The Mavericks/Stars/AAC Dispute Is a Major Bummer for Dallas

This city is really going through it right now

Before we get into the more depressing stuff, let’s get the hockey news out of the way after an optional practice in Frisco today:

• Glen Gulutzan said Matt Duchene and Oskar Bäck will both travel with the team to Florida this week for games against the Panthers and Lightning.

• Roope Hintz will not travel to Florida with the team, dealing with an undisclosed injury after the hit from Taylor Hall last weekend

• Duchene skated at the optional practice today, wearing a tinted visor. Also on the ice today were Casey DeSmith, Mavrik Bourque, Lian Bichsel, Kyle Capobianco, and Justin Hryckowian.

• All three of Hintz, Bäck, and Duchene are still “day-to-day,” per Gulutzan.

Okay, onto the less fun stuff.

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Quick preface here: I don’t have access to any reporting on this whole mess that you don’t also have. From this point on, I’m making observations and deductions based on public information, not trying to state as facts anything not already known.

Here is where I should, once again, praise the Dallas Morning News for the reporting they’ve been doing on all of the Mavericks/Stars/AAC news lately. Having a paper like this in town (especially when it’s staffed by great reporters with character and integrity writing for it, as I’ve come to know Lia and others to be) is an indispensable resource when it comes to holding people accountable, from team owners to city officials and everyone else caught in between.

The most recent reporting from the DMN last night was that the Stars have countersued the Mavericks, asserting that the Mavericks are attempting a “hostile takeover” of the AAC. This is made all the more depressing in light of the fact that the Mavericks have stated that they themselves won’t be staying in the building after 2031 regardless. It’s like two divorcing parents arguing over custody of a child that neither of them appear to want to care for all that badly.

Mike Piellucci wrote yet another great piece today over at D Magazine about the whole thing, and why the City of Dallas is taking the Mavericks’ side in this ugly affair. Mike’s piece is the best one-stop-shop overview of the whole situation up to this point that I’ve seen so far, so you should check out that piece.

But if you want to talk about the Mavericks ownership, you have to talk about the Adelson family. And the first and most important thing to know about the Adelson family is that they have been and clearly still remain wholly focused on one thing: Starting a casino empire in Texas.

However, another thing worth keeping in mind is that Mavericks CEO Rick Welts told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram just over a week ago that Mavericks ownership no longer expects the new basketball stadium location to feature a casino.

From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram

So, on the one hand, maybe this isn’t about gambling at all, right? The basketball team, they’re just some poor folks trying to find a new home, and they simply can’t believe the Stars would back out of the Totally Real Verbal Agreement they claim the Stars made to stay at American Airlines Center through literally 2061. Shocking, I know.

On the other hand, we also know that Tom Gaglardi isn’t running a charity here. The Dallas Stars have to be profitable, and preferably moreso each year. Northland Properties also are bringing more and more businesses to Dallas, too. Gaglardi is a huge hockey fan, yes; but he’s also a businessman, and he doesn’t pretend to be otherwise. In other words: I don’t think the Stars have been entirely (or even remotely) bluffing when it comes to their exploration of moving to other cities after 2031.

So I want to be careful here not to imply that the Stars are altruistic, or anything close. Like most billion-dollar organizations, they have their own flaws, and we try to be as honest as possible about discussing them while we primarily talk about hockey. It is always wise to be dutifully skeptical of rich and powerful people when they start using ethical language to justify business tactics.

But in this situation, it sure seems clear that one side is driving things toward the ugliest possible conclusion for Dallas. And the side doing that is the one owned by the Adelson family, they of the Las Vegas Sands and the various Singapore casinos.

If a casino winds up not being a part of the new Mavericks’ building, it’s only because of a massive failure on the part of the Adelson family’s constant lobbying and pressure to change the laws in Texas. Here is where I’m going to include a couple of excerpts from a lengthy and outstanding piece from Texas Monthly earlier this year. You should read that piece, absolutely, if you want to understand just who Mark Cuban sold the Mavericks to.

Then again, you might presume to know that already: the same people who reward loyalty over competence, and who continue to let Nico Harrison shape the Mavericks according to his vision after his first grand stroke was to rip out the team (and the city’s) heart.

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But I digress. As for the Texas Monthly piece, let’s look at Part the First:

From Texas Monthly

This is just one paragraph, and I have zero desire to discuss the political leanings of those involved right now. But I do think it’s important to understand that for years now, the Adelsons have been angling toward being the first casino to set up shop in Texas—once they get all that pesky legislation outlawing the foundation of those ambitions out of the way. And money can take care of that, right?

