Lockout

[510TWSS]

I hope the players freeze out the owners for the entire year. Let's see what happens to Stern when the profitable teams start to eat him alive.

That would be interesting to see Stern get eviscerated on TV then flogged in the board room.

But I do wish for a speedy lockout if at all possible. The NFL now the NBA lockout = Lockout Overload. Sick of it and all it's talking heads. Just get it done and e-mail me when you make a decision.

[Carl_Monday]

From Larry Coon's article:

Union president Derek Fisher placed the blame squarely on the teams' front offices. "We've run into situations where teams have either mismanaged spending, overpaid staff, or made decisions on rosters and personnel that weren't in their best interest -- things that we're now being asked to take the hit for,"

You mean like some schmuck giving Derek Fisher $37 million over six years? Eff you Rotten Fish.


The NBA is losing money as a whole, and the salary system/length of guarenteed contracts is totally out of whack, but not nearly to the extent that the owners are whining about. IMO it has become detrimental to the league, but not worth losing a season over.

Just institute a reasonable hard cap ($65 to $70 million range), institute a reasonable minimum team salary ($45 to $50 million), get rid of trade restrictions and signing restrictions (not necessary with a hard cap), limit the length of guarenteed contracts to 3/4 or 4/5 years instead of 5/6 years, and institute some level of revenue sharing. All of that evens the playing field some, still rewards well managed teams, and addresses the current revenue/income issues.

The counter argument is that poorly run teams should greatly suffer for their mistakes and face the consequences. I'm not toally against that, but the NBA is not a real-world business controlled by the market economy. In the real world, the Timberwolves would have folded years ago and the NBA as a whole woud have become stronger. The truth is that the league is weighed down by its weakest link. For a lot of the poorly managed teams, bad long-term contracts weigh down the team. That aspect of free agency always fundamentally hurts the league for "non-superstar players". If you imagine that each player has a "correct" intrinsic value in free agency, the "winner" is never the bidder who gets closest to that value, it's always the one who bids the most. Limiting the legth of contracts does protect teams from making bad mistakes (necessary because the NBA is not really a free market), but it also greatly rewards those players that produce.

With the structure of the league as is, the above issues won't ever go away unless there is a drastic change. Something that would fix the above is relegation, which I'm all for. Imagine if after another crappy year the Kings and T-Wolves got relegated and had to join the NBDL. Adding a basic aspect of Darwinism to the league would definitely fix the problems of the bottom dwellers and make the league stronger as a whole. But that ain't happening any time soon.

[floppymoose]

If you are shortening contracts you have to raise the maximum. For some of the contracts players are getting, the teams fully expect that the player won't be worth the year 6 amount in year 6. But they are offerringvthat because the player is worth more than the max in the early years of the deal. If teams can no longer offer the extra years, they need to be able to offer more money per year.

[Carl_Monday]

If you are shortening contracts you have to raise the maximum. For some of the contracts players are getting, the teams fully expect that the player won't be worth the year 6 amount in year 6. But they are offerringvthat because the player is worth more than the max in the early years of the deal. If teams can no longer offer the extra years, they need to be able to offer more money per year.

Definitely agree. Furthermore, there's even an argument that says you can get rid of the max contract limit altogether if you have a reasonable hard cap in place. Decreasing length and getting rid of limits (like the MLE, which has been terrible for the league IMO), provides some protection to the teams down the road, while at the same time rewarding those players that deserve it. Sure it's not perfect, but it's better than the current situation.

In related news, Stephen Jackson has already hit up the Bucks about extending him.

[Twinkie defense]

And I have very little sympathy for owners who want a guaranteed profit no matter how stupidly they run their business, and want that guarantee on the backs of the players.

How come Patrick O'Bryant gets a guaranteed profit but Robert Sarver can't?

That's the business. In order for Sarver to make money, he needs to make solid investment choices. The players create the revenue streams for owners, not the other way around. Business people make poor investment choices every day, POB is an example of one in the NBA business. Make a bad investment, lose money, simple.

It's not POBs fault NBA owners throw money at him. He tried his best, did well for himself with the little skill he posessed.

Screw that. POB took advantage of the perversity of the system. He's not creating a revenue stream for anyone but himself, and doesn't deserve to be a millionaire for the crap job he did for his teams and fans.

How about the only change that is made is player contracts become unguaranteed, like the jobs of the rest of the universe. That way the good ones can still make their ridiculous $90 mil, but no one has to waste $8 mil on a loser like POB.

