The Games of 2015 & 2024

(This column appears as part of my regular series of sports commentary on The Daily Payoff).

By Terry Lyons (Twitter: @terrylyons)

BOSTON - A dangerous game with the highest stakes in the entire sports world is playing out this summer, and about a week ago, the United States Olympic Committee doubled down on its weakening hand. The USOC is gambling with the battered reputation of the United States of America in the international sports community, and the organization’s wager is a “Boston in 2024” bet that has a doubting New England community yelling “CRAPS!”

On January 8th of this year, the USOC surprised the elite followers of the Lord of the Rings with the announcement that Boston was selected over Washington DC, San Francisco and Los Angeles as the USA’s choice to put forth in the high stakes poker game of landing the rights to host a future Summer Olympic Games, targeting the next available Olympiad to be held way in the distant future of 2024. With the fact that the Summer Games have not been held in North America since the ill-fated, domestic terrorist bomb-laden Atlanta Olympics of 1996, the Pundits of the Rings all believed the United States entry had a better-than-average chance at landing the ’24 Games. Since ’96, the better part of the universe has had its hands in the Olympic cookie-jar, including Sydney (2000), Athens (2004), Beijing (2008), London (2012) and all-too-soon-to-be Rio (2016). After that, Asia will host the XXXII Olympiad, with the 2020 events in Tokyo.

That left Olympiad #33 up for grabs, and what better way could there possibly be to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the great Larry Bird’s dual NBA & NBA Finals MVP season than the Summer Games right behind the Fourth of July on the Esplanade?  So the USOC acted on this notion back in January, and all the local Boston politicians and civic leaders jumped right on the bandwagon, figuring there would be much rejoicing. All was fine and wonderful in Beantown, for about as long as it took the New England weather to change.

The cruel winter of 2015 dumped 108.6 inches of snow atop the golden dome of the State House, the worst winter snowfall since 1872, some 24 years before the ancient Olympic Games of 1896. What the politicians and USOC members did not count on during that snowy winter were the two things every Bostonian can claim as his or her own - crankiness and complaining.

Bostonians, and New Englanders, in general, love to complain. They complain about the weather, the weather forecasters, the politicians, the sports teams, and their coaches. Even when the coaches deliver championships, the next season the fans complain. You can ask Red Sox manager John Farrell or Bruins coach Claude Julien, and they’ll tell you, if they still have jobs next week. And, that’s just sports!  When it comes to REAL complaining, Bostonians have three favorite topics: the Big Dig, the traffic, and the transit system, known to all as the T, probably since its formation in 1897, only a year after the inaugural and ancient Olympics in Greece.

Now put this perfect storm together, and you won’t need a PhD in Mathematics from MIT to frame the equation:

IOC + USOC + 2015 + 108.6 (snow) + Big Dig - (new Governor + new Mayor) = Boston - 2024

What is the answer to that problem?

A resounding, “No."

Faster than a politician can flip-flop, the grand plans of Boston 2024 were called into question, and the pronouncement of Boston being the USOC’s city of choice as fact was denounced by civic groups, claiming the 2024 Games would cost taxpayers hundreds of millions. While the snow fell, Bostonians did what they do best and started to complain to their elected officials to the point where all hell broke loose, and the original head of the Boston Olympic organizing group, prominent construction magnate John Fish, had to step down and was replaced by Steve Pagliuca, known to most as managing partner of Bain Capital investment group and co-owner of the Boston Celtics. 

In recent weeks, Pagliuca has done what any newfound co-chair of a committee would do. He called for a “players only” team meeting, re-shaped the Boston 2024 bid specs, and launched version 2.0 in order to appease the inquiring minds of “No Boston 2024” and a public still complaining about the Big Dig, the snow (and the resulting parking and traffic woes), and an ancient, failing transit system. One thing is for sure: in the world of politics, investments, public opinion, and even sports, team meetings, re-launches, and versions 2.0 are not good, although Pagliuca has assured all who will listen that the premise of Boston 2024 will not come at the cost of taxpayers of the Commonwealth and the Summer Games will actually fuel a much-needed rebuilding of two Boston neighborhoods while the city works to finance its aging and decrepit infrastructure.

To that point, Pagliuca and Boston 2024 are right. The failing “T” and the aging roads are not going to fix themselves, and by 2024, they will be nearly a decade older.

So the question remains - Should the USOC put forth a bid to the world for Boston to host the 2024 Olympics?

With world class cities like Paris and Rome amongst the competing cities, a successful Boston bid is a long-shot, at best. Even Hamburg and Budapest might be more viable candidates to the IOC. But the influence of the North American audience (a.k.a. NBC/Comcast television money) might be enough to influence the IOC hierarchy to vote for the USA candidate city, either in 2024 or no later than 2028. The people of Boston need to recognize the fact that the old fashioned way of “complaining and doing nothing” is only a mantra for the GOP, not a city in dire need of modernization.

