The NBA is Dead

“POWER CORRUPTS, ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY”.
THAT GRAVESTONE PIC LOOKS SO CHEAP

Awesome. 100 percent agree. I don’t know how ESPN contracts work, and I can understand why pay-per-view exists, but ESPN needs to get on airing international basketball or wherever Durant, Lebron, and other American players are playing.

loss of the season is imminent

@Wayno

They’re not outright victims, but they are being victimized. Should they have to suffer workplace injustice just because there’s more money involved? What if your boss called you into his office tomorrow and was like, “OK, you have to take a paycut. You’re not doing a bad job and we’re not making any less money than we thought we would, but you just really don’t deserve as much as you’re getting.” I’d like to think that if you had a means (and most people don’t), you’d fight it.

@ FLIP – it would suck if the CEO of my company did that…BUT like I said, I’m not required to work there! Plus the owner of the company has the right to pay whoever he/she wants whatever he/she wants.

50/50 and the owners would have made $2.4 billion total, to the players’ $1.9 billion. But surely the owners will have to pay hundreds of staff, from the coach to the janitor, and the upkeep of all their facilities out of that money? I wonder how equally the players themselves would share the near $5 billion of they ran it themselves. MJ sure doesn’t seem to be very sharing. Just want basketball back. If the season is lost when would players sign for euro teams?

Wayno
If you and all your fellow co workers banded together to fight, why wouldn’t it be up to you?
Man, all employees have value as employees and as humans.
Some employees have more value because their skills are hard to replace and their impact on the bottom line is greater.
Just because somebody has the title “owner” or “boss” does not mean they actually own you and it does not mean they can tell you to do anything.
Your choices are NOT suck it up or quit. If you accept those two choices, then you’ve pretty much agreed with the owner that you deserve whatever you get. I don’t think people should agree to that.

It’s clear who is negotiating and who isn’t. I mean sh*t, the owners have given ultimatums, how often do you hear about take-it or leave-it ultimatums and turn around and call it a negotiation?

desert* you get it though

Allen, you’re living in a dream world if you think that Norma Rae sh*t works in real life. If you’re a laborer, let’s say working in a factory, and you and 100 other labor workers decided to strike to protest your wage, most companies would give you your last check and show you the door quicker than a preteen getting his first nut. Why? Because labor jobs are easy to fill. Same with general office work or retail jobs. Re-training for those types of positions require minimum effort and spending a week training a new person who’s not complaining about their wages or work is a hell of a lot smarter than paying a disgruntled group of employees arguing about a 3 or 4 percent raise. In the NBA’s case, these guys are afforded the opportunity to play ball for huge money….paid by guys WITH huge money. This is not work pertinent to the bettering of our country….it’s entertainment….and at some level, it’s entertainment for the owners. So if they go a year without having to pay 80 to 100 million in salaries, well, they can afford it. That’s the rub. They control the money. Read up on the NHL lockout from a few years ago. Years later, most of the players that backed it now regret it as the concessions made weren’t enough to justify losing a years salary. Feel good stories are for pus*ies…at least in the real world. BTW, this was a really well done piece, I just disagree with your 12:21p comment.

Allenp
The owners have the title of “owners” because they own the company, not the players. They took the risk of spending hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase/start this company, provide employment for hundreds of people, and more or less take all the upfront risk associated with owning and running a business.

The players on the other hand are paid handsomely for the unique skills. But like Wayno said, they have the choice of not working for the company which they work for. Sports athletes in general have a much better employment structure than the vast majority of employees. They get guaranteed contracts for multiple years. That’s a very unique scenario. Whether they decide to perform or not for the remainder of their contract, they are protected, with no financial risk, only risk of career ending injury. There are not a lot of employers that would be willing to provide those incentives. I wish I could sign an agreement for my current salary, with a 10% annual increase, for the next 6 years, not based on my performance. That’s a risk the owners are taking on themselves.

While I don’t completely agree with either side, I am leaning more towards the owners side. If you look at the gross/net revenue these teams general, the percentages are small. A 5-10% slide in gross revenue would have a detrimental effect on the bottom line, while it would have no effect on the players. Again, the owners are carrying the burden of the risk.

Also, Steve
if revenues slide 5-10 percent, players salaries slide by the same amount.
The player’s salaries are tied to the BRI of the League, which is a pot of overall revenue.
They only get paid as the company makes money. If the company is floundering, so are they.
Just like every other job, that’s the risk.

AllenP
I agree about opening the books, and I’m sure that the numbers are not where they have claimed them to be. Hopefully they will be forced to open the books during these preceding and prove themselves correct.

I believe clauses for under performance makes obvious sense, however, I don’t see an increase for exceeding expectations unless the salaries are scaled back, which the players would never accept. Although it is a byproduct of high performance, and not a team mandate financial issue, sponsorship and endorsements are the incentive for exceeding expectations (or meeting it). Again, this would not be possible for the players without the vehicle (a team/job) being provided by the owners. This, I believe, is something the team does not share in (the direct financial benefit, not the obvious increased publicity/interest for the player/team), and can become more lucrative than the player’s salary itself.