[Twinkie defense]

It's also not true that owners can simply choose not to participate in the ridiculousness, they are part and parcel of a system that is designed to overpay talent. Obviously, if the players are guaranteed 57% or whatever it is of overall revenue, it logically follows that teams couldn't just have low-paid players on their rosters. They aren't even allowed to keep just eight or nine players on their roster if they want, they're forced to keep paying guys to sit on the bench or play in the D-League. Bottom line is they struck a bad deal with the players in the last CBA and they're trying to renegotiate terms once that deal is up, just like any business.

[floppymoose]

Yeah, they struck such a bad deal that team value has steadily gone up.

[jamesnamida]

umm, correct me if im wrong, but can't all the nba players just organize and play in non nba buildings,
like it would'nt cost too much to put a regulation nba court in a hockey ring, or they can just use college or non nba league courts.

pretty much keep their teams, but name them something different, and play each other, by starting a new league.
I'm sure they still will get people to the games, and easily a tv contract somewhere.
They just need to hire new people planning and managing the games and business.
It'll be the same stars...

but then again thats alot of work. and they would have to find a new way to split revenue.


or if most of them take a minimum salary for a season in china... omg they'd make so much money from other things. there wouldn't be a chinese starter in any of the teams lol

[turk3d]

Even though Sterns been sucking up to the Euro market for years now, he better hope they don't start throwing some big money out to NBA players if they don't start the season on time. There was some talk a few years ago that some European teams were going to throw some ridiculous money to some of the NBAs stars if there were a lockout.

I'd love to see some rich dudes in Europe take over the NBA. That would be riot and the result would likely be Stern either getting stoned to death by the owners or hung in effigy. That's card that I believe the players could play which I surprisingly haven't heard mentioned as of yet.

[GSWbandwagon]

If there were no such thing as Rookie scale, the marketplace would have set Patrick Obryant's value at draft time. Given his rawness and lack of track record, he very likely would have been drafted and then negotiated a partially guaranteed deal. If he made it out of Bakersfield by January, then his deal would have been guaranteed for the remainder of the season and an extension offered. The owners have screwed up that equation because some owners made (fewer) horrible decisions in the past about negotiating with higher 1st round picks. The hazard of mal-investment in a 1st round pick has now been distributed across the draft board rather than distributed by market forces. That never ends well.

Do you really believe that the market would efficiently set rookie salaries? It's great in theory, but it wouldn't happen in practice. Agents wouldn't allow it. Look at the NFL where rookies are free to negotiate. There's effectively a slotting system of salaries based on what the guys drafted around you are getting and what those who were drafted in the same slot the year before got. Alex Smith got the biggest contract in 49ers history. Was he a surefire star? Or was he just a qb who was drafted #1 overall so he got a little more than what the last #1 overall pick got?

Also, I don't think they have to offer a first round pick a deal of any kind. If they'd rather not sign the guy, they don't have to.

[marthafokker]

umm, correct me if im wrong, but can't all the nba players just organize and play in non nba buildings,
like it would'nt cost too much to put a regulation nba court in a hockey ring, or they can just use college or non nba league courts.

pretty much keep their teams, but name them something different, and play each other, by starting a new league.
I'm sure they still will get people to the games, and easily a tv contract somewhere.
They just need to hire new people planning and managing the games and business.
It'll be the same stars...

but then again thats alot of work. and they would have to find a new way to split revenue.


or if most of them take a minimum salary for a season in china... omg they'd make so much money from other things. there wouldn't be a chinese starter in any of the teams lol

Because by the time they pay up for all the services, travels, rents, man power, and other bills, they are better paid with guarantee contracts in the NBA than trying to operate a new league.

[turk3d]

I don't see anything wrong in "slotting" rookies. It's probably one of the few good ideas they've come up with imo. It's a lot better than having to pay guys like Jamarcus Russelll and Alexs Smith 50 and 60M dollars for never doing anything on the field (I also don;t care for the idea that they're paying unproven guys more than they pay a lot good veterans, especially in football).

Maybe they're just paying rookies too much and should lower it (these are the kind of things I would be shooting for if were the owners in the new CBA instead of BS like some ridiculously low hard cap when people and teams are used to something significantly more).

