Lockout

[Twinkie defense]

I agree... just fix it, kill about ten teams...

[floppymoose]

a) You are the one asserting that their is a correlation between decision making and profitability. An assertion I proved to be false.

no

b) I remember you posting after returning from seeing a game live on a couple of occasions this season. aka: rewarding bad decision making.

irrelevant

Do you not see the hypocrisy here, even a little bit?.

i see someone who doesn't have the facts on their side trying to reframe the argument.

[Sleepy51]

There is more incorrect information being passed along in this thread.

The salary CAP was set at 57% of BRI which came to $58MM. Teams are not REQUIRED to spend the full amount of the salary cap. The salary cap is a "soft" MAXIMUM, not a MINIMUM. The CBA set the salary cap at 57% of BRI. The league minimum salary was set per the CBA 75% of the salary cap. Teams were required to spend $43.5MM last year on player salaries. That 43% MINIMUM salary requirement = 42% of BRI. Teams are not required to pay players more than half of revenues. They are REQUIRED to pay players 42% of revenues per the terms of the CBA.

Average of the salaries on hoopshype is currently $53mil, and 7 tears under the $43.5mil minimum, so I', guessing that this is up-to-date and this seasons contract expirations have been dropped and not replaced because you have teams like Denver and Sac currently ringing in at under $30 mil, so in all likelihood, the real number probably still works out to 57% annually. It's not absolute, but it is (was) the de facto number.

The result is not the same thing as the requirement. My issue was with the claims that 57% was a requirement.

I know that teams are spending too much money. I feel that the best solutions for that are simple ones like a hard cap and contraction to put the onus of making good ownership (financial AND competitive) decisions back on the owners themselves.

[billinder33]

There is more incorrect information being passed along in this thread.

The salary CAP was set at 57% of BRI which came to $58MM. Teams are not REQUIRED to spend the full amount of the salary cap. The salary cap is a "soft" MAXIMUM, not a MINIMUM. The CBA set the salary cap at 57% of BRI. The league minimum salary was set per the CBA 75% of the salary cap. Teams were required to spend $43.5MM last year on player salaries. That 43% MINIMUM salary requirement = 42% of BRI. Teams are not required to pay players more than half of revenues. They are REQUIRED to pay players 42% of revenues per the terms of the CBA.

Average of the salaries on hoopshype is currently $53mil, and 7 tears under the $43.5mil minimum, so I', guessing that this is up-to-date and this seasons contract expirations have been dropped and not replaced because you have teams like Denver and Sac currently ringing in at under $30 mil, so in all likelihood, the real number probably still works out to 57% annually. It's not absolute, but it is (was) the de facto number.

The result is not the same thing as the requirement. My issue was with the claims that 57% was a requirement.

I know that teams are spending too much money. I feel that the best solutions for that are simple ones like a hard cap and contraction to put the onus of making good ownership (financial AND competitive) decisions back on the owners themselves.

How do you feel about the guaranteed contract? Do you feel this is something the league should address?


Personally, I'd like to see some stipulation that the final 2 years of a contract could be Team Optioned at 75% and 50% of contract value, respectively. This would allow teams to more easily scale down or get out from under large contracts that belong to lazy (Damps, Curry, Baron), injured (Iggy, Andris), or just plain under-performing (Maggot, Rip) players. The benefit here is that it would allow contracts to more closely align with performance and allow bad teams with wretched contracts to right the ship more quickly.

I know you are one that prefers to see management less insulated from bad decisions, but I'm not sure every bad decision, especially in terms of player injury, is the fault of management. If giving management some relief for a few bad decisions (Maggot, Damps) is the side effect for helping teams move on from injured or deceptively lazy players, adding more team flexibility and parody, and rewarding player who can/do perform, then IMO that would be better for the fans and league in general.

[turk3d]

I've suggested that as well (having more opt out years at say 50% of contract value) if the player either doesn't live up to expectations or the franchise goes into serious financial hardship. If a team were to exercise, they's still be on the hook for half the salary (so they wouldn't be indiscriminately throw out these big deals) but at least they'd get some relief.

And the player would then become a FA and could sign anywhere they wanted (at minimum) as they work towards revitalizing their career. This could even be done when a guy gets injured. I'm surprised there hasn't been any discussions by the league on this one. It seems like they don't want to address this problem even though it's one of the biggest they have, deadweight contracts and prefer things like one year amnesties.

This to me is the crux of the whole problem and yet they seem to want to sweep it under the table preferring to focus on other things.

[marthafokker]

http://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap/21 ... y_Overseas

Remember I talked about potential to voiding a contract via injury playing oversee?

