The compromises that need to be made

[WC NBA Fan]

I posted this on the general NBA discussion board but I'm not sure if it's better off over here or there so I'll repost.

I'm not sure if this has any credibility but Ken Berger wrote this small blurb on cbs sports.com and he has covered the lockout very closely. It says..

As he announced that the NBA was cancelling two weeks of the season, commissioner David Stern made the surprising assertion that the share of basketball-related income is not a major obstacle to getting a deal done with the union.

Both Stern and deputy commissioner Adam Silver said the main impediments are contract length, the length of the collective bargaining agreement, the use of exceptions by taxpaying teams, tax levels and the frequency of the tax.

The union claims that these new luxury tax and exception usage provisions that the league is seeking would be the equivalent of a hard salary cap.


If this is true, then these guys really need to compromise as it isn't that hard. I'll break down the issues one by one.

1) CONTRACT LENGTH

The players want 5 years and 4 for players switching as free agents. The league wants 4 and 3.

The league needs to cave on this. No other league has contract length limits. 5 and 4 should be more than good enough and making this concession will allow the league to ask for concessions from the players elsewhere.

2) LENGTH OF THE COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENT

I heard that the league wanted 10 years with the players having the right to terminate after 7. I don't see the problem here for the players. If we have to make it 9 and 6 for the purpose of compromise then what the heck, go for it but I think the 10 and 7 number makes sense for all.

3) THE USE OF EXCEPTIONS BY TAX PAYING TEAMS

Anyone who has listened to me rant or read my annoying sig for the past year will know that I am and have been very passionate about keeping the amount of the MLE intact but not allowing tax payers to be able to use it. I've gone so far as to emphasize it when I sent my own proposal out to owners on the labor committee.

The owners also want to limit the amount to $3 million and have less years on it as well. I say that they shouldn't set their sights on that. Allow for the contracts to last the full 4 years for FA's leaving their current team and for the full amount that is above $5 million but not allow the tax payers to use it. This way, the Heat, Lakers and Celtics can no longer just load up on FA's and keep buying championship level teams. This was the Heat's strategy when they signed the big 3. They knew that they could just keep improving the team through the MLE. Now, they won't be able to do that while the players that do sign it get paid in full. This will create more parity for the league without totally limiting what the players make.

4) TAX LEVELS AND FREQUENCY OF THE TAX

Again, if you take the MLE away from the tax payers then you lower their payroll to the point where they aren't much higher than the lux tax itself. If the only way of going above the lux tax is by re signing your own free agent, I say that the league should let that slide and not be so hard on the tax payers.

Also, more revenue sharing will give small markets less incentive to make one sided trades that we've seen. For example, we had Gasol to the Lakers or Garnett to the Wolves. More revenue sharing puts more money in the pockets of the small markets and thus, less incentive to make those trades. As a result, you have a lower payroll in Boston and LA and no need for super taxes in the first place.

In summation, give this one to the players. Allow for a larger tax but not to the extent that the owners are asking where it quadruples and what not.

[DBoys]

Your problem is that you think common sense solutions matter to the players. But I'm not sure they do.

From what I've seen, the owners want to revise the system to give every team a much more reasonable chance to win. But one of the primary negotiators for the players is Derek Fisher, who plays for the Lakers. Does he want to balance the playing field and have the Lakers with the same amount of talent-payroll as everyone else? Of course not. Heck, if they have to waive someone to get under a hard cap number, he's toast, and he knows it. Do Wade and Lebron want to balance the playing field? No way.

And in a nutshell, there's your problem. Those guys are the loudest in the room when it has come to considering competitive balance, and they are saying "We can NEVER accept anything like a hard cap, it's just not fair." As long as their votes are the only ones being heard, the vast majority of players are going to get killed financially by being out of work, all holding out to prevent a system that would benefit 85% of them by giving them all a chance to win (rather than only about 15% starting the season on teams with any real shot at titles).