While the bid-specs detail the use of existing facilities and champion a new approach, tagged as "Olympic Agenda 2020” by the IOC, seeking to cut down on the growing excesses of prior Olympiads, the secret sauce for Boston 2024 is to seek new and better sources of revenue generation. One idea, totally lost in the shuffle of all noise generated this spring, is Boston 2024’s original bid idea to “farm out” some of the events - such as the preliminary round of basketball. In such a plan, two groups of six teams could play to large audiences in cities such as New York or Chicago before coming to Boston for the medal round to be played after artistic gymnastics folds up its tent and TD Garden reverts back to the parquet floor.

Another idea - ripe for the times - is to factor in potential revenue or licensing from all-out sports gambling on certain events of the Games. Properly administered, global wagering from authorized sports books and even daily fantasy sports could add tens of millions to the Boston 2024 coffers, and that would be just for the sponsorship or official licensing rights to the likes of William Hill or Betfair. Affiliate fees and a portion of the take might net enough cash to appease the Boston 2024 naysayers while paving the road for additional fees to further insure possible cost over-runs. The Mass Lottery might like it enough to begin the program as early as the Summer of 2016, when wagering or a DFS lottery on the Red Sox, Celtics, Bruins and Patriots could mint millions, just as the Rio Games are planning to wager their Olympic reputations on the likes of win, place, and show bets on gold, silver and bronze medalists.

Let the Games begin.

Posting Up

Be sure to visit Jack McCallum's new blog which will be promoting his new book, DREAM TEAM.  

Chuck, Joe, Isiah, Lam: All Brothers in Arms... with Matt

Here is my brief, helpless post-funeral salute to my good friend, Matt Dobek.  It comes about a week and two days after I heard the terrible news which shocked us all to a 'lump-in-your-throat, stop-in-your-tracks stand still.  I felt particularly terrible as I hadn't spoken to Matt since hearing of his unfair firing by the former employer this past May. In the week that has passed since his death, I've quickly realized that none of it matters.

Not a thing. Not the firing, nor the fact that a lot of us didn't know or understand the state of mind that Matt was in during his final days. It doesn't matter, now.  He's gone and there's not a damn thing any of us can do about it. And, that is why this is so damn sad and why it'll stick with us for a long, long time.

I met Matt, appropriately, in an NBA media hospitality room at the old Bellevue Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia.  For you trivia buffs, that is the same hotel in which the Legionnaire's Disease was first reported in summer of '76.  I met Matt in late May, 1983, as he was joining the Pistons right after his very first job as an SID at Wayne State University.  It was about a year after he had interned for then-Pistons PR man, Bill Kriefeldt, when the team played at the big, bad Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan.

Kreifeldt, too, as history would have it, was let go -- abruptly -- by the Pistons organization and had been asked to work the 1983 NBA Finals as the Eastern Conference PR rep. to assist with "beers and buses," as I used to say.  Dobek was stepping into a tough situation in Detroit.  His predecessor was well-liked and very well thought of by the small but growing corps of media that covered the NBA beat.  Matt was the new kid on the block when Menudo was king of pop and Ronald Reagan was POTUS. Dobek, as we all called him, would have to stand on his own two feet and establish himself as a good PR guy in the league that was about to take-off on a soaring, upwardly mobile ride to the bigtime.

I had been with the league office for only two years, starting as an intern from St. John's, I might add, and I was tipping-off a string of some 135 consecutive NBA Finals games.  As per usual, I enjoyed taking the new, younger PR guys aside and letting them know they had a friend and ally in the NBA league office. All of the PR assistants and a lot of the interns did a great deal of work and we, at the league office, often relied on the young PR assistants to help out when a local story merited national attention or when the likes of the coveted CBS Sports "Game of the Month" came along or the crack USA Network crew, or later ESPN, then TBS, then TNT-then ESPN (again) would be rolling into a town near them.

Matt and I hit it off pretty damn nicely while he quickly earned his stripes with all of the media and NBA PR Directors, even the Kreifeldt contemporaries who gave Matt a rightful chance to prove himself.  Plus, soon afterward, Kriefeldt hooked up with the Utah Jazz and all was well in the Land of PRs. The up & coming Pistons (Isiah, Laimbeer and Kelly Tripucka) were early fodder for the likes of the Celtics, 76ers or Bucks for a year or so. But a remarkable Pistons vs. Knicks, circa 1984 fifth and deciding game of a first-round series put the soon-to-be-bad-boys on the NBA map for the rest of the decade, an impressive feat since the club was competing in the league playoffs for the first time since 1977.

