Articles
'Devastating'
day for Thunder
By Craig DeVrieze/ QUAD-CITY TIMES
John Coker
wasn’t sweating his future Thursday night after
getting the official news from coach Bob Thornton that the Quad-City
Thunder’s season is over.
The 7-foot-1 center already has spent a month in the NBA this
season after renewing his career here. By Thursday afternoon,
Coker said his agent had fielded offers from several International
Basketball League teams and at least a couple of overseas clubs.
“It’s the other guys who may not have other opportunities
and the people who are left out of work who I feel for,’’ Coker
said Thursday night.
That includes people such as Thunder general manager Kim Evans,
first-year Thunder play-by-play announcer Brian Sieman and office
manager Sonya Brewer.
Thunder players,
who missed last week’s paychecks, will
be paid through last Saturday’s final game. That is according
to Ivan Thornton, who heads the trust that Thursday ceased its
attempts to sell the CBA for Isiah Thomas.
He said non-player salary issues will be determined today.
Rookie head coach Bob Thornton and his assistant Gary Kloppenburg
also are owed back pay. Thornton is among several angry CBA employees
who will seek legal counsel on those questions.
Thursday, though, the coach was less perturbed about the paychecks
he has missed than the opportunities he and his team now will
miss.
“You want to finish what you started,’’ said
Thornton, an eight-year NBA player who was getting his first
opportunity as a head coach. “And I find it extremely frustrating
that a league that has survived for more than 50 years falls
apart in 15 months.’’
The latter is the length of the tenure of another ex-NBA player
as owner and operator of both the Thunder and the CBA. In October
1999, Thomas took over ownership of what started as the Eastern
Basketball Association in 1946 and became the CBA in 1980.
Thursday, his reign ended when Ivan Thornton and the trust working
to sell it gave up those efforts and said it would turn the teams
back over to their former owners.
Former Thunder owner Jay Gellerman was among many ex-owners
who said they are not interested. The CBA has suspended operations,
and the Thunder are not likely to play another game.
For players
such as Coker and recently named Thunder All-Stars Chris Garner
and Jamel Thomas, that’s
an inconvenience.
For Brewer, it is more. She must worry about paying bills, but
said she believes she will find work in her field of accounting.
It is the unfinished work with the Thunder she regrets.
“It is devastating because of the work we have done to
promote the new and improved Thunder,’’ she said
Thursday night.
Sieman, who left a radio and front-office job with the Des Moines
Dragons of the International Basketball Association for what
he thought was a better opportunity last summer, will be hard-pressed
to find basketball play-by-play work at this juncture of the
season.
Still, like Brewer, he rued the end of the Thunder, not of his
job.
“It is a great league that had everything but money,’’ he
said of the CBA.
He said he has no regrets.
“The work I did here was so educational,’’ Sieman
said. “I don’t regret leaving a job I might have
had for the rest of my life for a second. I have learned so much.’’
For point
guard Garner, a job might await in his hometown of Memphis.
While home during the last week’s midseason CBA
break, he said he received countless calls from the Memphis Houn’Dawgs,
a member of the first-year ABA.
He said he never hesitated to turn those down to return here
Thursday. Somehow, he said, he thought the CBA would survive
its latest crisis.
“I had established myself here, and the team believed
in me,’’ said Garner, a fourth-year pro who led the
CBA in steals. “I was the leader of this team, and I wasn’t
going to bail on them.’’
Kipp Christianson, a backup center with fewer professional options,
said he came to the Thunder thinking it offered his best chance
to establish himself as a pro after a couple of bad experiences
overseas.
“I came here like this was going to be my last chance,’’ he
said.
Now, it might be. At 7-foot, Christianson also has had calls
from IBL teams.
Instead,
he said, “I’m thinking law
school.”
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