[SO_MONEY]

Honestly, the time for compromise has passed, as time continues on the offers from the players prospective will only get worse. Not very well played by the NBAPA.

[floppymoose]

I don't believe the reports that state system issues are the blocker in negotiations. I believe it's BRI BRI BRI.

And I'll bet $100 right now that the deal the players eventually take will be at least 50% of the BRI, so...

No, the deal is not going to get worse. That's a bluff, and a transparent one.

[DBoys]

I don't believe the reports that state system issues are the blocker in negotiations. I believe it's BRI BRI BRI.

And I'll bet $100 right now that the deal the players eventually take will be at least 50% of the BRI, so...

No, the deal is not going to get worse. That's a bluff, and a transparent one.

Unless you're in the negotiating room and have first-hand knowledge to back you, you're nuts to think that owners, players, Stern, Hunter Fisher, and every member of the media is misinforming us of what is separating the parties.

The remaining issue is, the players are determined to have the system they want, without any mechanism to balance salaries and talent - and are going to keep demanding it even if they go broke, just to prove how long they can hold out, I guess. Whatever, I say.

As for whether the players can get 50% if they'll do a deal, that's not much of a declaration since the owners already offered essentially that deal. In a year? Different story, of course.

If the deal doesn't happen soon enough to keep the owners from cancelling the season, I think the players will end up with a choice of (a) sit forever and watch scabs play under an imposed system of everything the owners want in their last formal proposal, or (b) sign that deal and get the money themselves, which would be at 47%. That's the owners' long term end game, i'd wager.

[floppymoose]

Unless you're in the negotiating room and have first-hand knowledge to back you, you're nuts to think that owners, players, Stern, Hunter Fisher, and every member of the media is misinforming us of what is separating the parties.

I'll grant that parties who would know better than I are contradicting me. But I am not yet convinced. Until recently they were saying BRI was the issue. Some not very old reports have stated that they had made good progress on system issues and expected that to be easy compared to BRI. Then suddenly, after both sides start digging in, the story changes. I'm not sure the story change is for real. It may be spin.

As for whether the players can get 50% if they'll do a deal, that's not much of a declaration since the owners already offered essentially that deal.

I was responding to the post above. It had implied that the 50% offer was now out of reach for the players.

If the deal doesn't happen soon enough to keep the owners from cancelling the season, I think the players will end up with a choice of (a) sit forever and watch scabs play under an imposed system of everything the owners want in their last formal proposal, or (b) sign that deal and get the money themselves, which would be at 47%. That's the owners' long term end game, i'd wager.

I'm hoping the owners DO try a scab season. That will be a nice wakeup call for them when they see the results.

[DBoys]

I would have believed one or more sides were spinning the truth, up until we passed the point where they are actually losing money. But once we passed Midnight Hour and there is no deal - and not even one anywhere in sight - it becomes silly to disbelieve that the sides are truly far apart.

Looks to me like there exists a basic disconnect in all of this.

The owners have been saying that the prior system was broken and they needed some major changes because it didn't make economic sense to continue. In response, the players are taking the premise that there was nothing wrong with the old deal, and therefore anything less than one that's 100% the same is a give back.

But is that realism? As H Abbott notes, you only can give back that which you have, and they have no deal at all. They're not starting from "old deal" but from "no deal."

Taking it further, we see that player talks of a "fair" deal are based on the premise that there was nothing wrong with the old deal, so retaining old deal, minus a little, to them is "fair." For the owners, the prior CBA is dead and gone and not the starting point for a new deal because it killed them financially.

As far as a scab season, I think it would simply be a case where the NBA decided they had a business to run, and unrealistic expectations from the old players, so they'd more or less move on with whoever wanted to play. Lebron James or Dwyane Wade or whoever are nothing special outside the framework of a truly competitive stage where they are forced to fail at times, and if they stayed on the outside, NBA revenues would decline for awhile, but not forever. New stars would inevitably fill the vacuum they left, and it might not take as long as you think. College hoops turns over their stars every season or two, and have no problem.

