Make no mistake about it but the battle over the new arena in Milwaukee is a story about sports, specifically basketball.

Oh, the rhetoric is about politics, Downtown development, recreational facilities and history versus progress but it’s really all about the Milwaukee Bucks and the ability of this city to keep them here.

I know there’s a small group that thinks we’d be okay of the Bucks left, but I really believe that anyone with even an ounce of common sense knows we are much, much better off as a city with an NBA franchise that we would be without one.

I don’t have to go down the list of good things we get with a basketball team. It’s overwhelming and indisputable.

But there are problems on the horizon, not the least of which is the uber-loud group Common Ground that has dug its heels into the ground in opposition to any public financing for the arena unless money comes from somewhere to improve athletic and recreational facilities in Milwaukee.

For the life of me I don’t see how these two issues are related, but then again I’m not a member of Common Ground.

The latest tactic almost boggles my mind with the stretch they are making on this one.

Wes Edens, one of the Bucks owners, heads an investment group called Fortress. One of the holdings of Fortress is Nationstar Mortgage, a mortgage services company. Common Ground has found at least 14 abandoned and deteriorating properties in Milwaukee that they say is the responsibility of Nationstar.

Common Ground says it is particularly galling that a driving force behind the push for a new arena is also connected to the kind of neighborhood problems the group is trying to address.

"We are going to hold them accountable," Common Ground staff director Bob Connolly told the Journal-Sentinel. "They are responsible for those abandoned properties."

Now, saying that Edens is somehow responsible for and knows about these 14 properties is kind of like my saying that you bear responsibility for drunken driving accidents because you drive a car, and, on some occasions you have a beer at a backyard barbecue and everyone knows that beer and cars are major factors in drunken driving accidents.

There is no connection and it’s just not fair for me to make that comparison for you. But fairness is not in the Common Ground vocabulary.

I admit that we could use better athletic and recreational facilities in Milwaukee. But the fact is that fewer and fewer kids are going out for organized athletics and we need to balance what we build with what the actual need is.

I also admit we need more Downtown development and I do believe that a new arena would be a catalyst for it. I think all of that is true.

But the big truth for me is the Milwaukee Bucks of the National Basketball Association.

Sports, especially successful sports, can do so much for a city and for a region.

Having a team is a message to the rest of the world that we are a first class city. It can do wonders for the spirit of a city. Despite all these crazy studies by crazed scientists who say that there is no economic impact to a new arena, the fact is that without a new arena we won’t have a franchise. Go ask Major Goolsby’s how much the Bucks’ franchise means to its business.

What I would suggest to Common Ground is that they turn their sights on the Milwaukee Public Schools and Milwaukee County and the City of Milwaukee and make their case for better facilities there. I think they’ve got a good cause and they don’t need any kind of blackmail tactics to win that battle. They can win on its merits and trying this kind of leveraged pressure just diminishes the sincerity of their argument.