Henderson quietly tried to lure Arizona Diamondbacks to Southern Nevada (Phoenix: layoffs, moving to)

[Bondurant]

Originally Posted by Ponderosa

Good riddance. They have sucked like every other Phoenix team since 2001. Maybe if they leave another owner who cares about putting a winning product on the field could move in.

D-backs were in the playoffs 4 times since '01 including the NLCS in '07. Better than a lot of other teams and not quite sucking since '01.

[Ponderosa]

Originally Posted by Returning2USA

You folks know more than me.

Why have the Suns sucked so bad for so long?

Bad luck in the draft and a market where the big name guys don't care to play even if ownership would be willing to pay them - which they have not been.

[cjseliga]

Originally Posted by Burning Madolf

Pretty much a non story if MLB isn't involved. No? Aside from the team issue and all, I don't think the league would like the optics of the city/county that hosts the Cactus League losing its team.

Here's a great article explaining the whole relocation process in detail (and expansion).

How MLB Relocation And Expansion Would Play Out

Basically a relocation committee is formed and the owners will have a vote. It's up to the owners to decide if a team can move. While it might look bad that the Phoenix metroplex with almost 5 million people will lose their MLB team, once their lease is up, they are not legally required to stay there. The trick is finding another city/place to play either immediately or in a few years while a new ballpark is built.

[KurtAZ]

[kytoaz]

Originally Posted by Returning2USA

You folks know more than me.

Why have the Suns sucked so bad for so long?

Sarver. Period. He might be the worst owner in any pro sport.

[bgray9]

Originally Posted by kytoaz

Sarver. Period. He might be the worst owner in any pro sport.

Yes, the Suns have gone from being the toast of the town in the Colangelo days to being the laughingstock of the NBA under Sarver (along with the Knicks). In the Colangelo era, Phoenix was an appealing place for free agents to go. Not anymore under Sarver.

[wit-nit]

After Jerry Colangelo left the organization everything went downhill.

[asufan]

That was a bad location that wouldn't work. If baseball is going to work in a smaller city like Vegas, it would have to be on the strip like the Raiders stadium (slightly off strip). Even then you have to depend on the tourists (fans of other teams) to fill the stands most days. I can't wait to see the Raiders play the Chargers in Vegas, as a Chargers fan.

[Ztonyg]

The MLB has forced the A's to play in a literal sewer in Oakland. There is no chance that the Diamondbacks are moving to Henderson. This is a non story probably released by those within the Diamondbacks organization to attempt to gain leverage for a new stadium.

[Valley Native]

Originally Posted by Maroon197

The Phoenix teams that want new stadiums frankly don't have a lot of leverage. Phoenix/Tucson is a huge and rapidly growing market, so teams have incentive to be here. At the same time, the area has historically been transient and the sports teams have historically been awful, so there is a ton of fan apathy. If the teams threaten to move, the general response is a big fat shoulder shrug.

Even when the Phoenix based teams are on a winning streak, there is still one big factor, which is the transplants who couldn't care less about the fact that we have pro sports. They're still loyal to the teams they left when they moved here: Steelers, Packers, Bears, Bulls, Cubs, Patriots, Yankees, etc. Hell, we draw more substantial crowds during Spring Training than we do during the Diamondbacks' regular season.

I can't really agree with your statement that the sports teams here have been historically awful. People seem to forget that the DBacks won the World Series in 2001, and have been in the NL West playoffs several times since then. The Suns never won a championship, but were in the finals twice: once in the 1970s, and the other time in the early 1990s. During much of the '90s, the Suns were the envy of the NBA thanks largely to Colangelo.

Originally Posted by gliu953

I can't believe some of you are serious about getting rid of the Diamondbacks.
I lived in a mid-size city that didn't have any major league sports and I moved to Phoenix to be in a bigger city because of things like better jobs and close access to major sports teams.
You should be thankful Phoenix has the Diamondbacks and the other teams. This place would probably be little more than an overgrown small town if it didn't have them. I know they're not the best but at least you have 4 major league teams with state of the art stadiums, that's something many cities can't brag about.
You don't know what you have until it's gone. Remember that Ponderosa and JGMotorsport64. Good riddance to you.

You're obviously a transplant, but you don't seem to have the typical transplant mentality, which is: move to Phoenix and lay in the sun or gawk at the mountains, but the hell with the more important reasons to move to a large city (good jobs and amenities like pro sports teams). In any event, I agree with you 100%. As for the DBacks, they need to stay in their current venue and quit threatening to move. Chase Field is still a state of the art facility, and all it needs are some general repairs & upgrades. It would be a huge mistake to vacate Chase Field and move to some idiotic location like the SRR, Nevada, etc. Downtown Phoenix would take a huge step backward if this were to happen.