Michael Jordan in Favor of Hard Salary Cap, Revenue Sharing

you know what the problem really is? the deals are too long and the non-super star contracts. i’m a laker fan so i’ll use them as en example. The lakers don’t have a problem w/ kobe’s salary. They don’t have a problem with gasol’s salary. No problem with bymun and odom’s salaries. Our problem? Luke Walton, Steve Blake, Ron Artest. Teams always over pay role players. Think of big contracts. Most of them are good. The only bad big contracts belong to Eddy Curry, Rashard Lewis, and Gilbert Arenas. There’s probably something like 60 big contracts in the league (think 15+ million a yr) and only 3 of them are bad. If joe johnson’s contract was 4 yrs instead of 6 you wouldn’t think of it was a bad contract. Now think of mid level exception contracts. I’m sure 70% of them are bad. Look at the grizzlies. They payed a ton of money to rudy gay and Z-Bo and that’s okay. The problem? Mike Conley’s contract. How do you give 50 million to a guy who’s not one of the top 15 players at his position?

Bryan
You have to check the history. Sterling’s teams have always been profit makers because he draws just enough fans and sells just enough merchandise despite being a loser team. I’m not saying he’s drawing Lakers crowds, I’m saying that even a “bad” crowd in L.A. is pretty good compared to the pickings in some of these smaller cities.
Chukaz
With just Gasol, Kobe and Artest the Lakers are at the $45 million hard cap. Seriously. Kobe makes like $23 million, Gasol makes right about $18 million and Artest makes $7 million.
That’s three players. If you substitute Bynum, who makes $13 million, for Artest, the Lakers are already over the cap and they only have THREE players on their roster.
A hard cap affects everybody. Even the superstars. It depresses everybody’s salaries, and it doesn’t even include the automatic lump sum payments that players receive in the NFL. Hell, Mike Vick signed the richest deal in NFL history back in the day, and he got $20 million in guaranteed money. Kobe makes that in his base salary, and will make more than that for the next three years.
The hard cap will change the financial landscape of the entire league.

Chuk – While I pretty much agree with what your saying. Big contracts can and often do become issues, especially if the Salary Cap gets any lower. FE using your Lakers and Kobe Bryant – We will assume the CBA doesn’t change, so the salary cap is $56.1 Million, Kobe’s production drops a little again, say he goes for 23PPG, 4APG, 4RPG on like 44% shooting at some point in the next 3 years (what he is under Contract for). Would he be worth half your salary cap? or even more? He is slated to make $25 Million in 2011-12, $27 Million in 2012-13, and $30 Million in 2013-14. While that is probably closer to his actual worth to the Lakers (in terms of how much revenue he alone generates) that is still a massive roadblock towards building a championship caliber team if your not allowed to go over the salary cap for outside players. IMO the whole system needs to be revamped not just adjusted.

give credit where credit is do, MJ and jerry richardson are of very few who
have played and owned a franchise. perhaps both have had a hand in making some bad decisions, but who of us would not trade places with them to at least
atry and run a franchise..

how the tables have turned

Well if they have Revenue Sharing and a Hard Cap (with a fair amount of money going to the players) then I understand and can see it working and being fairly competitive for the majority of the league (however i am well aware though that the owners offer with these rules is/was not fair). IDK where you got “zero guarantees on contracts” from, nowhere does it say that, and nowhere have I read that, that is what the owners offered.

Whatever one thinks of what MJ is saying, it’s revealing to hear one owner’s take on things. This is sounding more and more like the owners are not going to budge an inch on this thing. Whatever one’s opinion is about this labor dispute–whether the owners are to blame or the players are to blame—it looks like at the very least the league has had some very serious issues. The player/owner relationship is becoming so poisonous that it might be coming close to the point of no return even after when the players eventually cave in. What we might be witnessing is the beginning of the end.

I think the owners feel like thy don’t have a fair chance to compete for free agents, but I tony think tat is true The owners just need to learn how to better manage their teams that’s all. you can’t give out all of thesr bad contracts then get mad at the players for accpeting thr money.

Ok that makes sense. I read from I believe Larry Coon that said the players were willing to make those changes (shortened contracts & little less revenue) but only if the cap is not made into a hard cap & players still get something like 53%. I follow him on twitter and it was in june i believe.

@la huey check your sources. MJ did not make $30mil his last few in Chicago. He took less to make sure the team could buy the players they needed to compete. He made enough on endorsements

well it works in the nhl. do we really want an mlb situation where only the yankees and red sox can compete? where teams like the blue jays who have winning records still cant make the playoffs. in nhl the leafs were the yankees of hockey paying their way to the playoffs after there lockout and salary cap and bad drafting they are in the hockeys crap bin and lower markets like carolina are making winning runs. i want the nba to be like nhl or nfl where almost every year some one has a chance. so i cant hate on mike for what hes saying but hes got a unique view having been player and now owner.

Gotchu slamily

A hard cap helps teams because it sets a limit to how much a team can spend on players. That being said, It helps prevent teams from overpaying sad role players. In the old system a small market would have to overpay sad role players because they risked losing them to the big markets because teams like LA and Dallas can spend A LOT more money on players. This puts small-market teams at a disadvantage because LA spends 90 million dollars on players salaries. I am just using LA as an example. This means LA can severely overpay a sad role player(s) and still be able to afford its high paid Superstars. However if a team like Indiana paid Dahntay Jones(role player) what LA could afford to pay him then Indiana would not be able to resign a star such as Danny Granger because they can’t afford to go over the cap and pay the luxury tax.

Kind of funny how a lot of guys are pointing out how much Jordan made in his last 3 years in the league. How many remember when he was the 37th highest paid player in the late 80′s/early 90′s and told management to spend the money to get better players on the team? Reinsdorf had said giving Michael that money was a thank you for what he’s done for the organization since he’s been there. They went from something like 8000 fans to sell outs every night for 20 years. How many individuals can make that claim for their team?

I specifically noted earlier in this section how I thought he was still underpaid in his last couple years. You could field a team with just Jordan and mascots and still sell out an arena.
Also, the NFL’s single-game-elimination playoff system has a lot to do with their perceived parity. In a one-and-done playoff format, the best team doesn’t always win. You catch a superior team asleep and you can beat them (see ’08 Giants, ’11 Seahawks).

All of you (that are arguing about Jordan’s last years in Chicago) need to realize there are 2 reasons for the current financial system in the NBA. The first, Kevin Garnett signed a 6-year $126M Contract (unheard of amount of money at the time) – and Michael Jordan made over $63M over his last 2 seasons (because he excluded himself from the NBPA and had right to negotiate his image….which is why he wasn’t in video games. FOr Example) – So the NBA Owners decided they didn’t want this turning into Baseball – So they enacted the current (or real close to it) CBA. – And the figure I used for Jordan’s salary is on Basketball-References website, inflation has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Yeah my bad I didn’t mean he was excluded as in not part of the union. I meant the league had no rights to his image. He signed 1-year contracts (just 2 of them) after his 8-year contract he signed in 1988 expired. (The Bulls paid the full length of the contract, even when he was playing baseball. and at the time, the $20M 8-Year contract was the biggest in NBA history. (Well Magic Johnson signed a 25 year, 25 Million Dollar Contract in 1980 but that was so long I don’t count it.) His 1 year $30M and 1 year $33M contracts at the time equaled more money then entire teams, and that irked owners. my bad on the last comment that was a mess

That’s a solid idea. There was a similar post on the winningest tandems on wageofwins. Click my name Allen — Also, what about Rick Barry and Jamaal Wilkes? Or was Wilkes playing a forward spot for those Warriors teams?

Magic and Byron…