drastic drop in salaries - owners prepared for lockout

[fatlever]

http://basketball.realgm.com/src_wireta ... _salaries/

thoughts?

obviously something must be corrected. too many teams are losing money on a consistent basis. i dont think NBA teams should have to expect to lose money. i dont want to reward cheap owners either.

[Rich4114]

Salaries are out of control. The interest in the NBA has gone down, attendance has gone down, the economy has gone down, yet salaries have gone up. If they do the right thing and lower salaries, there will be a lockout. I wonder if they can run the league with replacements and non-NBA contracted guys from the NBDL?

The last lockout is actually what took the NBA from one level and dropped it down to the next. The long term impact of another lockout is bad for everyone. This is what happens when any kind of Union is involved though, they want to get paid, a lot, regardless of the circumstances or their true value to what they do.

I would not be surprised to see someone suggest they compensate by incorporating sponsors and advertisements on players jerseys nascar style. It would be pretty stupid looking, but it may be the least damaging option.

[ohara]

Salaries are out of control. The interest in the NBA has gone down, attendance has gone down, the economy has gone down, yet salaries have gone up. If they do the right thing and lower salaries, there will be a lockout. I wonder if they can run the league with replacements and non-NBA contracted guys from the NBDL?

The last lockout is actually what took the NBA from one level and dropped it down to the next. The long term impact of another lockout is bad for everyone. This is what happens when any kind of Union is involved though, they want to get paid, a lot, regardless of the circumstances or their true value to what they do.

I would not be surprised to see someone suggest they compensate by incorporating sponsors and advertisements on players jerseys nascar style. It would be pretty stupid looking, but it may be the least damaging option.

I think you are right on with your last comment. I absolutely can see that happening and decals and logos going on jerseys. Dont they do that in the European league already? May be wrong, but I thought they did.

[Felton for Pres]

Your Charlotte Bobcats...brought to you by... Summer's Eve

[Diop]

We have advertising on the jersey's in the Aussie league.

[floppymoose]

Your Charlotte Bobcats...brought to you by... Summer's Eve

When I read this I thought about the "Vagicil" plugs in the live sports coverage skit from SNL.

[Felton for Pres]

Your Charlotte Bobcats...brought to you by... Summer's Eve

When I read this I thought about the "Vagicil" plugs in the live sports coverage skit from SNL.

That was what I was going for. I suppose it make me a 12yr old boy, but those skits crack me up.

[fatlever]

all soccer leagues use corporate sponsorship to help with costs. i dont know why the NBA is too good to accept that money. that being said, would that give even more of an advantage to teams like the lakers who would be sponsored by major corps while teams like us would be lucky to anything decent.

[Walt Cronkite]

Armani Jeans Charlotte!

[countryboi]

would the bobcats make it though a lockout? their attendance has not been the best and we all know a lockout would only make matters worse....this sounds like a very bad thing for the cats

[Paydro70]

If there were contraction of the league, the Bobcats probably would be fairly high on the list of likely cuts. Not the highest, but high.

Salaries are only out of control because the owners allow them to be. The cap is directly tied to league revenues, so it decreases automatically when fewer people go to games. It's not the players' fault if some owners get over their heads with spending or do a bad job getting people to go to games.

I think sponsors on jerseys is a pretty OK thing, it works fine for European soccer.

[doc.end]

It is prett common in almost every sport in Europe. Sometimes the team is even called <name of the company> <name of the city/region> for example ČEZ Nymburk (that's the Zídek's one).

Edit: Oh, well officially it is actually ČEZ Basketball Nymburk, nevermind.

[fluffernutter]

This is an issue which should be an non-issue. Talk about blaming the wrong people!

I have to laugh at the owners and GM's complaining about high salaries when they are the ones giving out the high salaries!

Hey guys, how about this. Don't give $100+ million to guys like R Lewis. That has the effect of not bumping up contracts across the board. And how about not giving scrubs $20 million over 5 years.

If there is a problem with salaries, it is the fault of the owners, and they should be looking to themselves to better regulate how much they are willing to spend.

I mean, really. My boss gives me a raise, and I take it, and then a year later I get yelled at for taking the money and I'm punished and given a serious pay cut.

Like, WTF?

[fatlever]

its true, its absolutely the fault of the owners and GMs and stern. the players are just getting what they can.

someone has to protect this owners from themselves. all it takes is a few owners making ridiculous signings and it ruins it for everyone else.

i guess the owners are finally sick of the mess they made and are ready to band together to fix their mess. in the process, the fans are going to get screwed. i dont really feel bad for the players, cause the market was so ridiculously overinflated that even a player with an IQ of 70 should be able to figure out that the league cant sustain the insane salaries these players are making when the attendance and tv ratings just dont justify it on a league wide level.

so yeah, it sucks for some players who would have made 10 million 2 years ago, but will now only make 5 million. so sorry. i guess you can go play in europe if you dont like it.

every sector has been rocked by this economy, yet the sports world seems to keep handing out contracts like paper money. it has to change.

the NBA has two choices... get the spending under control, lower the salary cap and decrease the % of salaries related to income OR go the way of soccer/baseball, get rid of the cap and let the lakers, celtics and knicks dominate for the next 50 years while teams like charlotte and memphis turn into the kansas city royals.

