TORONTO -- The odds are '999-1' that the Cleveland Cavaliers will be moved to Toronto at the end of the current NBA season with approval from the Board of Governors only a minor obstacle, club owner Ted Stepien said Tuesday.
Stepien unveiled a team logo emblazoned 'Toronto Towers' to reporters at Maple Leafs Gardens and said he had informed NBA commissioner Larry O'Brien the Cavaliers needed the approval of the league's Board of Governors by April 1.
'I think the odds are 999-1 that we will be selling tickets here April 18 after the (current) season ends,' Stepien said. 'I also do not anticipate difficulty in getting the other owners to approve the transfer. There are plenty of owners in the league who know that when they have needed a favor from Ted Stepien they got one.'
The Cavaliers' owner said he expects the club to generate $6 million in its first year in Toronto with $2 million coming from radio and television revenues. He repeated his resolve to 'move the team anyway' if the board would not relent.
'They can't hold a person captive and prevent him from working and they can't force me to stay in Cleveland where I am losing $3 to $4 million,' he said.
Stepien said his request to transfer the franchise would be formally heard at a meeting of the NBA Board next Tuesday. To move the team he needs approval from 75 percent of the league's 23 owners.
Asked if the '1' he included in his favorable odds would be removed after the Board's decision, Stepien replied 'absolutely, yes.'
'This is a big league town of 3.5 million people and if it were in the U.S. it would have had an NBA franchise long ago,' said Stepien, owner of Nationwide Advertising, which has a branch office in Toronto and is 82 percent owner of the Cavaliers.
Stepien said dismal attendance figures in Cleveland and little to no prospect of a buyer who would keep the team in the U.S. had made Toronto the most attractive alternative open.
He plans to sell 32 percent interest in the club to Canadian investors, while keeping 50 percent of the shares for himself. The remaining 18 percent would be retained by existing shareholders in the U.S.
UPI has learned that the price asked for the 32 percent control would be about $3 million.
Toronto stockbroker Tor Jon Boswick, who Stepien terms his 'financial partner and advisor,' would not identify the Canadian investors, but he insisted they were already set to take part in the transfer. He rejected a published report that Carling O'Keefe Brewery had been approached as a possible part-owner.
'It could be either corporate or private, I can not say,' said Boswick, who also indicated he might be one of the shareholders. 'I probably could be.'
Stepien said he had already struck a deal with Harold Ballard, owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs and of Maple Leaf Gardens where the 'Towers' would play their home games.
'We already have met with Mr. Ballard and come to terms and I can assure that it (rent) is a lot less than the $25,000 per night I saw quoted recently in the newspapers.'
The Cleveland owner said he would not totally rule out a last minute deal which would enable him to sell the team to U.S. owners but stressed that the three prospects mentioned in published reports -- a buyer in New York, a group in New Orleans and boxing promoter Don King - had all been discounted.
'Don King is a good friend of mine and I love him, but he was supposed to make a formal presentation and never did so. We never had a concrete offer from him,' Stepien said.
