Mike Kahn is at it again

I always enjoy reading Mike Kahn's "Ten Things We Learned in the NBA This Week" column on foxsports. Partially because it never makes any sense. Here's his latest headscratcher.

His No. 4 item this week, you will notice, concerns your Milwaukee Bucks. I have read it and reread it... and still I can't make sense of it. He mentions that the Bucks are on a roll, that's true, but then rather than following this by making a point about what significance their short-term success has, he instead goes into this litany of either bogus issues (trading Michael Redd?? Whoever brought that up?) or old, irrelevant news (the Bucks overpaid for Bobby Simmons... we learned that last week, huh?). Then he basically implies that Senator Kohl is presiding over a house of cards that is destined to collapse and will always be a "poor stepchild".

To quote Jules Winfield, "Well, allow me to retort...".

First, as for overpaying on Simmons... why didn't he also mention that the Bucks lost Bobby Dandridge to free agency, or that they didn't get enough for Kareem? Those would also qualify as extremely old and irrelevant concerns. And as for Simmons, I'm not even convinced they overpaid. But that's an argument for another day.

Second, his column vaguely alludes to an imaginary conspiracy theory that I'm tired of hearing. Namely, that Senator Kohl held onto the Bucks instead of selling them because it somehow benefited him in his reelection bid. Now that he has won reelection, this line of thinking goes, its likely he will dump them to the first bidder.

This is the most idiotic 'concocted from thin-air' argument I've ever heard, but its repeated over and over again as though its fact. Its not. Its completely illogical. For one thing, keeping the Bucks won Kohl exactly.... ohh... let me estimate... zero votes. In fact, I would argue that selling the Bucks would have probably won him votes outstate.

More importantly, for those of you outside Wisconsin, Senator Kohl had no chance of losing reelection. Zero. How lopsided was his reelection bid? Let me put it to you this way... I couldn't even tell you who his opponent was! Seriously. Whoever it was, he/she was put up as a mere sacrificial lamb because Kohl is close to unbeatable in a statewide race. And as it turned out, predictably, his margin of victory over whomever his challenger was made Nixon/McGovern look like an absolute photo finish. And none of the exit polling I saw listed "He didn't sell the Bucks" anywhere on the list of reasons that motivated Kohl supporters. So any master scheme he supposedly had involving his political future and the sale of the Bucks is absolute fantasy made up by sports journalists who know nothing at all about politics.

The fact is many NBA franchises are losing money, and many are looking for new arenas as a panacea to this problem, not just the Bucks. This is an Association-wide issue that is not specific to any one team. The Bucks are no better nor worse off than most, and for Mike Kahn to try to suggest that they are somehow a sinking ship that is "forever destined to be the poor stepchild"... well, that's just Mike Kahn being Mike Kahn. He's got a lot of learning to do.