Q and A with Michael Tuckman

by Chris Rouhier, www.ABAsite.tk
Published on June 23, 2005 under American Basketball Association (ABA)
Bellevue Blackhawks


Michael Tuckman is the owner and General Manager of the Bellevue Blackhawks and an unnamed Tacoma franchise in the American Basketball Association. He agreed recently to participate in this Q and A, and has supplied some of the most detailed answers I have ever seen from an owner. Many thanks go out to Mr. Tuckman, and also to Mr. Parimal Rohit, owner of the San Francisco Pilots, and Shawn Blattenberger, owner of the Los Angeles Aftershock.

- Why did you join the ABA?

A: I was President and General Manager of KONG-TV in Seattle from 1993 through March 2000 when we sold the station. We were an independent station, and I had acquired a lot of local sports programming, such as the Seattle Supersonics and Seattle Thunderbirds hockey team. Out of those relationships came the knowledge that Bellevue, east of Seattle, would be the ideal site for a mid-sized sports arena. In June of 2001, I made a proposal to the Bellevue City Council for a $155 million sports and entertainment center. The heart of our proposal was vertical integration, where I would own, operate and finance the arena, and own and operate multiple sports franchises. We acquired the hockey team and needed a basketball team. I knew Gary Hunter with the CBA and negotiated a deal to buy a franchise we would call the Bellevue Nighthawks. I hadn't heard much about the ABA at the time. I paid my $125,000 franchise fee, and was accepted to play in the CBA for the 2004-05 season. But, the league wasn't comfortable with my interim venue, Bellevue Community College--1,900 seats. At the CBA owners meeting in Denver in June 2004, the executive committee slapped a whopping $400,000 letter of credit requirement on me because they thought a community college venue, rather than a true sports arena, would result in huge losses. I basically told them to go to hell and demanded my money back. The league refused to return a dime, so I resigned myself to the fact that I owned a CBA franchise without a place to play. I was visiting Vancouver, BC in July of last year trying to secure Pacific Coliseum as a venue for the CBA, when I went back to my hotel, went online and noticed that the ABA had announced four new franchises in the time it had taken me to drive from Seattle to Vancouver (3 hours). I called a sports marketing friend in Pittsburgh and asked, "What the hell is the ABA?" He put me in touch with Joe Newman, and after a couple of phone conversation, Joe agreed to sell me a market reservation for Bellevue. The CBA had already investigated me and I passed their minimum financial requirements of a $3 million personal net worth, $125,000 franchise fee and $200,000 letter of credit, so the ABA gave me expedited approval to make it in for the 2004-05 season. Bellevue Community College was fine for the ABA (frankly, they didn't have the arrogance the CBA had), and on August 1st, I was approved as the Bellevue Blackhawks. I liked the fact that the ABA had hit on a great business strategy: Lower the bar for entrance, run teams on a parallel, but less expensive business model, maximize the number of franchises to get good geographic distribution to minimize travel costs. It made a lot more sense to me than being in the CBA with 8 teams in places like Bismarck, ND, Yakima, WA and Sioux Falls, SD.

-Did you explore other minor leagues (basketball or otherwise)?

A: I explored the CBA obviously, the NBDL and the IBL in basketball, and the Western Hockey League and West Coast Hockey League for minor league hockey.

-What is your background in sports?

A: I'm a lawyer. I represented three San Francisco 49ers players in the 1980's and wrote the national bestseller: The San Francisco 49ers: TEAM OF THE DECADE in 1989. In San Francisco in 1992, I served Mayor Frank Jordan as Chairman of the Facilities Committee on the Mayor's Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sports. In August of that year, the Giants were sold to a group from Tampa Bay. I was named Chairman of the Giants Stadium Committee to get a new ballpark built, and I was part of the private group, led by Safeway Chairman Peter Magowan, who bought the Giants from MLB in 1993. We bought KONG-TV that year and I moved to Seattle.

-The Blackhawks were definitely a "Cinderella Story" in 04-05. What contributed to their immense playoff success?

A: The honest answer is that we were one of the last teams standing at the end of the regular season. A lot of people in your group make fun of the financial performance of some ABA teams. You should keep in mind that without an official tie to the NBA, any minor league system is going to have rough going. Joe Newman hit on a great theme: Affordable, family-friendly basketball where the players were young, skilled and accessible to the fans. He dropped the bar for entrance by eliminating the franchise fee, which frankly, is just a financial windfall for the owners who got in before you. My $125,000 was distributed to the 8 other CBA owners as a cash dividend. It didn't buy anything other than membership. Now that's a poor use of funds.

