pilight
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 Posted: 04/24/05 7:27 am ::: Sunday lunch with Michael Alter |
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http://www.suntimes.com/output/pickett/cst-nws-lunch24.html
"If the league is a success," I ask, "isn't there a possibility that money will change its essential nature?"
Alter looks at me like I'm a little dense.
"Fortunately and unfortunately," he says, with the patient tone of a teacher with a very slow student, "that isn't going to happen in the near future."
So, while Alter predicts that his yet-to-be-named franchise will be profitable within a year or two, he does not see WNBA player salaries rising significantly.
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rebkell
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| Posted: 04/24/05 11:05 am ::: |
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Interesting article, is this good or bad for the 'W', an owner that treats it purely as a business, but it also sounds like he almost bought it on a whim, he likes the brand, and of course the cheap labor is an incentive.
He sure doesn't sound like the kind of owner that will stick it out for very long, especially if the franchise doesn't hold it's own and do it in a hurry.
Am I missing something, I included the whole section below from the article, but it says he was watching the women play last February, or am I reading it the wrong way?
| Chicago Sun Times Article wrote: |
Alter, by his own description, is "not a sports guy." Though he played basketball at New Trier and during his freshman year at Harvard, he is not a die-hard fan of the game. He reads the sports pages, he says, just enough to find out who won. And, before last year, he never paid any attention at all to women's basketball.
"I am a convert, I must admit," he says.
His law school classmate Adam Silver, the president of NBA Entertainment, took Alter to the All-Star game in Los Angeles last February. There, he had an opportunity to meet some WNBA players.
"I was really just blown away by their presence," he says. "They were so impressive."
By impressive, he explains when I ask, he means smart, attractive, personable and articulate. Or, to sum it up more simply, pretty much the opposite of most of the other professional athletes he'd ever encountered.
That same weekend, when he watched the women play, he was bowled over by their athleticism.
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