[nyjazz]

We keep hearing about what the owners want and what the players want, but what the debate is missing is what is best for the fans of the league. The most important aspects for the fans are that:

1. the league is competitive across all teams over time, that is, any team can over a number of years with good management, picks, signings, coaching, fans, etc., build a championship contending team.
2. the difference between the best team and the worst team any given year is sufficiently small that every game played is competitive and therefore exciting to watch.
3. team loyalty, that the teams have a good chance to hold on to the talent they develop. it is not fun to watch your favorite players jump ship just because the team down the road can offer them a slightly more attractive deal.
4. competitive spirit and the quest for the championship for your team motivates the players and other people involved, not the money. Money is however a measure of success but it needs to be given and taken based on success and failure.

Well, maybe I missed something but this is what is important to me. So what is needed from a CBA perspective to get this done?

1. Well to start with, each team should have the amount in the pot of money they use to pay its players, coaches, and other basketball related staff. Sure, adding in coaching and other basketball related staff is not on the table, but it should be. The contracts are obviously part of this also. Either by having a higher max amount, longer contracts or both, teams need to be able to offer a better deal to the players on the roster than other teams can offer the same players. The contracts needs to be shorter and depending on the length of the contracts some ability to be terminated or bought out.

3. There needs to be significant revenue sharing between the big market teams and small market teams to make sure that all teams have an opportunity to make a decent return and put on a competitive organization. In some sense, it is only fair that the Lakers need to share their television money - it wouldn't be much of a basketball game without an opponent.

4. Any CBA should be valid for a long time to remove these CBA negotiations from disrupting the game.

5. Give players incentives for success and penalize for failure. Playoff team players should get playoff bonuses paid by players of non-lottery teams. Doesn't have to be a lot, 5-10% of their pay is plenty.

6. Penalize the bottom teams. Bottom teams should have part of Lottery teams should be penalized for being in the bottom. In European leagues, the bottom teams get moved down to a lower division. Sometimes the most exciting teams to follow are the teams at the bottom as they fight to stay in the top division. Harder to do in professional basketball, however, it is screwed up that the bottom teams get rewarded with great lottery position when they should be penalized. Maybe we should put the bottom four teams into a losers bracket where they have to play essentially a tournament in which the losing team gives up its lottery picks to the winning team. Teams would be desperate to avoid placing in the bottom four and if you ended up in the bottom four, we could watch a very exciting mini-tournament after the end of the regular season before the playoffs. Ok, it is not perfect but something along those lines.

7. Give play off bubble teams a second change. Similar to the losers mini-tournament, let the four playoff bubble teams fight in a mini-tournament between regular season and the playoffs for a final playoff spot.

Clearly there are lots of things additionally to think about and to change, but these are some of the things that I would like to see change to make it more exciting for me to watch the game.

[floppymoose]

1. the league is competitive across all teams over time, that is, any team can over a number of years with good management, picks, signings, coaching, fans, etc., build a championship contending team.

Depending on what you mean by "can", I don't think that is possible. At least, not without some system that forces ridiculous levels of player swapping year to year. I say that because basketball is more star driven than most team sports. Only two teams (at most) can get Shaq and Kobe (or the stars from whichever era we want to talk about). The only way to really guarantee that any team can set itself up for a championship run is to make sure the stars can't stay in one place very long, and I don't think that's what fans really want.

Short of forcing a lot of player movement, teams will always be subject to the luck of the draft. You get MJ or Durant? You go girl. You get Bias or Oden? Well, wait a few more years for the next superstar draft.

[Haisan]

I agree with those who think this is 90%+ about the BRI split. If they players were offered to keep the 57% split, they'd probably sign just about anything.

