Great Article About Stars Taking Less

[GreenHat]

http://grantland.com/features/nba-miami-heat-double-standard-contract-sacrifice-lebron-james-chris-bosh-houston-rockets-free-agency/

Touches on a lot of points I've been saying.

[sp6r=underrated]

Lowe misstates what the owners were fighting for in the lockout.

They weren't fighting for competitive balance. The owners don't care about that. The new policies prove they don't care because they do nothing to further competitive balance and are actually harmful.

They weren't fighting for revenue sharing. The owners are fiercely divided on revenue sharing. Owners in rich markets oppose it while those in small support.

The owners were fighting the war of capital against labor. Their primary purpose was to reduce the share of money that went to the players. In that they were widely successful. The BRI was lowered and the players further divided which should help them win the next CBA just as they won in 1999.

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.

[daniel3]

Last CBA arguments have pretty much shown to be a farce. The owners aren't hurting for money and many of them are sitting on multi-billion dollar investments. The league is also growing at a rather sizeable amount as well.

[GreenHat]

Lowe misstates what the owners were fighting for in the lockout.

They weren't fighting for competitive balance. The owners don't care about that. The new policies prove they don't care because they do nothing to further competitive balance and are actually harmful.

They weren't fighting for revenue sharing. The owners are fiercely divided on revenue sharing. Owners in rich markets oppose it while those in small support.

The owners were fighting the war of capital against labor. Their primary purpose was to reduce the share of money that went to the players. In that they were widely successful. The BRI was lowered and the players further divided which should help them win the next CBA just as they won in 1999.

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.

You must not have read the article. He said the same thing which was what I was saying during the lockout.

Adam Silver trumpeted that catchphrase (competitive balance) every chance he got during the 2011 lockout, but the league’s primary goal during that torturous offseason was to transfer cash from players to owners.

[sp6r=underrated]

Lowe misstates what the owners were fighting for in the lockout.

They weren't fighting for competitive balance. The owners don't care about that. The new policies prove they don't care because they do nothing to further competitive balance and are actually harmful.

They weren't fighting for revenue sharing. The owners are fiercely divided on revenue sharing. Owners in rich markets oppose it while those in small support.

The owners were fighting the war of capital against labor. Their primary purpose was to reduce the share of money that went to the players. In that they were widely successful. The BRI was lowered and the players further divided which should help them win the next CBA just as they won in 1999.

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.

You must not have read the article. He said the same thing which was what I was saying during the lockout.

Adam Silver trumpeted that catchphrase (competitive balance) every chance he got during the 2011 lockout, but the league’s primary goal during that torturous offseason was to transfer cash from players to owners.

I did read the article but I mis-read or glazed over the sentence. For most of the article he writes as if the owners tried but failed to promote competitive balance especially from the 3rd and 4th paragraph.

Apologies to Lowe for mis-characterizing his article but I do think it was a case of burying the lead.

[GreenHat]

Yeah Lowe has been on the Owners for just chasing money veiled under "competitive balance" for a while.

He brings up some good points about us specifically:

“Teams are being exposed for what they are doing,” says Ron Klempner, the interim executive director of the players’ association. “It has been laid bare. They are hiding behind the rules. Teams like the Heat have the ability to bring back all their players, and give them raises, but they are choosing to go in another direction.”

He continued: “There is a misperception that players are being asked to cover for their teams. But I am concerned that the sacrifice they are making is not as much for the good of their teams as it is for the good of the owners.”

In other words, the Heat asked for the opt-outs so Pat Riley could deliver this message to his stars: “You have to take pay cuts, otherwise we’re not going to be able to bring in Josh freaking McRoberts with the full midlevel.”

Putting the apron in play also conveniently hard-caps the Heat just above the tax line, reducing Micky Arison’s exposure to huge tax payments. Miami can spend only so much now.

