Friday, November 4th, 2011 at 2:15 pm  |  68 responses

Michael Jordan, Other Owners Refusing Anything Less Than 50% of League Revenues?


Things were already going to be inevitably tense at this Saturday’s NBA labor meeting, but now, the tension and bad blood promises to be off the charts. The NY Times reports on Michael Jordan (*cough cough*) and other team owners who will not back down from the 50/50 BRI split, no matter what: “A faction of 50 N.B.A. players is threatening to dissolve the union if it compromises further on player salaries. The league is facing an equivalent threat from a trenchant group of owners, who are vowing to oppose any deal that gives players more than 50 percent of revenue. The owners’ faction includes between 10 and 14 owners and is being led by Charlotte’s Michael Jordan, according to a person who has spoken with the owners. That group wanted the players’ share set no higher than 47 percent, and it was upset when league negotiators proposed a 50-50 split last month. According to the person who spoke with the owners, Jordan’s faction intends to vote against the 50-50 deal, if negotiations get that far. Saturday’s owners meeting was arranged in part to address that concern. A majority of the 29 owners are believed to support a 50-50 deal, but they are reluctant to move further. ‘There’s no one who’s interested in going above 50 percent,’ said the person who has spoken with the owners.”


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  • http://thetroyblog.com Teddy-the-Bear

    Okay, I do agree with you that players who under-perform and are thus overpaid can be a nuisance to the league. And I understand that if a regular employee were to under-perform, they’d likely be fired or demoted.
    Keep in mind though, that in the NBA the players ARE the product. The NBA is just a brand name. Think about it this way: if Apple were suddenly to disappear off the face of the planet, what would happen? People would buy from other brands. But they’d still be buying the same (or similar) product–ie. tablets, smart phones, etc.
    Also, they’d probably come to appreciate other brands more because iTunes rips you off and doesn’t actually give you full “ownership” of the music you download… but that’s another story. lol.

  • Heals

    Jake please explain how your job resembles that of an NBA Player as well how the company you work for resenbles the NBA. I have no idea what you do, but doubt that there are enough parallels to make the comparison accurate. MJ shouldd’t have agreed to Diop’s deal t begin with, so what now? We already covered that NBA contracts don’t have to be guaranteed, if you don’t know that by now you shouldn’t be commenting as such. Jake I’d flip your comment around and say the teams are nothing without players. If you disagree feel free to watch AAU teams in NBA uni’s all you want. Wouldn’t be shht huh, Justin if you feel that way say the commentors names so they have a chance to defend themselves…

  • http://slamonline.com Allenp

    The problem with performance based contracts is determining good performance. Do you use star or team success? Either one means certain players will get shafted. Do you have owners decide r players decide if they me expectations? Use third party arbitration?
    Pay as you go works in the NFL because the owners don’t have to pay if you overperform. They just have the ability to cut you if you suck.

  • VanCityBBall

    anybody else notice that the only side giving up a little bit of way are the players? first they tried sticking to 57, then they went down to 53 and now 52.5… its not “negotiating” if only one side is willing to bargain

  • Jake

    Teddy, there is a difference between wishing and actually thinking it’s going to happen. Would I start an uprising if I was an NBA player making 6,000,000 a year to play a game? Hell no I wouldn’t. The owners are the ones putting their financial futures on the line for 30,40 years at a time when they are responsible for putting a marketable product on the floor year in and year out.

    Heals, A job is a job. Pay structure is the same almost everywhere. The head of a company gets the biggest cut of the pie( Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Donald Trump) so and and so on. How it is dispersed beyond that is dependent on the company. MJ agreed to Diops deal because he believed that Diop had the talent to succeed in the NBA, which is what almost every contract is based off of these days instead of the players previous body of work. That needs to change. Also, I’ve been watching the NBA since the 80′s. There are always more stars out there waiting for their chance. One crop of overpaid, under-performing players isn’t going to turn the NBA into a forsaken wasteland. Do you really think Bob Cousy, Wilt the Stilt, Kareem, or any of the old legends feel bad for the players? NO, because they remember what it was like to make pennies on the dollar, ride to games on buses and sleep in a Motel 6 with some mice as roommates. A good majority of the players these days have adopted the Latrell Spreewell mentality, screaming “I got kids to feed!!” As they sit in their brand new Bentley, in a $20,000.00 suit. Spare me. My initial and overall point is that the workers of a company don’t get to and shouldn’t be able to decide how that company divides it’s earnings, as we are seeing now.

  • Heals

    Exactly Allen, Hunter brought his up. He said since the owners wanted player accountability for underperformance in the form of giving back salary that’s fine. With that though he said that players who were overacheiving should have an equal right to outside arbitration and of course the owners wanted nothing to do with the whole concept then…

  • Heals

    Jake – appreciate the response man, but we just see things differently. I asked for examples and you gave me a job is job. Do your place of business have a TV contract, are you part of union, what’s your pay structure in comparison to your fellow employees, do people pay to see you perform you job, are there other jobs (with their own employees) dependent upon you performing your job at certain places at a certain time, do people wager on the outcome of your companies performance versus another, is your business in marketing contracts with other businesses, are you featured in advertisements for your profession and company, do you perform charity work for your company, can you be traded to a competing company, does the media cover your job performance and for any major publications or outlets, does your company monitor and possibly punish your actions outside of the workplace? Please don’t simplify the situation…