One of the things I'd be in favor of is some kind of a buyout clause in all contracts after 1 year and every successive year after that would allow them to terminate a players contract for 50% each successive year (could be graduated for a lesser % for each successive year of player service) and maybe after 3 years of service then they'd have to be bought out for the remaining years.

Player/Team options are a two way street. If you have them there's a good argument for both sides having them (which may be the right way to go) but that way either side could potentially come up on the short end. I wonder how many teams wind up losing money because of players they've signed to bad contracts?

If they had a cost effective way to rid themselves of that albatross player then perhaps they could themselves back on track a little sooner (amnesty, a very poor way to deal with that problem imo, just masks it to a degree, the team/owners still get burned). Look at how long it takes a team to recover after they sign someone to one of those horrifically bad deals.

[turk3d]

Look at what I found. A sign of things to come?

And this:

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_ylt=A ... kout-gasol

[Golden State]

Owners & Players are grossly overpaid in all sports.

The trend is removing sports from the fans it should place at priority #1. Commercials & Cable get the league's (all sports) priority today with tix buyers/fans getting the left overs, thank you.

It is becoming like elected officials. Once every 4 years they kiss the voters butts then go back to fleecing anything & everything of value. ...and simultaneously lessening the power of the vote.

I for one want fans to be the driving force, not a Cable TV provider in NY, LA or Chicago.

I say "F I X IT!"

[old rem]

Yeah, they struck such a bad deal that team value has steadily gone up.

An owner can make a LOT off just breaking even over 10 yr then getting a huge Cap Gains selling the franchise....which Cohan just did here.

[azwfan]

I don't think its any of our business what these guys come up with. They sure as hell don't care about us, why the hell should we care about them. Their entertainers. I don't give a rats ass whether Tom Cruise makes more money or the producers do of his next film. I just go to the movie to be entertained.

It cracks me up seeing the obvious player-employee bias and the owner-employer bias in this thread. At the end of the day its a fight between them and has no effect on the fans other than we need to find another source of entertainment for an undisclosed amount of time. The people effected that have no say in the fight are the businesses tied to the sporting events (resteraunts, vendors, etc.) but no mention of that.

[turk3d]

Bottom line is it's the owners who have locked the players out (many whom have existing contracts in place). Why not (instead of shutting down the season and not playing) just say that they will not enter into any new contracts until they come up with a new CBA? That would be too tough for them I guess.

And if the players weren't willing to play under the current arrangement while these things got resolved then they could go on strike and then they become the bad guys. Right now, it's the owner and until they start playing basketball, which may be a while from now, this is what we've got to talk about for the time being.

[Twinkie defense]

I hope players do play in Europe, that will make it easier to watch European ball.

[Sleepy51]

If there were no such thing as Rookie scale, the marketplace would have set Patrick Obryant's value at draft time. Given his rawness and lack of track record, he very likely would have been drafted and then negotiated a partially guaranteed deal. If he made it out of Bakersfield by January, then his deal would have been guaranteed for the remainder of the season and an extension offered. The owners have screwed up that equation because some owners made (fewer) horrible decisions in the past about negotiating with higher 1st round picks. The hazard of mal-investment in a 1st round pick has now been distributed across the draft board rather than distributed by market forces. That never ends well.

Do you really believe that the market would efficiently set rookie salaries? It's great in theory, but it wouldn't happen in practice. Agents wouldn't allow it. Look at the NFL where rookies are free to negotiate. There's effectively a slotting system of salaries based on what the guys drafted around you are getting and what those who were drafted in the same slot the year before got. Alex Smith got the biggest contract in 49ers history. Was he a surefire star? Or was he just a qb who was drafted #1 overall so he got a little more than what the last #1 overall pick got?

Also, I don't think they have to offer a first round pick a deal of any kind. If they'd rather not sign the guy, they don't have to.

A market operating efficiently does not require that participants in that market never make mistakes. Only that the market be allowed to correct for thise mistakes through the delivery of consequences. Consequences are how markets STAY efficient.

Regulation can be beneficial in a marketplace. Preventng and punishing fraud, instituting the framework for transparency, enforcing contracts, adjuticating disputes are all places where regulation can and should interact with a marketplace without derailing the efficiency of competitive forces. But when you start interfering with the expression of consequences, that is when you start destroying a market and encouraging mal investment. That is whal "moral hazard" is all avout. When you enable behavior that weakens the system, you cultivate more of that behavior.

[Twinkie defense]

POB was a fraud, where is his punishment?