But the Heat could have proceeded down a less frugal path, giving raises to their own free agents (via Bird rights) and digging deeper to find quality players without using the full midlevel and triggering the apron. Hell, the Heat got Allen and Battier using the smaller midlevel exception for tax teams — the one they deemed not good enough to snag McRoberts this time around. Fill out the roster with that toolbox, and there’s no need for the guys producing the wins to take haircuts.

Granger is going to make only about $700,000 more than his minimum salary, and he didn’t produce at a rate that merits much more than that last season. McRoberts had a nice season, and the market for bigs who can shoot, walk upright, and hold a basketball is climbing fast.

But Klempner’s point is this: The Heat are asking their stars to forfeit millions so the team can pay McRoberts and Granger an extra $2.7 million per year combined and Arison’s Carnival Cruise Lines can continue to offer the very best in overstuffed buffets and kitsch. And the Heat have opted against just re-signing their own guys because the roster they built was no longer good enough. Whose fault is that?

Harder, but not impossible. The CBA provides team-building mechanisms for everyone, even the mega-spenders, and deep-pocketed owners could always green-light tax payments when a championship window emerges. The salary rules in the NBA are so complicated that players are losing the public relations battle because it’s just simpler to point to Duncan and say, “Be like him.”

But sacrifice is a two-way street, and every situation is a beehive of complex variables. No choice is easy, and the hero/villain lines are never as clear as we’d like. If it’s so virtuous for a great player to give up salary, why shouldn’t an owner also be called upon to lose money if it will help his team win?

Which ties into what I was saying last year. You keep Miller not for the player but for the expiring contract. Then you can match salaries in a trade for a higher price guy during the year. You get the mini-MLE instead of the MLE but you get that salary slot to trade and you know longer have to worry about the apron. I think that's why Riley (and Ellsburg) wanted to keep Miller.

Of course it costs a lot more money but its a better use of resources. I would rather have two mini-MLE guys (last year and this year) plus Miller's expiring to trade for a 7 mil ish guy than McRoberts and Granger. And we wouldn't have to worry about the apron then or making asking guys to take less.

To do that would require putting winning well above money and not many owners are willing to do that, including ours.

[HeatGuyInChicago]

No doubt the owners are raking in the bucks, and their time is coming. The 2 billion dollar franchise worth and the huge tv revenue deal coming up, the players are opting out of the CBA and will win the next CBA. The owners cleverly used the superteam and small market team imbalance to win the last CBA.

[PaulieWal]

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.

[sp6r=underrated]

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 wish the public would side with the players but I doubt it will happen.

Read the GB. A huge chunk of threads are people trying to come up with Rube Goldberg schemes to end free agency completely. It stinks.

[PaulieWal]

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 wish the public would side with the players but I doubt it will happen.

Read the GB. A huge chunk of threads are people trying to come up with Rube Goldberg schemes to end free agency completely. It stinks.

The GB is always a compilation of lowest common denominator opinions and posts for the most part (sorry if I sound harsh). You are right though. When the lockout actually takes place the public will put pressure on the players to take less and the owners/NBA will undoubtedly have much better PR/marketing on their side.

Something that's not being mentioned enough is that the NBPA is still a cluster**** and they haven't recovered from the Billy Hunter fiasco (did they even pick his full-time replacement)? Even if the public doesn't side with the players, the onus is on them this time to dig deep. You have franchise values skyrocketing and the new TV deal could almost double the existing contract. If the NBPA can't get its act together in time for 2017, then the joke is on them.

[sp6r=underrated]

The GB is always a compilation of lowest common denominator opinions and posts for the most part (sorry if I sound harsh). You are right though. When the lockout actually takes place the public will put pressure on the players to take less and the owners/NBA will undoubtedly have much better PR/marketing on their side.

Something that's not being mentioned enough is that the NBPA is still a cluster**** and they haven't recovered from the Billy Hunter fiasco (did they even pick his full-time replacement)? Even if the public doesn't side with the players, the onus is on them this time to dig deep. You have franchise values skyrocketing and the new TV deal could almost double the existing contract. If the NBPA can't get its act together in time for 2017, then the joke is on them.