  • Heals

    And MJ believed incorrectly in Diop’s ability (and Morrison’s, and Kwame’s, and MattCarol’s and not in Rip Hamiliton’s, and Gerald Wallace’s,). His punishment is less cap flexability, a poorer performing team, less fan interest in the franchise and thus less revenue generated. His reward shouldn’t be that player concede below 50-50. You claim to watch the league since the 80′s and use Latrell and an example for your average NBAer. Latrell is an exception in it’s most extravagant form and you must have forgotten how cocaine alomost ruined Pro-ball in 80′s. Their not deciding how the “company” divides it’s earning their fighting to maintain stake representative of their contribution to that “company.” Regardless though you got a POV and we are better off for you sharing it…

  • Heals

    If anything the “stars” of today are the antithesis of everything you hate. The league is closer to it’s Gloden Age now than it has been for years. I think your still refering to the mid to late 90′s funk of oevrpaid underachievers (KAnderson, VinBAker, Antoine, any tall white center). Kobe is grinder, KD a gym rat, CP3 a life source of a city, DW3a stuntman, LBJ the embodiment of what is and can be, DHoward the lovable giant, DRose the windy city savior, BGriff the Daredevil, The New3 and RR reenergizing and once dead franchise. I dunno man if you can’t get on board with this crew it’s your loss…

  • Jake

    Alright, if Spree is an extravagant exception…how do you explain Stephon Marbury, Steve Francis, Jalen Rose, Larry Hughes, Eddie Jones. They were all wild complainers that complained their way into getting exorbitant contracts. I’m not saying that the players don’t deserve their fair share, BUT I am saying that a 50/50 split is more than fair. If you think it would be good for the NBA to give more than that to the players, look at the NHL. How many of those franchises are floundering year after year because the players are making 55,56, even 57% of the revenue brought in by the league? It leaves less money for marketing, which leaves less room for the league to grow and attract new fans. 5% might not seem like a lot, but when you are talking in terms of billions, its a big chunk of change for the owners to give up. I’d rather have under-paid players than a bankrupt NBA.

  • Jake

    Oh and here’s some more food for thought…Kobe is the only one worth writing home about on the entire list. If these guys made half of what they do now it would enable the teams to attract more solid talent and expand their fan base, increasing revenue.
    EXPECTED SALARY ACTUAL SALARY

    Michael Redd, MIL 252 $3,712,735 $18,300,000
    Rashard Lewis, WAS 144 $6,961,039 $19,573,711
    Gilbert Arenas, ORL 172 $5,914,274 $17,730,694
    Eddy Curry, N/A 493 $913,154 $11,596,822
    Peja Stojakovic, DAL 248 $3,800,181 $14,034,483
    Vince Carter, PHX 121 $7,958,008 $17,522,375
    Kobe Bryant, LAL 7 $15,450,923 $24,806,250
    Andrei Kirilenko, UTH 90 $9,531,563 $17,823,000
    Troy Murphy, GS/BOS 263 $3,484,494 $11,657,324
    Kenyon Martin, DEN 102 $8,888,593 $16,545,454

    Being realistic, do any of these guys deserve nearly that much money in accordance to their level of play?

  • Heals

    Nope, none. But who signed them, where’s their accountability? Other than Bryant, from the first day those contracts were signed those players had no chance of living up to them. I can just as easily list several players in their rookie deals that are grossly overperforming their deals, so where does that get us? NBAPA offered amnesty cluases for teams which would allow all the contracts mentioned above to be erased from their books, but the owners declined. The fact that Kobe is the only player of the ones I listed that you deem worthwhile says alot (to me) about your interest in the game as a whole. That’s 6 players (we both know you could have gone on longer) over a maybe a 7-8 year span (so somewhere around 45-50 players out of 2,400+, I’ll take that percentage). Once again totally agree that the NHL’s financial restructuring has greatly benefited the leagues viability, but the NBA is on a different level. The TV contracts are with bigger networks and for much more money(The NHL still can’t get every Stanley Cup final game on NBC). Look at any list rating the financial worth/marketability of athletes and you’ll not only see many more NBA Players, but the gap in earnings (from advertising/marketing not salary) between them and their NHL counterparts is significant. I agree no one wants a bankrupt league, but I believe 52.5-47.5 will achieve that. Even you have to agree if 50/50 was cool 2-3 days ago then why is it necessary for a minority group of owners to now push for 47-53 at the highest? Props on the back and forth…

  • Jake

    Haha no problem, a friendly argument is never a bad thing. I do agree about the owners being idiots at this point…it’s almost like seeing school children fight. The fact that the best mediator in the history of mediation quit means bad bad things. I just hope the L comes back soon, so we can get back to arguing about the things that matter, like who’s dunk should have been number 1 in the top 10 on ESPN.

  • Yesse

    If MJ was still playing, i bet he wouldn’t think like this.

  • http://www.slamonline.com Cheryl

    Capitalism sucks.

  • @Deknowz

    @Cheryl- I agree, but it’s a double edged sword…

  • Heals

    Good place to leave off Jake. Now there’s something we can both agree on…

  • aj

    Why do people keep saying that players are the product so they should receive a huge chunk of BRI? The fact that they are paid MILLIONS, have their healthcare taken care of, and can make money from endorsements is enough! They should receive some of the BRI, but 50/50 is a fair offer. In what other occupation could they make as much as they do in the NBA?

    You can’t keep referring to the 57% split that they received from the previous CBA. It was extremely player friendly and not a good business model. The owners are guilty of signing outrageous contracts, but the market dictates what the going rate is for players. It’s just like buying a home in California per se. You know an outdated ranch home is not worth $975K, but if you want to continue to live in California, you pay what the market dictates.

    Owners have an obligation to keep their franchises competitive. If they dont pay a player a certain amount, they will sign with a different team and the team gets a reputaion of being cheap and no one wants to play for you. SO yes, the owners are guilty of being stupid for making the market this way, but how can you fault them for trying to correct the mistakes they made and keep the NBA viable?

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