The ABA, on the other hand, eliminated the franchise fee and charged only a $10,000 market reservation fee with the instruction that owners should put their money into operations rather than franchise fees. That was a brilliant strategy, but the flaw was that it let a lot of owners who were not financially qualified or committed enough to spend the money it would take.

My team, the Blackhawks finished the regular season 12-16. We signed all local players and played only 8 home games because we were geographically isolated in the Pacific Northwest where our closest team was Utah, 1,200 miles away. But, despite huge travel costs, I delivered my team to every single scheduled game. For the year we played a total of 30 games, 8 at home and 22 on the road, including the playoffs.

The last week of the regular season, we went on a two-week road trip to Texas, Arkansas and Kansas City. I had signed Tim Ellis that week, who was released by Yakima of the CBA. Tim is a 23-year-old, 6'4" shooting guard from Seattle's Rainier Beach High School and Kansas State. He's the most amazing player I've seen. He averaged 36 points per game for us, including 46 and 42 in two games against Arkansas. The team had been together from the beginning of the year, and they'd played with and against each other in high school, so they knew each o0ther very well and got a long like family. We got very hot during the playoffs and almost beat Arkansas in the championship game (we led 51-49 at halftime), but were overtaken by a team that spent five times more than I did and had four former NBA players (I had none).

-What do you think is the biggest obstacle to achieving success with your teams?

A: To be honest, the biggest obstacle is your venue. We played games at a Seattle high school, and that's just not good for pro basketball. You need a good venue with a good lease that will allow you to make money. You need good personnel who know what they're doing, and you also need a good team. My mentor in sports was Eddie DeBartolo, who owned the 49ers. He treated the players extremely well and they responded by playing well for him. I traveled with the team on the road and made sure they had everything they needed. I got them into their hotels, took them out for team meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner), and gave them money to go out at night. I handled any problems they had, including things like child support, girlfriends, etc.) It really paid off. We traveled nearly 25,000(miles) last season. I tried to make it as comfortable as I could for my guys.

-How will your teams approach that obstacle?

A: We are in lease negotiations with the Bellevue Convention Center and the Tacoma Convention Center (I've been granted Tacoma for 2005-06). These venues are superb for minor league basketball. We have good deals that allow us to make money, and good schedules as well. It makes a huge difference.

-What will define a successful year for your teams off the court?

A: No question about this. It's the amount of interaction we have with the community. We run several youth camps in addition to our tryout camps for players, and make numerous visits to schools, clubs and service organizations. If we give back during the off-season more than we get from the community during the regular season, I'll consider that a success.

-What are your impressions of the new regulations the ABA has implemented?

A: I'm very pleased with the direction the ABA is going. We had huge expansion in 2004-05 and some failures, but I'm a lot smarter now than I was last year. I think that's true of the league.

-Are there any you would like to have seen added, but were not?

I guess Portland is one I'd like to see, just from a travel standpoint. I'm thrilled that Hawaii is in.

-How do you view the ABA vs. other minor league basketball (CBA, NBDL, etc.)?

A: There's no upside whatsoever to the CBA. I know the financials very well and there isn't a single team that's making money. They've lost two more teams and they're in such tiny markets that no one's interested in them. The only way out is for some kind of merger with the NBDL, but it's a real long shot. The NBDL will become the official minor league for the NBA now that the new collective bargaining agreement is signed. Their plan is to Have 15 teams with each team being the farm club for two NBA teams. It should be moderately interesting, but players will move a lot and fans will be disappointed with that I think. The ABA has much greater buzz with all the expansion and national marketing and promotion. The ABA will be a mini version of the NBA. I can't name a single team in the NBDL. The results have been horrible, and I'm moderately surprised the NBA owners didn't just dump it outright.

-Have you secured a venue for the upcoming season for Tacoma? Where will the Blackhawks play this year?

A: Tacoma: The Greater Tacoma Convention Center, right in the heart of downtown on Commerce Street; Bellevue: The Meydenbauer Convention Center, again, right in the heart of downtown Bellevue.

Note: OurSports Central no longer actively covers the American Basketball Association (ABA) as a professional league due in part to its inability to publish and play a schedule and the transitory nature of many of its teams. For information on professional minor leagues, please see OSC's basketball section.

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American Basketball Association Stories from June 23, 2005


The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer(s), and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts or opinions of OurSports Central or its staff.

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