Reviews are pouring in for Michael Heisley‘s Chris Vernon Show interview, and they aren’t good. At least not for Heisley: On ESPN’s True Hoop blog, Henry Abbott questions Heisley’s thoughtfulness and wisdom. CBS Sports calls it an “abject trainwreck.” At Fan House, Tom Ziller first compares Heisley to Donald Sterling and then comes back with a few tips about other collective bargaining agreement clauses Heisley might want to check out.
I waded through the first half of Heisley’s Chris Vernon Show interview here. Let’s now finish it up:
Vernon: Why are you responsible for making the basketball decisions?
Heisley: Why? I’ll tell you why. Because I’m the guy who makes up the difference between what we bring in in revenue and what we put out to pay for players. And believe me, kid, that is a lot of money.
Vernon: But you would admit that’s not your expertise?
Heisley: What’s not my expertise?
Vernon: Basketball.
Heisley: I know as much about basketball as most people. I’ve been a pro sports basketball fan for longer than most of these people have been alive.
This is a common refrain whenever Heisley gets pushed on Grizzlies-related issues, bringing it back to financial issues even when the questions are not related to financial issues. A year or so ago, after a “chalk talk” with fans, Heisley held an informal press conference. I asked him three different times about issues relating to the team’s organizational structure — his increased and increasingly public role as decision maker, the lack of input his general manager had in assembling most of the team’s basketball staff, the rare-if-not-unprecedented 1.5 year contract his coach was then working under. None of this was at all related to spending and yet, each time, Heisley started barking defensively about how people said he hasn’t spent, but he’d spent plenty.