) was started in 1946 by Walter Brown, who owned the Boston Garden and the Boston Bruins, as a way to fill empty dates on the arena calendar.