The Seventy Stubbers

70Stubbers

First things first... I write a corporate consulting blog which rarely, if ever, touches on sports. Mostly because it's about marketing and advertising, and drumming up consulting clients by sharing content and tips. So if you want to see a cleaned up and pro version of how I feel about the team becoming the first, most brazen and cheapest whore in the NBA shanty town, go here. 

Now, the less, um, cleaned up version.

I didn't want to think about this, but whatever piece of garbage that the ownership wanted to give up to NPR invaded my drive time trip home to justify this latest insult. He compared ads on jerseys to going from a rotary phone to a cell phone. No, seriously. Because when you make something worse, but it's new, that's innovative. He talked about how he's seen sports all over the world (oh, you mean in leagues that are inferior to the NBA?), and everyone just accepted ads on jerseys there... as if those teams also don't have RELEGATION PLEASE GOD GIVE ME RELEGATION IN MY LIFETIME I'LL NEVER DO ANOTHER BAD THING EVER AGAIN IF YOU JUST GIVE ME THE HOPE THAT SOME RICH PRICK OWNER GETS THROWN OUT OF A LEAGUE ON HIS GOLD PLATED ASS...

Um, sorry. Needed to take a walk there.

You see, teams in other leagues kind of HAVE to do things like put ads on their jerseys to, you know, SURVIVE. Like Little League teams, for one. The Stubbers (no reason to call them the Sixers any more, they sold that brand) aren't in that place. They are in the best basketball league in the world (well, kind of), and they share national television revenue and merch sales and tickets sales and so on, and so on. If we all lock arms and don't enter the building, not a single one of us, for the 41 regular season games and out that the laundry will play next year, the team will still exist. Maybe with more logos on their jerseys, or bigger ones, since StubHub won't be so happy with the terms of their deal, or in another city that likes it without lube. Regardless, the team will exist.

But so long as we're conflating and lying to make another $5 million a year for those ivory back scratchers (it's not as if the Stubbers spend money on players, or on ticket price or cable television rights rollbacks), just keep digging the hole, you clueless slash and burners. You ran off the only GM in the past 10 years that had a better plan than lose after lucrative first round playoff games to LeBron James. You spent the last season selling the building out as live nostalgia events in front of the second-worst team in NBA history. And now you've made the freaking jersey itself an object of ridicule, while tacitly admitting that the adulterated laundry is inferior -- because the shirt your fans (I'm sure you still have some, in the same way that domestic abusers frequently get laid) can buy...

DOESN'T GET THE DAMN AD PATCH.

Oh, and congrats on getting the first overall pick, and the inevitable injury, woe and ruin that will result to the poor stiff, or to the bad trade package that you get for the guy, because after 3 years of rank hoop, the big payoff to a 30 to 40 win road to nowhere franchise will seem so sweet.

Finally, this.

Can't we just admit out loud that the NBA runs this franchise now, and will use it as a failed state / testing lab for whatever asshat idea it doesn't want to risk on a real team?