RealGM

A Game of Groans

https://www.southsidesox.com/2024/4/20/24134568/a-game-of-groans-chicago-white-sox-historically-bad-because-of-owner-jerry-reinsdorf

Michael Jackson wrote:

step wrote:

Michael Jackson wrote:Suddenly the max contracts were sub 10 million when they came back. Hell even in 2010 the Heatles all initially signed for under 10 I think like 9.5. Too lazy to look it up.

$14.5M for the most part.
https://www.espn.com/nba/salaries/_/year/2011/seasontype/1

That makes sense since 9 was the max contract for the new CBA and this was a decade later. So on overage it was about a .5 million increase year over year.

I think They all took a "smidge less and Wade took the biggest hit because he would have been paid more due to his bird rights.


Did Amare do a sign and trade? Just interesting he made about 2 mil more than the Heatles so maybe it was more than a smidge, might have been close to 2 mil per...

Joe Johnson got like 20 Per that same off-season. Goes to show why they were always so mediocre when you have Joe freakin Johnson getting more than Lebron/Wade/Bosh in the same off-season

fleet wrote:A Game of Groans

https://www.southsidesox.com/2024/4/20/24134568/a-game-of-groans-chicago-white-sox-historically-bad-because-of-owner-jerry-reinsdorf

saw this the other day and thought it was spot on and a good summary of his blunders -- except that the game of thrones references seem a little dated. I might've picked a different framing device than a tv show that went off the air five years ago and is no longer part of the cultural zeitgeist.

also this quote annoyed me for a couple reasons:

In La Russa’s time as manager, the team went from competitive to mediocre in just two seasons as the world watched a lazing and unenthused keeper of an archaic style of play implement management techniques that clashed with the youth movement the White Sox had spent years developing. La Russa admonished fiery, competitive, vocal team leaders like Tim Anderson while stifling the growth and confidence of young players competing for their future like Yermín Mercedes.

La Russa never "admonished" Tim Anderson and the two have a very good relationship. the last time I heard TA speak publicly he went out of his way to shout out TLR. Actually, several "leaders" on that team when it was actually good spoke out in his favor without any goading. There was some braindead talk that La Russa is a white supremacist because he got mad at the Cuban guy (Mercedes) for swinging at a 3-0 pitch against a position player. Mercedes was god awful and had a terrible attitude to boot, he had literally two good weeks in his professional career then stopped playing baseball, the author doesn't really need to exaggerate these things to make his point, his growth wasn't "stifled" he was just a bad player with a bad attitude.

hiring La Russa was stupid especially when the alternative was Hinch but the team played well under him and, by any account I can find, liked playing for him. of course now we're stuck with the room temperature IQ guy who shouldn't be managing little league

The Bulls print money for Reinsdorf..bulls led the league in attendance, again. He has no incentive to make the team better. Put yourself in his shoes- Your restaurant is full every night and extremely profitable- would you make any changes?

[youtube]https://youtube.com/shorts/d__njiK5Th8?si=et1q65jY-lc09hHG[/youtube]

greenl wrote:The Bulls print money for Reinsdorf..bulls led the league in attendance, again. He has no incentive to make the team better. Put yourself in his shoes- Your restaurant is full every night and extremely profitable- would you make any changes?

Yes. I feel like sports teams should be run by elite wealth that run them to fuel their competitive spirit. Not as a primary source of income.

greenl wrote:The Bulls print money for Reinsdorf..bulls led the league in attendance, again. He has no incentive to make the team better. Put yourself in his shoes- Your restaurant is full every night and extremely profitable- would you make any changes?

The Bulls aren't doing that great from a business perspective relative to what they could be doing.

The Bulls ticket price is lagging what it could be by probably 50%. The Bulls "sell out" but a ton of it is charity giveaway tickets and no shows who don't come and buy merch / concessions and don't generate revenue.

The local TV / Radio deals are worth half, maybe even 25% of what they could be if the Bulls were a really good team.

This idea that the Bulls are just maximizing money because attendance numbers are good is way, way off. They have huge incentive to be a better team. Not at the cost of adding 100M in tax payments, but they couldn't be a significantly better team by doing that anyway since they have no meaningful avenue to add a ton of talent if they were just willing to spend, they could add maybe a 7th man caliber talent right now.

Their current problem is the front office is awful and has lost on all of its big swings, hung on to its assets too long to watch them diminish in value, has the 11th highest payroll and is the worst or 2nd worst team that isn't actively tanking.

Ownership and spending probably is a barrier to winning a title, but that barrier would come when we have a team like Boston or Milwaukee and its time to take a big swing and also pay big tax dollars. Do I think Reinsdorf would do that? I have serious doubts.
Our current problem is not being cheap, our current problem is that they won't fire the incompetent front office they hired.

WindyCityBorn wrote:

greenl wrote:The Bulls print money for Reinsdorf..bulls led the league in attendance, again. He has no incentive to make the team better. Put yourself in his shoes- Your restaurant is full every night and extremely profitable- would you make any changes?

Yes. I feel like sports teams should be run by elite wealth that run them to fuel their competitive spirit. Not as a primary source of income.

I think the better scenario is that you balance the league where spend can't be a significant difference, like the NFL. You are always going to have different types of owners, there aren't enough fanatical billionaires in the US to cover the 120 or so major pro US sports teams, let alone ones that also have die hard interest in the sport.