gswhoops wrote:shrink wrote:gswhoops wrote:I agree with TC’s framing here. These are two separate transactions and should be seen as such.
Transaction #1 is between the player (Kemba) and their current team (OKC). If the player and team can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement where the player gives back some money and gets to hit free agency early as a result, then they can execute it. Detroit benefitted more from saving $15M than keeping Blake on the roster, so they gave him a buyout. It wasn’t an act of charity.
Transaction #2 is wherever the player chooses to sign in FA. If Kemba would rather play for the Lakers for the TPMLE than the Knicks for $20M, that’s his right and I’m not sure how you “fix” that without fundamentally breaking the free movement of players.
Other than some minor fixes around the edges (maybe you limit in-season buyouts to players in the final year of their contract?) I don’t see how you solve the “problem” of players being willing to take less to play for a better team without radically changing the way the NBA offseason is conducted.
I understand your point, but in real life, these aren’t two separate transactions. The player’s agent has already made the phone calls, and his player decides whether to negotiate a buy out knowing how much and where the next offers will be. The second transaction affects the player’s decision on the first.
The NBA head office has it’s overriding provisions for two, legal transactions to be overruled, and it’s when they block a deal for circumvention. To me, this is the loophole here for in-season buy outs. It may help the individual teams, but unless the NBA wants to start the impossible task of rewriting it’s parity rules to not be based on players’ salaries, but rather their impact, the current system is unfair to most teams in the league. Any time a player wants to sacrifice money to give a team a talent boost - that’s unfair. But in the off-season, at least they have the deterrent of losing a season’s worth of higher salary. In-season buyouts don’t even do that - they get paid market value for the majority of the season by the first team, and then only take a small nick to play for less than market.
Playing for less than your worth is the door that David West used (and thanks for reminding me of his name - I’ve been trying to remember it for a month!). And we are seeing right now that the playoffs have been impacted by Blake Griffin, who’s production has been worth far more than his vet min contract. The loophole remains for an even better player, who may have already made his fortune, to completely unbalance a championship. I think before that happens, to help maintain league parity, this loophole needs to be closed.
I'm fine, at least conceptually, with putting additional limitations on in-season buyouts because I agree that they're a different beast that offseason buyouts. I'm not sure how that looks in practice though - do you ban them completely? Limit them to players in the final year of their contract? Make them pass through waivers or some kind of bidding system before they're free agents?
I do think that this whole discussion is putting way more emphasis on the player "forcing" their way out, and ignoring that the player is giving up money, sometimes very significant money, because they want to play for a contender. Would this discussion be all that different if Blake had negotiated a buyout for the same amount last offseason and then signed with Brooklyn for the minimum?
At the end of the day I don't see a way around the fundamental "problem" (if you think it is one) that sometimes players will be willing to take less money to play for a better team. You'd have to completely up-end free agency and IMO the cure would be far worse than the disease.
Good post.
My first question would be .. Do you think Blake Griffin WOULD have negotiated a buyout if he was only paid the minimum for an entire season? I don’t know, but at least that would have truly been a very significant amount of money lost, to make that choice.
EDIT: Blake gave up $13.3 mil over two years to make this move. That is significant. But I believe he was going to get $37 mil this year, and had a player option for $39 the next year. If he had negotiated a buyout in the offseason, I would have liked to see him play for only the vet min. Maybe continuing to have one team pay a player on another team isn’t something we should be comfortable with either. How much is DET paying to subsidize Blake’s production in BRK?
Anyway, maybe that would be enough of a disincentive to allow the loophole to remain? A player can do a mutually agreed upon buyout with his team, but if he was under contract for the entire season, he is ineligible to join a new team until the off-season, so he doesn’t unbalance the playoffs? And he must sacrifice the unearned part of his remaining contract.