The wiretap had a clip of Childress expressing his concern on it too.

[Sleepy51]

How do you feel about the guaranteed contract?

I think any player who thinks they can command a guaranteed contract by virtue of the competitive marketplace should have the opportunity to attempt to secure one. I think owners should continue to have the option to not meet a player's demands and let someone else make that mistake . . . like the Spurs did with our stupid (Please Use More Appropriate Word) Maggette offer. In a healthy marketplace we will have some players sitting out Nov and December because no owner is dumb enough to take the bait.

Do you feel this is something the league should address?

No. I do not feel that the league should address owners failing to exercise good judgement by limiting a player's ability to market their services.

[Sleepy51]

I know you are one that prefers to see management less insulated from bad decisions, but I'm not sure every bad decision, especially in terms of player injury, is the fault of management. If giving management some relief for a few bad decisions (Maggot, Damps) is the side effect for helping teams move on from injured or deceptively lazy players, adding more team flexibility and parody, and rewarding player who can/do perform, then IMO that would be better for the fans and league in general.

The bad decision is in the original allocation of resources and risk assessment. Offering a player with questionable attitude/performance history like a Maggs or a Baron 5 guaranteed years is a mistake to begin with . . . and look at the boobs who did it (or employed the managers who did it.) Donald Sterling and Chris Cohan. Hell, even Sterling passed on paying Maggette the "bad team asking price" so how (Please Use More Appropriate Word) did that make Cohan's brain trust? Baron Daivs as a clipper? Who didn't see that ending poorly? Sterling overplayed his hand poaching a fixture from a conference competitor who had passed him and stolen the 8th seed. He went "full Clipper" in trying to land two major risks with oversized deals. Even if Brand hadn't backed out, Baron was a volatile risk and should have been treated accordingly. Those deals were bad deals the day that they were signed, not the day that the player got hurt or disinterested.

Injury risk is at this point statistically quantifiable. That is why insurers are willing to insure player contracts. Teams have financial and cap relief from career ending injuries. If it's not career ending? Suck it up. The guy got hurt putting in time on the clock. I want that player to get paid because the work he performed has reduced his ability to be employed in the future. He left it on the court. Pay him. The team should be making contract offers aware of the potential for a performance reducing injury and adjust their risk allocation accordingly. But not by "rule" by exercise of good judgment.

In the end result, I would actually like to see teams offering players fewer guaranteed dollars/years because fewer players are worth taking the long term risks. Offer your 4-8 men most of their money early in a deal and then decline sharply. The owners have always had this option. They have to do is not makes stupid offers or let the owners willing to play russian roulette make big mistakes. A hard cap will level that out the risk/reward over time. I would have had no problem with the Celtics offering Larry Bird 15 guaranteed years as a rookie (under a hard cap.) That would have been a good risk. And it would have paid off for a dozen years. Then when Larry's back failed in the last couple of years of his deal, that's when it would be someone else's turn. The league's competitive hierarchy would roll over periodically as it should. In the mean time, the hard cap would have required that they allow some other talent to disperse to other teams. All these things are healthy in my opinion and can be managed BY MANAGEMENT.

A healthy team, market, business and league will still have cycles ebb and flow. Stability or sustainability is not really a part of the competitive process and not something I want to see happen. If you reach stasis in a sports league, it will likely be highly dysfunctional competitively (like MLB and where the NBA is heading) We reached this level of stasis in large part because of sports owners efforts to engineer a comfortable financial stasis.

[Twinkie defense]

The market and incentives are too skewed towards big player salaries (too many teams, too big of rosters, not enough NBA-caliber players; financial incentives for teams more tied to location than cap number) to not adjust the other side to give owners some relief. It's not just a matter of making good decisions - there are bad roster decisions on every single roster, and many of the "best decisions" are simply the result of good luck, like the Bulls vaulting to the top of the lottery where a rookie scale MVP was waiting for them.

On top of making it easier for teams to get out of bad contracts, like those posted above for players who turn lazy, selfish, or get broken down, in fairness the League should also offer players who over-perform their salaries some opportunities to make extra money. They currently do this in the NFL (where they do not have guaranteed contracts) - they have a pool of money that they divide up among over-performing players at the end of each season. In fact I think there was a 'Niner or two who got bonuses.

No doubt one easy way to limit player salaries, and one that is already in place, is very simply to reduce the total percentage of revenue that goes to players from 57% to something lower like 50%. And that way you don't have to reinvent all of the other related rules like guaranteed salaries, revenue sharing, number of teams, etc. etc. 57% is the elephant in the room that still some geniuses refuse to acknowledge.

