My examples don't prove your point. Your point is that they lie about making money, but tell the truth with their actions. Which those companies prove other wise, AIG and GM were actually making large losses, but continued to spend spend spend. I don't know how you intepret examples in america...
It depends whose calculations you want to believe. I prefer to believe the owners, as the players assocation refused to account on the books for the repayments of loans, and acrewal of interest on the loans as net out goings, saying they had nothing to do with the accounting of the franchise (which is flat out retarded). It's a big reason i can't take anything the PA says seriously on the topic. Yes, there are ways to make money for your self, but net the franchise a loss. And they could all be cooking their books or... they could be selling.
You don't sell an asset that grows in value due to a extremely limited supply (which there is of NBA franchises) and is turning a good profit, just for the hell of it. They aren't bought as business investments by most of these guys. That doesn't mean they want to lose money, and have it turn into a huge sink hole.
200M for an NBA team isn't a lot, NOH who ARE strugling and losing money, sold for 300M, whats that figure of 200M mean then? (I know it's only for a majority share, not the whole team). But if they were all such proven long term investments making regular annual profit other companies would be lining up to buy them.
Just because a house in hollywood sold for 500M, doesn't mean thats what it cost to build and maintain, it just means that's its current market value.