So the vehicle for benefits for exceeding expectations are there. What I would propose is a much higher bonus for the players/staff should the team win the championships, but that bonus would be limited by economics and split so many ways that it would hardly be felts by most players (although the staff would greatly appreciate it).

As for free market; that’s what they are attempting to eliminate to an extent. At the end of the day they are all competing under the same roof/brand being the NBA. So fair competition between larger/smaller markets is important for the fans and the league. While they are individual owners of individual business, they are still under one umbrella, and I suppose parity across the league would be beneficial for all owners as it would help the brand itself.

Also, getting rid of a couple of teams wouldn’t hurt either. But that’s for another conversation.

It is pretty obvious that the owners want to regain control they perceive they have lost. They hated what happened in MIA and are scared crapless 2 or 3 franchise players are considering doing the same thing somewhere else. But if you want a better competitive and monetary balance between the small markets and bigger markets, what happened in MIA is a legitimate concern. And the owners have every right to address this.
Since negotiating control is much tougher that negotiating BRI, what would provide the best balance among the markets and provide the best distribution of talent? Surely there has to be some revenue-sharing scheme that no one has thought of or discussed that will satisfy both players and owners.
There has to be.

There is no way to legislate competitive balance. Not if you’re talking about championships.
Currently there are fewer than 15 superstars in the league if we’re being generous with the designation. Hell, there might not be 10. These are players who can be the corner stone of your team and you can build around with them as the clear alpha male.
There are only two ways to win in the League. Assemble a great collection of talent, or assemble two, possibly three mega stars and add filler.
Each way requires you to make sound financial decisions, roster decisions, AND have little luck.
Chicago got Derrick Rose with the top pick. Miami got Beasley. Portland got Oden, Seattle got Durant.
You can’t legislate that.

i don’t know if this question had already been asked before but now that the players are not represented by a union, are they free to negotiate contracts individually without system on how the contract will be structured?

There’s some excitement floating around for Kessler and Boies, but I don’t feel any good can come of this. I don’t see the owners backing down anytime soon, and I foresee a long drawn out process with the possibility of multiple seasons lost.

This article is on point. It is sad that this is happened but I back the players %100.

My only fear is that the power will shift from owners (the few) to the top players ONLY. I do not know where this will go, but I could easily see a shift happening where the top players control the market and due to new measures the lower the tier the player is, the more interchangable they become. Having younger teams is already beginning to trend (with OKC and Memphis as examples) and I am worried veteran players that arent in the NBA’s “top 1%” might end up getting the shortest end of the stick.

Everyone is talking about the whole “IN REAL LIFE, EMPLOYERS WOULD JUST FIRE THESE PEOPLE PICKETING!”
But in “real life” almost every single practice the NBA runs would be illegal. No, not the lowering salaries; that happens all the time… but the restrictions on players and how the contracts impact other leagues. In real life, the NBA would be a clear monopoly.
Actually, if the players really do wait three years to resume playing, we actually could see the court rule that way!

Great piece, Allen.

I’m with Mr P! 100% support for players! I’d rather go without watching the best league of my favourite sport for YEARS than see the owners force the players to capitulate. There are lots of other things I can do with my time. I don’t need the NBA, never have. And when I tune in again it will be because of the players and the marvellous things they do that will bring back my cheers and support, not the owners.

The owners are “owners”, they have a right to try to make a profit. Most of the small market team owners were struggling to turn a profit. And players were already getting great pay. There is no way now that all these NBA players are going to find the same salary in Europe or Asia. I agree there was greed all the way around, but the NBA players are shooting themselves in the foot by walking away.

Teddy, if the NBA was a “surefire business” than all these teams wouldn’t be losing money. While maybe they aren’t losing as much as they say let’s not kid ourselves that a lot of teams are losing money. Someone said that the owners own the teams but don’t own the players. Maybe not, but they do own the positions the players have within the organization. They own their jobs and it’s their right to pay people what they see fit. Maybe there should be a lot more incentive clauses in people’s contracts instead of all this guaranteed money. Make people earn their money for every second they’re out there on the court. Have base salaries with things like bonuses for so many points per game, making the playoffs, winning the championships, etc. etc. You’ll see a lot better performances from these guys knowing they’re going to get paid a lot more if they achieve those goals. What they did in Miami last year was a complete joke and no employee should be dictating what happens in the company that pays them

The player’s position is one that they have been forced into. If they allow for the league to bully them, then it will get to the stage where they have no concessions or benefits left. the league would do a 360 and go back to the 1950s and 60s were players were paid next to nothing and received almost no healthcare or any other benefits. The current system was seen as a coup for the owners during the last lockout, and if the owners are foolish enough to pay 20 million dollars a year to a above average player as Atlanta did last year then that is their problem. the onus should not be on the players, do not ask to be payed millions each year the current status-quo is one created by the owners who continue to pay players such as Gilbert Arenas and Rashard Lewis 100 million dollar contracts. The owners if they had any business sense would tell the player or player’s agent to go get f@#$ed, and let some other moron pay them that much. How many teams are gutted and unable to have any wriggle room because of a ludicrous contract? Where they could have let the player walk and maybe have 1 or 2 bad seasons yet come back stronger than ever through savvy drafting and better free-agent choices with the savings made from letting a player who demanded to much walk out the door.