Doc: No room for NBA in Cincinnati

Got another letter from Andy Furman the other day. It was maybe the 1,000th letter from Furman since I arrived here in 1988. Or maybe the 5,000th. With a guy like Furman, it’s easy to lose count.

Furman used to have free postage privileges when he worked at WLW. His office was filled with envelopes. He’d run them through the postage machine, 500 at a time, for whenever he had to dash off a letter to whoever about whatever. Now he works for Fox Sports Radio and he has to pay. It’s breaking his bank. “Oh, god,’’ he says.

You might remember Andy Furman. If you’ve been here longer than yesterday’s mail, you do. He hosted Sports Talk. Before that, he was a promoter and PR guy. He’s old school. Who else writes letters?

Furball’s obsession is bringing an NBA team to Cincinnati, though these days, he’d settle for Louisville. The first piece of mail I received after I arrived was a congratulations card from my dad. The second was a letter from Furman. Actually, a copy of a letter Furman had sent to some rich guy, imploring him to consider buying an NBA team and moving it to our city.

“Who is this guy?’’ was what I thought about that.

Twenty-seven years later, I’m getting the same letters. It should be noted that in 1988, Cincinnati had as much chance of landing an NBA team as a Hawaiian has of winning a snowball fight. In 2015, the chance is less than that.

Doesn’t stop Andy.

“It’s like a boil on my skin that never goes away,’’ he said Friday. “It’s an obsession. I don’t want to lose. I don’t like failing.’’

He has file boxes in his basement, filled with letters. He once wrote the late Carl Lindner, begging him to bring the NBA to town. Furman even sent Lindner a cake in the shape of a basketball. Lindner bought the Reds.

Furman once got a handwritten response from Warren Buffett, in which Buffett said he didn’t have time to write. A couple weeks ago, Furball wrote Spike Lee. He hasn’t heard back.

“Rich people, show business people,’’ he says are his targets. “Sports fanatics with a lot of money.’’ Furman even researched the names of people in Ohio who own airplanes, figuring they have lots of loose mattress cash begging to be thrown around. He also has a little black book of every current NBA owner, majority and minority. “It’s like going fishing,’’ he explains.

The topic occurs now because the Cleveland Cavaliers took the Cintas Center by storm Wednesday night. They packed the place for an exhibition game that was not highly marketed. LeBron James posed for photos, mid-game. Floyd Mayweather showed up, as did Adam Jones.

This sort of one-night exuberance keeps Furman’s juices flowing, even as he knows all about Hawaiian snowball fights. “Walk down the street, you see more NBA garb than baseball garb,’’ Furman rationalizes. “I want to see basketball here. I think a lot of people do. I think there’s a market for it here.’’

There isn’t, of course. A region our size can’t support three pro teams. NBA ticket prices are high. College basketball is ingrained. The Reds and Bengals own regional monopolies; the NBA could not, not with UK claiming all of Kentucky and Ohio State towering over Columbus.

Furman persists. “You gotta have three things,’’ he says. “Money and local government that wants to get involved. We’re 0-for-2. And an arena. Oh-for-3.’’ Furman says nasty, disagreeable things about U.S. Bank Arena, most of which are true. “It’s an albatross,’’ says Furman.

His hopes rest with Louisville now. Furman says a Louisville lawyer named J. Bruce Miller has investors ready to commit to a relocated NBA franchise, or an expansion team. Furman says the league is pondering a two-team expansion as soon as next season. Furman is Don Quixote in high-tops.

He swears Cincinnati was close in the early '90s. The Celtics and Jazz played an exhibition at the arena on the river; it drew 17,000. Kentucky rich guy Dudley Webb attended the game. He brought with him a friend from Texas, equally loaded. Each was impressed with the crowd, but not the facility. Furman recalls the Texas gentleman saying he’d never put a team in that arena.

The man was Leslie Alexander. He bought the Houston Rockets in July 1993.

Hope springs infernal for Andy Furman, who still writes letters. “I can’t move on. I need closure. If they get a team in Louisville, there’s my closure.’’ Besides, he says, “It keeps me out of trouble.’’