As the Pistons edged their way up in the eastern standings during the year which would end with yet another Boston win in a memorable 1987 Boston Garden & Vinnie Johnson-Adrian Dantley head-bumping clash. Dobek gained the respect of Coach Chuck Daly, along with all of the players and front office types. In 1988, the two teams would meet again and I remember the battles over Memorial Day Weekend in Pontiac.  I also remember walking into the Silverdome at some ungodly hour to prepare for a 1pm holiday tip and the cleaning crew of the Dome had yet to pay a visit after Saturday night's Monster Truck-a-palooza or something. The place reeked of stale beer and garbage and Matt Dobek had to deal with it.  But, the Pistons would finally defeat the Celtics that year, winning two games at the old Boston Garden and closing it out in the last-ever NBA game at the Silverdome.  One of my favorite memories of Matt came after total pandemonium broke-out amongst 60,000 "crazy car-makers, as John Salley called them, when Detroit took the Eastern Confference Finals series in six games with a 95-90 victory over the rival Celts and it was time for some post game interviews.  

The players wanted to celebrate and were already undressing near their second-floor lockers up an awkward staircase in the bowels of the Dome, but Matt marched into the locker and started barking out orders to the tune of "Get your asses dressed again.  "Lam, I need you to do home radio; Isiah, your doing Pat O'Brien and CBS; Vinnie, I need you, too.  Mahorn, get dressed, we're opening up the locker for the media!"

My jaw dropped as I brought Isiah Thomas to a relatively quiet area to do a live postgame interview with "CBS' At the Half host O'Brien and Matt grabbed a few players and headed back to the trenches. Matt had some serious clout and he was doing his job like a pro under pressure.  Of course, later on that night, we had some downtime with friends, Pistons front office workers and their entourage when we made our way over to Giannopolous' bar in the 'burbs of Auburn Hills, MI.

As time passed by, we spent more and more time in Detroit.  From the Troy Hilton to the Somerset inn where we played some pretty mean "pop-a-shot" and a variation of the game, called "Natural Fruit Pop-a-Shot." From the Finals vs. the LA Lakers in '88 to "Back-to-Back" titles over the Lakers and Portland Trail Blazers in '89 and '90.  We watched the Troy Marriott being built, brick-by-brick, thank God. From victory parades that ended with team-leader Rick Mahorn tossed to the expansion draft wolves to the 1992 Tournament of the Americas in Portland to the Barcelona Olympics to the 1993 NBA Draft where a capacity crowd cheered Michigan's Chris Webber, Matt Dobek was there and he was getting the job done - whether it be with the Pistons or assisting Coach Daly with his USA Basketball duties or assisting the league office set-up for the Draft.  Matt was there and he was damn good.

Off the court, we often found time to get a cold beer, take in a Tigers game (old Tigers Stadium) or make our way to see a horse race or two.

At Barcelona in 1992, we sat side-by-side at the Opening Ceremonies and shook our heads in wonder and amazement after Antonio Rebollo, aka "the paralympic archer," shot the arrow over the stadium wall to light the Olympic Flame.  This, of course, came after many a cerveza, resulting in a Matt Dobek sprint down Barcelona's famed Montjuic without a men's room in sight. Matt had to go and Cerveza San Miguel waits for no man.

We laughed and laughed.  And, it seems like yesterday.

I liked it better back then.

I liked it better when there were "only" 13 or 33 channels, too.

I liked it better when Connors played McEnroe at the Open,

and when "The Garden" had red seats, orange, yellow, green and blue seats.

I liked it better when Zink did the announcin' and Harry did the dancin'.

Kareem did the sky-hookin' and Earl the Pearl was spinnin' as a Baltimore Bullet.

I liked it better when there were at least two papers in every town and people actually read them.

I liked it when we went to the Old Miami near the Cass corridor.

Shelby and Corky at our sides, too.

I liked it better when Alex Sachare tossed his water on Mark Pray and the slice of lemon stuck on his sport coat like a boutonniere on the groom. (mistakenly, I might add).

I liked it better when we cruised San Antonio and Matt whipped out his cell phone at 3am to call Coach Daly, stating, "Don't worry, he'll be up."

I liked it better when Matt Dobek was alive and well and living near Auburn Hills, Michigan.

***

Here's to Matt and The Bad Boys:

BROTHERS in ARMS:

"These mist covered mountains
Are a home now for me
But my home is the lowlands
And always will be
Some day you'll return to
Your valleys and your farms
And you'll no longer burn
To be brothers in arms.

"Through these fields of destruction
Baptism of fire
I've watched all your suffering
As the battles raged higher
And though they did hurt me so bad
In the fear and alarm
You did not desert me
My brothers in arms.

"There's so many different worlds
So many different suns
And we have just one world
But we live in different ones.

"Now the sun's gone to hell
And the moon's riding high
Let me bid you farewell
Every man has to die
But it's written in the starlight
And every line on your palm
We're fools to make war
On our brothers in arms"    -- Mark Knopfler, Dire Straits

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