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FORT WORTH - Seven months after Mark McClure introduced professional basketball to Cowtown, the Texas Rim Rockers are in financial disarray and at risk of dribbling off the court before the final horn of their first season sounds.
McClure, who resigned as the team's CEO on May 9 and abandoned his role as a partner, is off trying to muster another sports franchise while general manager Don Wesley has stepped in as majority owner and quietly shifted the U.S. Basketball League's franchise from the showcase venue it once hoped for at the Fort Worth Convention Center to the Sid Richardson Center at Texas Wesleyan University.
And McClure's hoop dreams forged from his earlier 1996 failure as a team owner in Portland, Maine - have turned mostly to zeros.
Since the season kicked off April 19, the Rim Rockers are 1-13 and hold the league's worst record, behind the 3-and-8 Kansas Cagerz. Of the nine teams playing this season, according to the USBL's Web site, the Rim Rockers rank ninth with an average attendance of zero.
Wesley says attendance isn't quite that bad. But he says the turnout at Texas Wesleyan since the convention center called its 10-game deal off on May 5 six days before the scheduled home opener - was "terrible."
"We're lucky if we get 100...