In fairness to union management it is much harder to hold the players together. The owners are almost all, save the clown who runs my team, shrewd businessmen with substantial business experience. Furthermore there are only 30 of them and capital always has superior bargaining power to labor.

By contrast there are hundreds of players. Most of the players have very limited business experience and are facing very short careers. The shortness of their careers makes it very hard for the players to say screw it cancel the season.

20 to 30 years down the road I think the situation of the players will be far better. Basketball is becoming the 2nd biggest global sport. It will be in our lifetime that other leagues can offer comparable or superior contracts to an NBA that operates under the BRI. Once that happens the owners will be in trouble.

[PaulieWal]

The GB is always a compilation of lowest common denominator opinions and posts for the most part (sorry if I sound harsh). You are right though. When the lockout actually takes place the public will put pressure on the players to take less and the owners/NBA will undoubtedly have much better PR/marketing on their side.

Something that's not being mentioned enough is that the NBPA is still a cluster**** and they haven't recovered from the Billy Hunter fiasco (did they even pick his full-time replacement)? Even if the public doesn't side with the players, the onus is on them this time to dig deep. You have franchise values skyrocketing and the new TV deal could almost double the existing contract. If the NBPA can't get its act together in time for 2017, then the joke is on them.

In fairness to union management it is much harder to hold the players together. The owners are almost all, save the clown who runs my team, shrewd businessmen with substantial business experience. Furthermore there are only 30 of them and capital always has superior bargaining power to labor.

By contrast there are hundreds of players. Most of the players have very limited business experience and are facing very short careers. The shortness of their careers makes it very hard for the players to say screw it cancel the season.

20 to 30 years down the road I think the situation of the players will be far better. Basketball is becoming the 2nd biggest global sport. It will be in our lifetime that other leagues can offer comparable or superior contracts to an NBA that operates under the BRI. Once that happens the owners will be in trouble.

Oh, I agree with all that but even accounting for all of that the NBPA is a mess and Billy Hunter sold them out last time. I understand that they won't be able to say, "Screw this season" but they need better leadership, better PR/marketing, and more unity. If they can't get at least some concessions from the owners now when the iron is hot I don't know when they will be able to strike. I think the best thing for the players would be if another team gets sold close to 2017 for an exorbitant amount.

[NBA82]

It's a good article.

Arison is really an overrated owner. He has penny pinched for a long time, and now that penny-pinching might have contributed to pushing LeBron away. I don't know if he slides because the fans don't really understand he's doing it or because the team has been so successful, but it's absurd that he would slash salary and trade assets away from a team that had a legitimate shot at three-peating. Arison has a net worth of ~$6 billion. He's more than twice as wealthy as Mark Cuban and the Dolan family, and 10 times as wealthy as Dr. Buss was. And he's sitting on a team that has appreciated well over 3000% in value (yes, that's 3 zeroes) over 26 years.

It was a joke that this guy asked the entire roster to sacrifice, sold it as the defining feature of the team, and then played poor and dumped Miller/Joel for financial reasons. Just about every player on the team is sacrificing salary, and he's laughing to the bank. I don't like what LeBron is doing with his free agency, but I don't blame him at all for demanding the max and being pissed about Miller/Joel.

[puppa bear]

I think the repeater tax & the incremental tax really caused things like Arison wanting to amnesty Miller. If he didn't have to pay $2.50 per $1, and risk the dreaded repeater tax, then he would have bit the bullet, and they would have use the mMLE as well. Heck, the mMLE for tax payers reduces a teams ability to improve its talent core except for fridge additions.

They need to go back to the previous CBAs way of dealing with tax & MLE, then more teams will be willing to pay tax & teams who penny pinch will get more $ back. The combo of these punitive measures AND revenue sharing really limits who will be willing to go into the lux tax (if your classes as a big market & aren't competing for the championship then there's no benefit in having a tax team).

