I'm not sure "mismanage" is strong enough. What the McCourt's did verges on fraud. Keep in mind MLB (ie, the other owners) loaned him and his wife money to buy the franchise in the first place (they had nothing like the resources necessary to buy the team on their own). They then split off all the cashflow pieces (ticketing, parking, etc) into separate companies and borrowed against those to fund their
lifestyle ($10K a month on a hairstylist, 6-digit Dodgers jobs for each of their sons despite them having separate employment elsewhere, $14M swimming pool, etc). They also paid no income tax the entire time they were owners.
(
This piece is dated now, and obviously long, but just look at the flowchart it contains showing all the pieces the Dodgers were broken into and borrowed against -- this is the "shell game" I was talking about)
Yet the little club of MLB owners will extend loans to guys like this (and Jeffery Loria in Miami, don't get me started) but they don't want anything to do with potential owners like Mark Cuban. (And with good reason, of course: they're scared someone like that will call them out on their stupidity)
In fact, the Dodger brand isn't ruined, and the team is still close to competitive in the NL West. The team has a huge residual of goodwill among its fans (and fans of baseball in general) and all of its recent failures are tied directly to McCourt; as soon as he's gone, the new owners automatically get a boost by simply being "not McCourt" -- and doubly so if the public face is Magic Johnson. The trouble is, if they're forced to still be in bed with McCourt in any way, his stench will cling to the new regime (whether it deserves to or not). They need to get rid of him completey.... which, unfortunately, probably means he gets a nice added payout to sell the parking lots and go away. Though I doubt they'll do it, I'd love to see the new owners launch a civil suit against McCourt once they get their hands on
all the books -- I'm sure there would be plenty of basis.