Tim Cowlishaw has a column in today’s Morning News [reg. req.] about the continuing NBA lockout. His thesis statement:
There is only one set of “bad guys,” and those are the owners represented by Commissioner David Stern. I don’t see the players as bad guys in this deal. There’s another word for it.
I believe it’s called “idiots.”
Hm.
Before I go much further, I just want to point out that I generally like Cowlishaw’s column. And, here, I think he has a point that there are probably too many agents with, if not a seat at the table, at least too much influence. Also, yes, I know, we’re talking about billionaires squabbling with millionaires while many are living paycheck to paycheck (in some cases, at best). STIPULATED. (Also, also, basically none of my ire is directed at Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. One, he’s been pretty quiet in all of this. Two, he’s made some mistakes payroll-wise but I’ve never heard him looking to Stern for a handout. Three, I think if he were allowed to be more involved, this thing would already be over.)
All that said, I don’t believe you can call the players “idiots.” They overplayed their hand by not really engaging in any meaningful discussions until it was clear games would have to be canceled. I guess they felt the owners, already crying poor, would really start to sweat when they started losing revenue from games. They didn’t, and so there was no more leverage. So that wasn’t the smartest play, no.
But are they idiots? They’re losing money right now they’ll never get back. That is true. They lose an entire season, some guys will lose other things. For instance, it would be hard for Kobe Bryant to make any sort of run at the all-time points record without even an abbreviated schedule this year. But I understand what they’re doing. Not all of it may make a ton of sense, but I understand.
They’re fighting against the most unbelievable collection of self-serving, deluded, devious a-holes this side of the cast of Inside Job. The players were never going to win, and it was never going to be close. But every time they give in, the owners just up their demands. Under the last labor agreement — which the owners happily went along with, no guns to their heads — the players received 57 percent of basketball-related income (BRI). Have some owners lost money in recent years? Yes. Why? THEY are idiots. I wouldn’t trust Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver to successfully make me a sandwich. He’d overpay for pimento loaf or something, then have to give away all the other ingredients. He’s just one, and he’s one of the hardliners, keeping his foot on the throats of the players. Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert has a truly awesome son, and basically nothing else to recommend him. He writes in Comic Sans. He SPEAKS in Comic Sans.
And yet, even though the financial mess was the owners’ own doing, the players made concessions. As Cowlishaw points out in that column, the players’ offer to split BRI 50-50 would have made up for the money the owners were losing. But the owners want more blood. And, you know, it’s hard to give in under those circumstances. Jim Dolan has mismanaged the New York Knicks in every conceivable way, and he’s going to come out ahead on this. The Maloof brothers have ruined the Sacramento Kings because of their own lack of financial aptitude, and they’ll come out ahead. At least for a while: bad owners are bad owners, and all those guys couldn’t function under any possible labor agreement. The players could have to pay to play, and the Maloofs would still figure out how to lose money. Dolan, Gilbert, Sarver — all those guys. Same with the good owners — they’d figure out how to prosper in any situation.
I’m frustrated that there is no basketball. It is the only sport I truly love. My team is the reigning NBA champions. I should be ecstatic. But no. And I’m angry for the workaday employees losing money (and maybe their jobs) in all of this. Truly. But I’m fully behind the players on this.
I’m sure many of you disagree. Let’s talk it out in the comments. But, please, let’s try to keep it mildly antagonistic.
10 comments
“They’re fighting against the most unbelievable collection of self-serving, deluded, devious a-holes this side of the cast of Inside Job.” Which pretty much describes the players. But do substitute idiots for a-holes.
If the season is canceled (likely, as it is not as if courts move quickly), the average player is losing over 20% of his best earning potential (average career is just under 5 years). Bringing it home, it is doubtful J Kidd will return and Dirk is not getting any younger. I be.ieve jason Terry will miss out on $11+ million as a result of a what is more or less a temper tantrum writ large. They are not acting rationally.