[floppymoose]

I know you are one that prefers to see management less insulated from bad decisions, but I'm not sure every bad decision, especially in terms of player injury, is the fault of management.

This is true in every endeavor. Not every nba-talented player who didn't make it in the nba made a mistake. Some were just unlucky. Are we going to take money from the owners for these players? If not, why are we taking money from the players for the owners who have misfortune? There is risk in everything. You evaluate it, make the best decision you can, and live with the results. It has nothing to do with what is a fair way to divide the basketball income.

[Twinkie defense]

Who's taking money from the players? It's the players who are taking money from the League - in fact they just got a fat check.

The talk is of giving them less. They deserve less, because they are currently putting the League in a precarious financial position. And to their credit, the players have recognized this and have offered to take $500 mil less over the course of the next CBA.

[floppymoose]

take/give is just semantics or spin. the players and owners divided the income in the prior cba. you can't give to one side without taking from the other. once the owners and players association entered into the agreement, the idea that the money is natively the owners, and that they "give" it to the players, went out the window. the money belongs to both parties as dictated by the agreement.

And you didn't answer my question. why should the owners be insulated from risk but not the players?

[Twinkie defense]

I think they should both face risk - but right now I only see the teams shouldering the risk. Players don't have to pay any expenses and they get 57% of revenue. If the cost of building arenas go up, too bad. If the cost of chartering flights to games goes up, too bad. If the local fans aren't able to support the team financially, if no one comes to games, too bad. But if a player stinks, he still gets paid. If a player only has enough pride to play hard in order to get a big contract, and once they get that contract they give up, they still get paid. If they get injured, they still get paid.

That is not a fair shouldering of risk or a fair reaping of reward.

And again, because the markets and incentives are so skewed, players not only are sure to get paid, they are sure to get paid a premium, more than they are worth in terms of either wins OR revenue in support of the franchise.

[Twinkie defense]

And also, like I said, if we do add an element of risk for players with some softening to their guaranteed contracts, in the name of fairness I would be glad to see a bunch of money redistributed to truly deserving players.

[azwfan]

The owners obviously didn't like the old deal. The players did like it. As of now, there is no deal in place. Therefore, with no CBA, nobody is giving or taking anything. There's a big pot on the table and it will be divided up through negotiation.

[Twinkie defense]

Unless there simply is no season, which may be a pretty likely outcome.

[Sleepy51]

http://blogs.forbes.com/sportsmoney/201 ... or-battle/

This is a pretty impartial summary of some of the financial issues argued in this thread. It doesn't touch on the competitive issues, but this is an unbiased party giving a primer on the financial standing of the league.

[floppymoose]

I think they should both face risk - but right now I only see the teams shouldering the risk.

The players face risk every time they get on the court.

Players don't have to pay any expenses and they get 57% of revenue.

That's WHY the players only get 57%. If players footed all the bills they'd BE the owners, and they'd get 100%.

The question is how to fairly divide the pie.

[floppymoose]

http://blogs.forbes.com/sportsmoney/201 ... or-battle/

That article's thesis is that league profits are down even though fan interest is up, and that means the current CBA agreement is bad for the teams. But what it doesn't show is where the money has gone. Why are the profits down? If it is because the players are making a lot more money, then that would seem to speak to the point they make. If it's because the owners pissed it away elsewhere, then that's on the owners to clean up and the players part of the pie should not be involved.

It looks to me like the players are making the same money recently they made 3 or 4 years ago. I don't know the tv $$$ for the league but I haven't seen reports that they've gone down. Attendance has been pretty flat since the last CBA renewal (2005, I think). Ticket prices I think are higher then last CBA, not sure how much. Playoff viewership is up, which bodes well for the league next negotiations with the tv networks. Where is the money going? Why are profits down?

[old rem]

The recession hit some areas pretty hard,and of course New Orleans got hit by Katrina and the BP spill.

No doubt several teams are hurting...but others are making a lot of $. The Knicks and Nets seem eager to spend every cent they can. The Lakers are gonna pay almost $50 mill to Kobe + Pau in a couple years when,frankly...both are past their prime. They don't care. Several other teams are also happy to throw around the $.

Meanwhile....the players ARE the product. You can't charge NBA ticket prices to see Junior College talent. That's a $2 ticket and a small gym.

GSW's last owner sold the franchise for over $400 million.......a HUGE capital gains. If Cohan just broke even year to year....he ended up with about $200 mill gains on the sale...and that is large money.

The "average" owner....however...does need the leverage to stop the big spenders from BUYING success. Stern also wants to sell another half dozen expansion franchises...and the big markets are all gone.