Great Article About Stars Taking Less

[thinktellectual]

Another great piece from Lowe. I expect another lockout coming and this time the players should be more united + the public won't be as pro-management as they were last in 2011. Ballooning franchise values + exponential growth in TV revenue, if the players' union is any good they will have a better PR campaign than last time.

I wouldn't count on the fans siding with the players this time.
As one of my favorite quotes goes:

Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity.

[DeeDub]

If the players are smart, in the next round of CBA negotiations, they will make a credible threat of forming their own league. And it wouldn't be very hard to do. They'd just need a players (which they'd have), uniforms and balls (small costs), arenas (most of which are not owned by teams and would be happy to have another tenant) and a TV contract. There are a lot of players who have made $100M+ and are internationally recognized brands of their own. With a little organization and a little venture capital, they could get a mega TV deal. If a new league with all the players, or even just most of the top ones, auctioned off the TV/broadcast rights they would make many billions. It would kill the networks that have the current NBA rights but that would only encourage the competing networks to want it more.

It could be structured in a bunch of different ways but I'd go with a single entity approach. All players employed by the league but assigned to different divisions (teams). Use the law firm model and have rookies sign scale contracts but after the rookie contract you become a partner and have equity and share in profits. When you retire, you give up your equity in exchange for some cash.

Turn it around and put coaches and management on small scale contracts. Share the profits among the players. The NBA would be dead within a few years. And if nothing else, the threat of that would dramatically change the complexion on CBA negotiations.


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[sp6r=underrated]

All the talk about "competitive balance" or that teams are going bankrupt was just propaganda to get the fans to side with management. It worked because a majority fans are predisposed to side with the owners for many reasons including some very negative ones.

Give me a good reason for fans supporting management instead of the players, cause I can only think of negative ones:

* stupidity
* envy
* racism

I actually created a thread on the GB to figure out why fans sided with owners. I gave several options for people to pick. viewtopic.php?t=1123894

- Fans side with the owners because they believe the owners demands will lead to greater competitive balance.

- Fans side with the owners due to political political philosophy. Many fans are right wing and always side with management in labor disputes regardless of the industry.

- Fans side with the owners because of resentment. Players "get paid millions to play a kids game."

- Fans side with the owners because they believe ticket/merchandise prices are impacted by players salaries.

- Fans side with owners partly because of unconscious biases. A majority of athletes are minorities and a majority of sports fans are white.

- Combination of the above reasons

I still think these are mostly the reasons fans side with owners though I would slightly change the wording for some.

[Ballah]

I believe the current CBA has resulted in a much more interesting league, if the owners benefit from that then so be it. They were right after all.