The real culprits (other than the agents — now there is your self-serving group) is the union leadership looking to keep their positions instead of bargaining for the players. Shame on Billy Hunter for running down and creating a rift with Derek Fisher in order to keep his own job; Fisher wanted, by the way to decertify months ago when it might have had some traction, but Hunter objected, largely because (i) it came from Derek and therefore must be bad for Billy, and (ii) what is the union’s executive director’s place in the absence of a union? Don’t expect mea culpas from Hunter though; he’s too busy scrambling to keep a place at the table.
Thirty player reps, none of whom are talking to or giving full disclosure their teammates, but are getting conflicting advice from their “leadership,” all of whom are interested in their own self-preservation and headlines rather than their constituency. As a result, the players are acting in a manner detrimental to their own short term and the long term interest. Idiots? Sound about right.
I agree. I’ve followed the story, and I can’t think of one concession the owners made. If you own a team, and you cannot afford to pay max contracts, find other ways to be competitive. Baseball and hockey teams figure it out.
@Thufir_Hawat: I don’t necessarily disagree with your larger point about Billy Hunter’s role in this.
The negotiations should have been about business, but it became personal. The more extreme factions began to dominate the conversation. In other words, the NBA lockout isn’t too different from the problems in our federal government. I place blame on the owners and the commissioner. Like or not, David Stern runs the league — and he let this thing get out of control. He treated the NBPA like children, and the players saw it for what it was: disrespect. And yes, the owners (with few exceptions, Mark Cuban being one) are self-serving, deluded, devious a-holes. The NBA is different from the NFL, MLB, and NHL. The NBA has a smaller roster where stars matter more. People see the Dallas Cowboys because they are the freakin’ Dallas Cowboys. However, people buy tickets to see Lebron James and Kobe Bryant. Many NBA fans are actually fans of particular players. ’90s Bulls or Michael Jordan? (I’m still rooting for Josh Howard –wherever he may end up.) As a result, more than most other pro sports leagues, the NBA should be a player’s league.
This is all on the players in my opinion. The league needs to have tougher salary caps… not because the owners need more money, but FOR THE BETTERMENT OF THE LEAUGE. The smaller market teams are being pushed out of the league only to let the high $$ teams win EVERY year.
I’ve heard a lot of people deride the owners for overpaying their players. What choice did they have though? It was either pay those players, or lose them to a team that could pay them. The competition SHOULD be on the court not in the bank.
This is the thing that always drives me up the wall when people talk about “The NBA is broken, and they need a new system.” The NBA is broken, but it’s broken because of bad owners, and BRI split and system changes are not going to un-break the NBA. What does the NBA need? They need human cloning, so that we can take the Cubans and Arisons and clone them, then rip away NBA franchises from Sarver, Sterling, Maloof, Jordan, etc. and grant them to the clones of the good owners.
If you didn’t have the moron owners, you’d be a large part of the way to fixing the NBA’s problems. You’d still need some sort of real revenue sharing system, but one of the major obstacles to a real revenue sharing system is, again, the bad owners. Not necessarily because they’re opposed to such a system (most of them aren’t), but because the good owners are absolutely against feeding good money to the bad owners so they can just wreck the NBA further.
If you could fix the owners and the lack of revenue sharing but did absolutely nothing about player costs, you’d still end up with a more successful NBA than you would keeping the bad owners, having no real revenue sharing, and getting all the concessions from the players that the bad owners are demanding.
The NBA rules regarding salary, cap, matching salaries for trades, ect. are overly complicated and complex. To me, this would be the perfect time to re-invent (simplify) the compensation model. How about:
-No Guaranteed Contracts (1st year of new contract is guaranteed for basketball-related injury only, no lack of talent exception)
-$60 million Hard Cap for 2012 (no exceptions to go above) w/ all teams required to spend at least $50 million in player salary (the 2011 soft cap was about $58 million)
-Team Cap minimum is 52% of basketball-related income and hard cap is 120% of that amount every year.
-All signing bonuses applied to current year cap 100%
-Rookie pay scale (first year only and pegged by draft position) and a $500K league minimum for any year after the rookie year.
