The Miami Marlins are an awful team playing in front of few fans in a ridiculously opulent, publicly-financed mausoleum. They’ve settled into their rightful place at the bottom of baseball’s standings, and the only surprise is that it’s taken this many weeks to get there. They are everything that’s wrong with professional sports in America today, but to get at the heart of why they’re so terrible, don’t look at the field. Look up at the owner’s box.

A bad player can cost your team a season or a whole lot of money. But a bad owner? A bad general manager? Those can cost your team an entire generation’s worth of success. And while they can sometimes stumble into success, or coast on past achievements, these front-office types can shut down your hopes and dreams in ways far worse than a four-game playoff sweep. Behold the guiltiest of the guilty, the owners and general managers who have turned your beloved teams, your cities’ pride, into jokes and embarrassments. When your friends laugh at your jersey, these guys are to blame.



Jeffrey Loria, Florida Marlins: The owner in the sorry Marlins saga noted above, he once obliterated an entire team when he took over the Montreal Expos and then, following failed attempts to get Montreal to build him a new stadium, sold them to Major League Baseball. Then bought the Marlins, and later pulled off the grand scheme of convincing the city of Miami to build him a billion-dollar ballpark. But within a few months he’d traded away virtually every player worth watching. Just a year after its opening, Marlins Park is a ghost town even as Loria has enriched himself. A full record of his actions ought to be required reading for any city that even considers publicly financing a new stadium.

Donald Sterling, Los Angeles Clippers: Don’t let Lob City’s recent success fool you; Sterling ranks among the worst owners in American sports based on an enormous body of work. He was long one of the cheapest owners in sports, and his team’s win-loss record showed it: he’s owned the Clippers for 32 seasons, and prior to the emergence of Blake Griffin two years ago, he had posted exactly two winning seasons. The Department of Justice and one of his own executives have filed suit against him for discriminatory business practices. He’s actively heckled his own players from courtside, most notably Baron Davis, whom he accused of being out of shape. He’s the longest-tenured owner in the NBA, and proof positive that you can outlast all your critics if you hang on hard enough.

Isiah Thomas, New York Knicks/CBA: Thomas owns the distinction of ruining both one of the NBA’s most storied franchises and an entire league. Thomas bought the Continental Basketball Association in 1998, but by 2001 it had been forced into bankruptcy, in large part because of Thomas’ management and overspending. He then failed upward, hired by the New York Knicks as president of basketball operations. While there, he threw truckloads of money at every free agent who wandered anywhere near Madison Square Garden. He traded three players and four draft picks (who would be Joakim Noah and LaMarcus Aldridge) to the Bulls for the chronically underperforming Eddy Curry. He kept New York at the top of the payroll scale and the bottom of the standings before being ushered out the door in 2008. Perhaps not coincidentally, New York is back to winning again...though Thomas' influence remains.