newjerseynewsroom.com

BY EVAN WEINER

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS

A few days ago, the Philadelphia 76ers basketball franchise announced the team was playing a pre-season game in Syracuse against the New York Knicks on Oct. 22.

The marketing ploy on this match up will somehow be tied into the 50th year celebration of this version of the franchise in Philadelphia and how the 76ers franchise "roots" are in Syracuse. The game will also feature the return of Carmelo Anthony to Syracuse as the Knicks player spent one entire college season playing for Syracuse University in 2003. Anthony has played a pro "pre-season" game in Syracuse as he and the Denver Nuggets took on the Phoenix Suns back on Oct. 17, 2008.

Syracuse's Carrier Dome has a large capacity and is attractive to NBA teams looking for a spot to make some money on meaningless pre-season games. The Dome's naming rights was sold to Carrier air conditioning, a manufacturer and one time major employee in the Syracuse area. Carrier's factory is gone and much of the work done once in Syracuse has been outsourced globally. Carrier was once a job creator in Central New York.

The Nationals franchise was like many businesses in central and Western New York is a distant memory. Buffalo would not be able to land an NFL franchise today as the port is gone along with the steel mills and flour mills. Rochester lost Kodak, Cortland lost Smith Corona, Binghamton lost IBM, and manufacturers that dotted the landscape up and down the Erie Canal are long gone.

Central New York is a depressed economic area.

Syracuse ownership sold the NBA Nationals to a group that moved the franchise to Philadelphia in 1963. It is not the first time the Philadelphia 76ers franchise has "embraced" the Syracuse area. The team played the New Jersey Nets in Syracuse in a pre-season game on Oct. 26, 1991.

Syracuse is far too small and economically pressed for today's NBA. The city does have a "major league" basketball presence anyway with Syracuse University, a school that pays an NBA type salary to the team's basketball coach Jim Boeheim, and has played the conference realignment game for TV purposes and money.

Syracuse Nationals owner Danny Biasone sold the team in 1963 to Irv Kosloff and Ike Richman. There were rumors floating around Syracuse in 1962 after Philadelphia Warriors owner Eddie Gottlieb sold his franchise to San Francisco interests led by Franklin Mieuli in 1962. Mieuli took Gottlieb's Warriors to San Francisco creating an opening in Philadelphia.

Gottlieb’s Warriors had Wilt Chamberlain but that didn’t seem to matter much. Chamberlain’s 100 point game in 1962 as a member of the Warriors took place in Hershey, Pa. which was one of the Warriors’ franchise home courts. The game was not televised.

Biasone had seen the league lose small market franchises in Rochester, N.Y. and Fort Wayne, Ind. and knew it was just a matter of time that the old NBA of the 1950s would be gone. He did get a 50 percent reduction in his rent from Syracuse elected officials in 1962-63 and paid some $12,000 for use of the arena but it was not enough.

The 24-second block is credited with saving pro basketball in the 1950s. It was Danny Biasone who created the 24 second rule. Dolph Schayes, who plans to be part of the Philadelphia-New York pre-season game crowd, was part of the Syracuse team that experimented with time clock and had a trail game in the summer of 1954 to prove it would work.

"That was an interesting game, because as soon as we got the ball, we felt we had to shoot it," recalled Schayes. "Then after a while, you realize that 24 seconds is a long period of time and that you could pass the ball a half a dozen to 10 times. The reason for the 24-second clock, which people don't understand was at that time, they divided a number of shots per game, I think it was 60 per team or 120 shots and divided that into seconds and came up with 24. I think 120 multiplied by 24 equals 48 minutes.

"24 seconds is a long time and strangely enough even though the number of shots taken today is much more than 60 per game per team, the 24 second game has still held up, whereas in the colleges and amateur ball, it has gone from 45 in the colleges and 30 in amateur ball. The 24 second clock has held up all of those years."

Biasone and other NBA owners of the 1950s were heavily involved with their teams. Today, an owner like Mark Cuban in Dallas is very visible and drew the wrath of NBA Commissioner David Stern with his criticisms of officials. Cuban would have fit in well with the early day owners.