[GreenHat]

No doubt the owners are raking in the bucks, and their time is coming. The 2 billion dollar franchise worth and the huge tv revenue deal coming up, the players are opting out of the CBA and will win the next CBA. The owners cleverly used the superteam and small market team imbalance to win the last CBA.

That was just for the media. The owners won the CBA because they have Billions of dollars and can keep making money for the rest of their lives while the players have millions of dollars (some less) and only a limited window to keep making money. That leverage is what wins the owners every CBA.

Its the same issue in nearly all labor disputes but the public always sides with the labor. In this case the public sides with the owners because while they can usually relate to the labor more than the owners, that's not the case here. Its not hard to see why.

[GreenHat]

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 wish the public would side with the players but I doubt it will happen.

Read the GB. A huge chunk of threads are people trying to come up with Rube Goldberg schemes to end free agency completely. It stinks.

The public usually sides with the side they can relate to. In almost all cases that's the labor because they don't want to side with old rich billionaires because of jealousy and other factors. In this case the public is more jealous and against the millionaires rather than the billionaires. You can even see it when a player refuses to take a lot less its "he has so much money, he should just do it" but that argument is conspicuously absent when an owner cuts cost even though the owner has way more money.

Its ridiculous the amount of hoops people will jump through to hate on the players over the owners. It's like they think if the players take a paycut then tickets will become cheaper.

[sp6r=underrated]

It's like they think if the players take a paycut then tickets will become cheaper.

sadly a lot of people do. I can't tell you how many threads I've participated in which I've had to explain players' salaries had no impact on the cost of tickets and merchandise.

[GreenHat]

It's a good article.

Arison is really an overrated owner. He has penny pinched for a long time, and now that penny-pinching might have contributed to pushing LeBron away. I don't know if he slides because the fans don't really understand he's doing it or because the team has been so successful, but it's absurd that he would slash salary and trade assets away from a team that had a legitimate shot at three-peating. Arison has a net worth of ~$6 billion. He's more than twice as wealthy as Mark Cuban and the Dolan family, and 10 times as wealthy as Dr. Buss was. And he's sitting on a team that has appreciated well over 3000% in value (yes, that's 3 zeroes) over 26 years.

It was a joke that this guy asked the entire roster to sacrifice, sold it as the defining feature of the team, and then played poor and dumped Miller/Joel for financial reasons. Just about every player on the team is sacrificing salary, and he's laughing to the bank. I don't like what LeBron is doing with his free agency, but I don't blame him at all for demanding the max and being pissed about Miller/Joel.

Yeah I still remember the cries of "Arison can't pay the tax because then he would look like a hypocrite because he was one of the people who helped institute it"

Why do you think he wanted it instituted?

Arison was the second richest owner in the league at that time and it was inherited wealth (his dad was one of the richest men in the world at one point)

No one move has been egregious but putting it all together the team (especially the depth) has suffered in exchange for profits. And the same argument levied at the players "he has more money than he needs" should be way more relevant to Arison who has more money than all the players who have ever played on the Heat combined.

But of course people hate the players (when it comes to money) but not the owners.

[GreenHat]

It's like they think if the players take a paycut then tickets will become cheaper.

sadly a lot of people do. I can't tell you how many threads I've participated in which I've had to explain players' salaries had no impact on the cost of tickets and merchandise.

Ha yeah same.

People don't seem to understand that prices are set by demand, not by costs.

[thinktellectual]

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

One of the biggest problems of the US is that (mostly through the red scare, I guess) it managed to turn workers against workers. Divide et impera. It's unbelievable how many workers are willing to side with the ownership against their fellow workers. Just as unbelievable how many workers are against syndicates (who are supposed to help the workers negotiate with the ownership as equals instead of having an ant eater negotiate with each ant in part) or regulation (when a lot of regulation is supposed to keep the workers and consumers safe, especially from stuff that's not so obvious - like poison in food or badly made products).

I am not a communist - in fact I hate communism, but a country needs some social protection.
Instead, the US is becoming a darwinian society. Funny enough, many of those who push for this kind of society hate Darwin and reject his theory.