This ranking of the value of each NBA team by Forbes is very interesting.
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/32/basketball-valuations-11_rank.html
It shows that the most valuable NBA franchise this year is the New York Knicks. They are valued at $655 million. The least valuable franchise is the Milwaukee Bucks. They are valued at $258 million.
If you look at each team's individual information, there is a ton of interesting numbers that explain a lot. One of the most telling stats there is Revenue. The Knicks have the highest revenue in the league at $226 million. The New Jersey Nets, who are ranked 21st in overall value, have the lowest revenue at $89 million.
Another area of interest in this to me is Operating Income, which as far as I can tell is basically the profit made by each team in the last year. Once again, the Knicks are at the top with $64 million. What is really surprising about this is the team in last place: the Orlando Magic. Their operating income is -$23.1 million. This is surprising because the Magic are a title contending team this year and have been for the last few years. Usually the good teams are making money. There are 17 teams who lost money last year, 5 of those teams (Nets, Nuggets, Pacers, Bobcats, Magic) lost over $10 million. Having over half of the league's teams losing money each year is not good for the league. I think they should institute a system of Revenue Sharing by each team, similar to what the NFL has in place.
There is a lot of other interesting info in there, such as Gate Receipts (how much the team made from people attending the games and is a very telling stat), Average Ticket Price, and each team owner's Net Worth. I hope you take some free time to take a look at this info and consider yourself informed!