WC NBA Fan's initial post was mostly on the money. However I think it is useful to consider lowering the MLE exception. Average is not the same as mean. It is good that mid-range players have the ability to get paid, but most of the players signed to the MLE just are not worth it and soon turn into cap-killers. A think the MLE should be shorter-term and for less than average (say 2/3 of player average?).

[floppymoose]

For those who think this isn't mostly about BRI:

http://twitter.com/#!/WojYahooNBA

[DBoys]

Actually that link pretty much shows that if BRI was the issue, it'd be done. Whta keeps getting in the way are when they get close, they go to the side items and then it falls apart ....it's like the story of the kid with the finger in the dike.

This sounds like a good summary: "Silver told reporters that the players in essence wanted a trade-off. In essence, if the players were conceding on BRI, they wanted more from the systemic issues."

This is a good analysis of that concept ...his details may be speculative and uncertain. but the concept makes more sense of what we've been seeing than anything else we've heard

http://www.cbssports.com/nba/story/1576 ... ds-a-drink

[floppymoose]

Yes, my post was ill-timed. There were a bunch of tweets from Woj about BRI, and then after I posted there were more about the system issues.

[floppymoose]

Although the owners insistence on a 50% BRI split as a precondition to further negotiations is rather suggestive...

[DBoys]

Although the owners insistence on a 50% BRI split as a precondition to further negotiations is rather suggestive...

Owners have two issues:
1 gotta have a split that doesn't force them to lose money
2 gotta balance the league so every owner has a viable franchise

When the players say balancing the league will have them demanding a bigger split of BRI, then it's BRI but it isn't. And if the owners have seen that raising of BRI demands over and over when the talks shift to the system, then it's not surprising they want to close that door before heading down that path, or simply not bother.

[floppymoose]

Ken Berger agrees, it's about the money:

http://www.cbssports.com/nba/story/1577 ... -who-cares

And you know what it's about in sports when they tell you it's not about the money? You guessed it: It's about the money.

In fact, I had told you the next day not to fall for the banana in the tailpipe -- that this mumbo-jumbo about the system was just something to distract everyone for a while until the discussions inevitably came back to the split of BRI. And sure enough, back-schmack they went on Thursday, with league negotiators drawing a line in the sand at a 50-50 split of BRI and trying to sell it as a new proposal.

[DBoys]

as if he knows

That's in the middle of an article in which, out of frustration over not understanding why they can't reach a deal, he throws up his hands. So he bails and goes to the convenient "it's always money" fallback.

But I think we'd be smarter to simply accept what we've been observing over and over: the players keep changing their demands on BRI, depending on whether they like the rest of the system or not. So yes it's become a situation where BRI can't be agreed on, but that's because every proposed change to the system ends with the players reopening the BRI discussion and asking for more.

[floppymoose]

Well, you shouldn't believe him just because he says so. But Berger and Woj have better access to the principals in this than you or I. So he may have a better read.

You didn't seem to want to cast doubt on the Woj tweets that agreed with you, for instance.

[DBoys]

I am not interested in checking my common sense at the door. No matter what any of the media say, I try to follow what they all are saying, and I keep in mind that their sources are all player-related except for interviews (which they all attend together) with Stern/Silver.

The media opinion pieces flip-flop. That tells me they are guessing. The very same Berger saying "it's all BRI/money" said it isn't really all about BRI" in his prior article.

The reason I buy his prior article is because it fits the negotiating behavior we have been seeing, while "it's ONLY about BRI" simply doesn't. I actually prefer the BRI/money explanation, as it's more elegant in its simplicity, and several months ago I thought like you.

But as things have unfolded, it simply hasn't held up. Ultimately, while I think they SHOULD settle on the money, and then it shouldn't matter to the players after that, they won't cooperate with my priorities. So here we are.

PS - As far as the Woj tweets, it was a question of observation not believability. You said he was asserting one thing, but when I followed your link, they said just the opposite.

[floppymoose]

I am not interested in checking my common sense at the door.

Neither am I.