Content area
Full Text
The Indiana Pacers have sidestepped a high-priced bidding war by unloading all-star Detlef Schrempf, but they haven't rid themselves of serious financial woes.
Financial statements filed last week with the Capital Improvement Board, the city-funded entity that owns Market Square Arena show Pacers Basketball Corp. lost $2.5 million in the year ended June 30.
Losses for the company, which owns the Pacers and operates Market Square, are nothing new. Over the last five years, losses have totaled more than $13 million, and the company's net worth has plunged to a negative $22 million.
Donnie Walsh, president of Pacers Basketball, was in NBA league meetings in New York late last week and could not be reached for comment.
Walsh has attributed the much-maligned decision to trade Detlef Schrempf partly to financial concerns. The Pacers last week shipped the popular Schrempf to the Seattle Supersonics in exchange for Derrick McKey and Gerald Paddio.
Under a 10-year contract running through 1999, Schrempf was eligible to become an unrestricted free agent after this season if he agreed to forfeit an undisclosed amount of deferred compensation.
Walsh believed Schrempf, who is making a relatively modest $1.6 million this year, would do so. With star salaries hitting the stratosphere--the Charlotte Hornets' Larry Johnson recently signed a 12-year, $84 million contract--Walsh believed the Pacers would lose the bidding war and end up with nothing.
"We're a small-market team," Walsh told sports columnist Bill Benner of The Indianapolis Star last week. "We could not afford to...