[fluffernutter]

The galling thing is the assumption that the players have anything to do with what they are paid. If anything, they have agreed to LESS than they are worth, artificially. And still the owners whine!

Players push for as much as they can. We all do. Sometimes we have more leverage, sometimes less. But the bottom line is that, in pro basketball, unlike the real life, there is a "cap" on salaries. You can't pay LeBron $100 million a year, even if it would make your team $150 million additional in income. Sorry. This is managed capitalism. Strict free market people need not apply (thank god).

But it's the truth. Kobe, LeBron, Wade... they are underpaid. Their salary is capped. They have agreed to this. They have sacrificed for security (guaranteed contracts, union, etc.).

So some players are being underpaid, usually the super-duper stars. It's not their fault. But they accept it. They are already working at a disadvantage compared to normal Americans, for whom income is not "capped." Investment bankers wipe their butts with $150 million. Not all, but some. Their income is uncapped. If you are the president of United Health Care or whatever, your income is essentially uncapped (and unlimited). If you are a super-duper stock market stud, you can make $500 million a year. Whatever.

Yet we have players who have agreed to caps - which are already artificial - who are then being blamed or slighted or impugned or... really... anything, about the size of their salaries?

The players cannot and do not sign checks. They don't determine their income. All they can do is present themselves to the artificially constrained market and see what somebody pays them.

Remember, the players have already agreed to keep owner salaries low via the cap and a hundred other ways (max number of players on a team, unable to pay for lotto picks over a certain amount, etc. etc. etc.).

Time for the owners to step up and self-police. It's up to them. The players have already given. They are helping keep salaries down. The owners... not so much. So get on it, grow a spine, and quit whining.

I honestly don't see the problem. If a player is asking too much, and nobody bites, he reduces his asking price. If an owner is foolish and overpays, the owner is foolish. That's not a systemic issue. It's an issue of personal responsibility cloaked as something else.

Oh, and BTW. Doesn't pretty much everyone agree that paying Gilbert A $111 million over X years is far preferable to the jokers on Wall Street who make easily as much, give far less entertainment value, and actually destroy lives/economies? Last time I checked, Gilbert hadn't caused anyone to lose their job. Well, except himself.

[spectre_]

Put me in the "it's the owner's fault" camp. All you guys covered it as well or better than I could have.

[UGA Hayes]

I couldn't agree more. I saw one quote saying Amare Stoudemire is going to have to accept making 6 million a year. I understand that we are in a economic downturn but I'm skeptical that it has reached the point where a mid 20 year old near max player in a multibillion dollar league would be making only 6 mil. If you carry that thought process to its conclusion and every player took a paycut on that scale, the players as a whole would probably be taking 65-70% pay cut. I fell for this trick once when the baseball owners pull the wool over the public eyes. I'm not falling for it again.

[Rich4114]

This isn't only a problem in the NBA, but in the NFL, MLB, and even NHL too. Owners of sports teams ARE those clown shoe stock market guys you're referring to. Not all of them are as crazy with their money, but you've got guys who are willing to spend more than anyone else, it's like a giant auction really. If ALL the owners were willing to only spend $5m/yr max on a player then that would be it and the players couldn't do a damn thing unless they wanted to play in another league.

The other idea to balance this stuff out is some kind of advanced revenue sharing. I think something like that exists now, but if they made it so all of the expenses/profits went into a giant NBA pool and it was then divided by 32... well we wouldn't have the scenario Fats mentioned (big markets dominating, small markets being farm teams).

[Paydro70]

I virtually always side with the players over the owners in a dispute. The simple reality is that one side are millionaires who were middle class or lower for the most part, the other are billionaires, who mostly were born that way.

One note Rich: The NFL shouldn't really be lumped with the others. The hard cap ensures that all teams spend pretty much right up to the cap every year, which does ensure decent competitive balance, the big teams can only out/overspend on coaches and stadiums, not player salaries. The downside, of course, is that nobody makes much money playing football except Peyton Manning, and they're all left crippled for life, but.... uh... yeah.

[countryboi]

I virtually always side with the players over the owners in a dispute. The simple reality is that one side are millionaires who were middle class or lower for the most part, the other are billionaires, who mostly were born that way.

One note Rich: The NFL shouldn't really be lumped with the others. The hard cap ensures that all teams spend pretty much right up to the cap every year, which does ensure decent competitive balance, the big teams can only out/overspend on coaches and stadiums, not player salaries. The downside, of course, is that nobody makes much money playing football except Peyton Manning, and they're all left crippled for life, but.... uh... yeah.

after this season the NFL will be lumped in there too...cause its a uncapped season and most people say once the cap has been lifted its never coming back on...