-All players are unrestricted free agents after three years.
-Maybe one franchise player tag to keep your star in place (at a max salary)
-That is it except for legalese stuff
I think you would get shorter contracts that are more in line with the true abilities and worth of the players. Easier to rebuild your team and rewards smart front offices.
@Paul: Fair enough, but a lot of the contracts that are albatrosses on the various team’s salary caps are NOT due to the situation you described. Jerome James had a couple of half decent games in the playoffs for the Seattle Supersonics (RIP), and the Knicks gave him a 5-year, $30 million contract. For instance. The Mavs gave Erick Dampier an average of something like $10 million a year over six years — when they didn’t have to, really. The Nets gave Travis Outlaw $28 million over four years this summer, based on I’m not sure what. Josh Childress signed with the Suns for more five years and more than $30 million this summer — why? Who were they bidding against? Did Ben Gordon earn five years and $58 million during his time with the Bulls? Then why did Detroit sign him to that contract? I could go on and on and on and on. Did agents negotiate these deals? YES. Did players accept them? YES. Did owners happily agree to them? YES. Would you take less money just because you didn’t think you were worth it? Not one of those teams had to make those deals.
One of the best teams in the NBA is the Oklahoma City Thunder. They are not in a big market. They have been able to keep their biggest star. Last year, if I recall correctly, they were under the salary cap. They have a very smart general manager in Sam Presti, and that’s how they do it. Even though I hate the Spurs, look what they’ve done with less than optimal resources.
The problem with Paul’s suggestion is that any cap that’s small enough to let mismanaged small market teams compete with big market teams just means that the players are getting absolutely hosed league-wide. You’d have to bring the players’ share of BRI under 40 to make that happen without some stringent form of revenue sharing. The difference in yearly revenues between some of the small market teams and the Lakers is $100m, and the only way you can set a cap where the small market teams compete with that ensures that the Lakers, the Knicks, and, yes, the Mavs, are just pocketing that $100m every year.
The right way to get competitive balance is with revenue sharing, so that small market teams like OKC have revenues much more on par with the big market clubs like the Knicks and Lakers. Having close to the same resources, they will be able to parlay their successful management style into better and more competitive teams, which is kinda scary for fans of other Western conference teams.
The biggest reason the big market clubs are against expanded revenue sharing is that they don’t want the bad-owner/small-market clubs turning into the Pittsburgh Pirates, who operate around the league floor for salaries because the owners have found the sweet spot where they can (this year’s performance notwithstanding) field an uncompetitive team year-in and year-out and still make significant profits off the team. Those profits aren’t coming from the fans of Pittsburgh who go out to see uncompetitive baseball, but off the revenue sharing structure that MLB has in place.
The NBA likes to pretend that the system they have now and the system they’re asking for now has revenue sharing, but the revenue sharing there is between big spenders and low spenders. The idea that your “revenue sharing” system could, in a few years, be taking money from OKC to send more money Sarver’s way, to be taking money from small market teams and redistributing it to big market teams who started with more revenue to begin with, is an absolute joke.
Good grief, this is a great discussion. Just try to find a comment section on any sports site about the lockout that doesn’t lead with “THE PLAYERS ARE SPOILED BRATS, LET THEM GET A REAL JOB BLAH BLAH BARELY DISGUISED RACISM BLAH BLAH.”
Almost totally agree with Zac here. One of the things I actually love about what has transpired — and I’m furious we don’t have basketball now, don’t get me wrong — is that David Stern will get to see what it’s like to go up against a real lawyer. Not just any lawyer: one who walks in the room, drops his 12-pounder on the table, and says, “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought I was still arguing before the Supreme Court about who gets to be president. I’m actually in a room with a sarcastic power mad double-dwarf. This should be fun.”
Folks saying they know how the lawsuits will go are insane. No one does. It almost ALL depends on what judge hears which case. That said, I look forward to the possibility of Stern, et. al getting his/their ass handed to him/them.
IN THE MEANTIME: http://youtu.be/IH85PrKDY0A