The Adelson family own the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, or “Sands” for short. They are not from Texas, but that corporation has been pouring money into Texas elections for a long time now, all in pursuit of changing the hearts and minds currently obstructing the too-full pockets of potential Texas casino customers.

Turns out, however, that those efforts have been about as competent as Harrison’s basketball visions.

Part the Second:

From Texas Monthly

These tactics haven’t been successful yet, and not by a long shot. So while there may have been an original vision to build an opulent resort and casino with the Mavericks’ new arena as a centerpiece, the reality of the Texas Legislature is that the timeline is now probably too compressed to do so.

So, wait, if the prospect of building a casino as part of the Mavericks’ new home isn’t likely anymore, then what’s the plan here?

Well, all of these stories make me wonder if the Mavericks’ new owners have decided that, while they continue to work on “convincing” politicians to change their moral stances against casinos in Texas in the longer term, they are instead going to extract the best new arena deal from Dallas that they possibly can. If this weird, not-Vegas-like city won’t fork over the casino dough in time for construction, the least it can do is give the team the cushiest possible deal, right?

And that probably gets a whole lot easier if the (very successful) hockey team is already pushed out of town after having tens of millions of dollars of arena revenue withheld on a technicality. That would leave the city desperate to retain the final sports team in Dallas proper, even at great expense to the city and its taxpayers—and without the competition of another sports team in the city.

If the Adelsons cared about actually being a part of Dallas in any meaningful sense, it would have become apparent by now. But this place is quite clearly just “a market” for them to profit from, and they’ll happily share some scraps of that profit with anyone who bends the knee to their unfathomable wealth.

This is where I also wonder if the tried-and-usually-true tactics of the Sands group are now coming back into play:

From Texas Monthly

That’s all guesswork, to be clear.

And really, what does it all matter? The Stars also aren’t looking to stay in Dallas for The Good Of The Citizens alone, as they would surely be happy to have more revenue streams as a result of being the sole owners of a giant plot of land in Plano (or wherever) filled with bars, paid parking lots, and restaurants.

If that dream was ever going to happen in Dallas proper, I’m sure the Stars would have been happy to take a look at it. Why wouldn’t they? But at this point, the city sure seems to have made the choice to axe that possibility ahead of time, and it’s one that leaves the Stars with almost no choice at all, when it comes to the city of their namesake.

And that’s a real bummer for folks in Dallas.

Screencap from WFAA showing the AAC under construction around 2000.

I have little romance attached to American Airlines Center, personally. Heck, I got plowed into by a drunk driver during the playoffs last year on one of the many tight turns required to get into the area. Dallas is far from the most beautiful place I have ever seen, and its downtown is not the most vibrant or well-designed place I have ever lived.

Still, the AAC is a good building, if a bit more optimal for its versatility than for any single purpose. The concourses aren’t as wide as you’d like at times, and the acoustics are a bit more cavernous than Reunion’s. And the ice quality is never going to rival any of the better rinks in the NHL.

Hence the supposed improvements that were being discussed by both teams last fall.

But even before any further upgrades, the AAC has functionally done exactly what it was designed for, and after a quarter-century, it seems a shame to throw it all away when the Stars were at least considering staying there for a bit longer as recently as last season, as well as planning to invest in (or convince the city to pay for) significant overhauls and upgrades.

The energy in that area (and downtown in general) around the playoffs is something increasingly rare in the growing sprawl of the Metroplex, and anyone who has driven out to a stadium in the suburbs can tell you that it just isn’t the same thing, no matter how nice a place might be indoors.

But it so often seems to be the case in big business that the driving forces behind the most important outcomes never seem to relate to what would actually benefit citizens the most. Instead, things will plod along until the strongest business interests finally consolidate power at the right time to push their pet projects across the line, even if that means the Adelson family literally (and ironically) moves into City Hall.

Wherever the Mavericks end up, we know it won’t be at American Airlines Center. And wherever the Stars end up, it’s hard to envision a location that will actually come close to the experience of attending a Game 7 at the AAC.

I wish it were otherwise, though. Because sports at their best deserved to be enjoyed in their best environs. And downtown Dallas, when it’s electric, still has a pretty darn good vibe. No disrespect to Plano, of course.