Duff Man

11am Sunday morning start when the Rams had a 3pm game (albeit the Spags era) was nowhere near full

Looks like it ranks #2 behind the 2014-15 season opener vs SIUC

Last year 2 of those scholarship players included a former walk-on and a guy who averaged 6.5 MPG for his 4 year career. I have to think Jacobs will get cleared eventually. Without him they're going to be thin at guard until Isabell and/or Wiley get healthy but they have the players to handle the early season home games. This projected season opening roster is not that far off from the original projected rotation Jordan Goodwin Fred Thatch Javon Bess Carte'Are Gordon Hasahn French Tramaine Isabell (less than 100%) Dion Wiley (less than 100%) DJ Foreman Thor Gudmundsson Remember in early 2012-13 Kwamain had a broken foot and Jett was not 100% and at one point McCall was the only available guard in a game against KU...and by late January they were running Brad Stevens' top 10 ranked squad off the floor.

Except none of the cornerstone players of the program are out or in jeopardy and there's still a pretty deep rotation of talent, even when compared to the best SLU teams.

Presumably anyone without an NBA contract at the start of the season can re-enter each year. What's his alternative? Play overseas? He's got a lot of factors working against him - the domestic violence arrest, the fact that modern NBA bigs can shoot and pass and there are fewer and fewer traditional centers each year. His best hope is that some team gets decimated by injury and require the athleticism/rebounding that Willie brings to the table.

You seem to be misplacing your blame with the city voters and not the group that a) failed to win the election and b) had no backup plan in place

Also the elephant in the room is city vs county divide, resentment from the city voters that the county wasn't being asked for anything in terms of the MLS bid, bad blood over the tricky way the c. 2015-16 NFL stadium bid (also a Dave Peacock led operation) was crammed through city government without a public vote, not to mention the original Dome stadium deal that we're still paying for both literally and figuratively. Simply put, in this region (or anywhere really) there's going to be significant opposition to any public money for sports stadiums. It's going to take a lot more than a few PR pieces explaining how this is a great deal for the city to get people on board. The previous MLS ownership group didn't do a good job of selling their proposal to enclaves within the city (Tower Grove South/East, CWE, Cortex, The Grove, Cherokee) that would have rather seen that use tax $$$ spent in ways that could help their neighborhoods.

"Well pardon the hell out of me." -Cheeseman, probably

I don't live in the city and thus did not vote in the April 2017 election, but I did follow it closely and my takeaway was that the Peacock/Edgerly group completely took for granted that it would pass, didn't have a real ground game in terms of voter turnout, weren't particularly compelling in their limited public appearances before the election (this is Peacock mainly), and completely misjudged the swing wards of the city. "This whole thing hinged on a cynical attempt to piggy back onto a mass transit resolution in the only predominantly African American part of the region...and you don't have a Plan B?" -Anonymous city resident the day after the election. Essentially a bunch of wealthy guys were asking a city that can't even afford to pick up the trash to kick in $60M on their investment and were rejected...and then immediately threw in the towel without trying to bridge the gap from another source - no plan B - and it set us back.

Leicester City won promotion in 2014, won 7 of their last 9 (going from 20th to 14th) to avoid relegation in 2015, won the EPL in 2016 as 5000 to 1 preseason longshots, and advanced to the quarterfinals of the Champions League in 2017.

Of the 9 markets below STL in the NBA - 5 have no other teams in the "big 4" leagues. None have the NHL or are represented in more than 2 of the big 4 as STL would be with an NBA team plus the Cardinals and Blues. Counting titles is just a shorthand way to measure tradition and how recently a city has tasted championship glory. If you can at least remember your team going on a playoff run, you have reason to be somewhat invested in your franchise. Think of all the tradition that the Cardinals, Blues - even the Billikens have going for them - well all those other cites who have had NBA teams and won titles over the last 50 years are better suited to draw fans than St Louis. Those teams aren't going to abandon their proven fan bases to roll the dice on St Louis - which has no track record or tradition in the last 50 years (aside from the Spirits which didn't draw well) - not to mention the black eye the region as a whole has been nursing in recent years.

I go into the city roughly every other day for work and typically patronize at least one city establishment every week. I love the city. I live as close as possible to the city as I can while still being in the county for public schools. Downtown for all the progress that's been made since 2000 or whatever still has a long way to go and there's many parts of downtown that are not really open for business after dark. I have been held up at gun point walking to my car after a ball game (in 2009). It's real. It happens. That doesn't stop me from going into the city. Jim Kavanaugh and the Taylors are doing a great thing by reviving the MLS bid and I hope it all works out. The NBA Is a completely different animal though. For this market to truly have the demographics to support an NBA franchise (on top of MLB, NHL, MLS and obvi our Billikens) would require a sea change. It's not as simple as the Taylors bringing a team here - which even if it were as simple as that, would be a long shot.

No. It's not - I'm basing much of this on what I hear from people who live in the "nice parts" of the city...and the "nothing to see here" attitude of denial (prevalent under the previous mayor) is part of the problem. Instead of recognizing that there's several degrees of dysfunction within law enforcement (which may be an at an all time high considering the crap going on between the circuit attorney and the city police) and demanding a regional strategy on crime from our leaders in both the city and county, we're day dreaming about getting an NBA team. There have been over 350 murders in the city in 2017-2018 and per the Metro Police's own data, motive is unknown in 212 of them. Either there aren't resources to handle it or those resources aren't being deployed properly or some combination of the two. It's a black eye for the region to have such a high murder rate year after year and don't think that doesn't come into play when STL is competing with other cities for events/teams. As alaman said, the carjackings might actually be the bigger problem as it's more likely to deter people coming into the city to spend money. re: Downtown I'm glad things are looking better in certain sections. I don't get downtown as much as I did before I had kids. I do know the last time I saw a show at the Opera House/Stifel Theatre there was seemingly nowhere to go within walking distance after the show.