New Union Chief Calls Owners Expendable - [Fox Sports]

So, then who will, like, you know, own the teams then?

Perhaps a league-wide Green Bay model.

 

After a few months of having no salary, as usual, the players will cave in.

The max salary should be raised if the salary cap is raised. Maybe the union should target their agents' percentages as well.

 

Is she talking about in general, or in the NBA?

In the NBA, salaries have grown as the salary cap has grown, which has grown as the league revenues have grown. It has nothing to do with the top salaries growing. In fact, top salaries have decreased since they put in max contracts, while salaries at the bottom have grown.

If she's talking about general life, then it's even less true. We've seen in corporate America that salaries at the top are skyrocketing while salaries at the bottom stagnate. It's one of the big economic challenges the country faces.

 

Good points. Sounds like she's blowing smoke up our asses.

 

She's grand standing. You would kill the small markets and create even more super teams in the large markets and teams with deep pocket owners. You can forget teams like the Spurs winning titles or teams like OKC and IND competing for championships.

 

I like the combative tone, but yeah I think challenging max salaries is a bluff. If the BRI share remains intact but you remove the max salary, most of the union membership will get paycuts. I actually still don't expect the next negotiation to be too bad. So long as the players can avoid more concessions on share of BRI, they'll all make more money thanks to the new TV deal. It's much easier to get along when a rising tide raises all boats.

 

While I can certainly understand her position as a negotiator to create a public perception against the owner, if you think about it her stance makes no sense. If owners are expendable, then there's actually one very easy solution for the players. Quit their jobs, create a new league, say the American Basketball Association, and then get all the profit minus the operating expenses and such. In that situation, players can literally split all the profit amongst themselves.

 

Doubt this happens, the NBA union is actually split into 2 camps, the elites who don't want a max and the rest of the guys who realize not having a max salary means no money for them.

Also I don't think calling owners expandable makes any sense, the owners ARE the league and they can withstand the NBA closing down for any length of time, the NBA players not so much LOL.

 

I think a better way to characterize owners is to say they are interchangeable. Many people are qualified to be an owner. You could have all 30 majority owners sell to 30 new owners and the league wouldn't miss a beat. You could replace them all with 1 owner, or take the league public, or make it a nonprofit, and it would keep on. But some sort of ownership is necessary.

Players are not interchangeable. If you waived the 450 active players and signed 450 new players, the quality of the product would be seriously degraded. It would continue on, but I think you'd have to expect all kinds of financial loss.

 

Players get locked out, players form new league, 100% BRI goes to player - owners

 

Unfortunately, the current NBA companies have assets and capabilities that a player's league would have to build from scratch -- things like lease agreements with major arenas, contracts in place with advertisers and broadcasters, and know-how on how to operate ticket sales, event hosting, marketing, back-office functions, etc. I'd love to see a player-league, but it'd be a long road to build one, and rather pointless when a league already exists.

 

This thread has been a discussion of player max contracts.

Is that what she was actually talking about? Because that article sounded to me like she was advocating eliminating the salary cap entirely and allowing a team to spend as much as their market can support, which would be utterly terrifying in terms of competitive balance.

Agreed it's probably just rhetoric to negotiate off of, but I want ZERO part of an NBA with no salary cap.

 

I mean, you could literally have NO owners and the league would be fine. Have the NBA league offices appoint CEOs of each team that are supposed to act as the owner of the team.

The only difference would be if you think they'd be less likely to want to win than an "owner" but that's not likely. Regional managers in corporations are competitive as hell with each other. NBA sets up a management board that is responsible for hiring CEOs (regional manager) that is responsible for hiring his own corporate structure. It would be clunky obviously to lay out, and I'm not suggesting it should happen, but owners don't bring anything to the table anymore of much substance.

Owners were necessary to the survival of leagues back when owners were risking personal wealth to operate their own teams and giving loans to the leagues out of their own pockets to fund them. Now the sports leagues are pretty much self sufficient. If anything, getting rid of the owners might increase the overrated holy grail of "parity."

 

It would definitely resolve revenue sharing arguments.

 

Agreed. The team CEO isn't pocketing the extra revenue, he's just earning a salary with incentives based on wins and team profitability or something. The money goes into the general pool. Each team has a salary cap to work with. One big corporation with individually directed franchises.

Again, not advocating for it, but you definitely don't NEED the owners.

 

I'm just going to post a few quotes from that interview because its too much to copy & paste completely.

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/11874609/the-woman-change-sports

That woman seems to be stupid.

Considering that American sports are the only ones I know of with a salary it is not just "un-American" to have it, it is actually as American as possible. Talking about it at McDonalds with a gun in your hands would be the only way to make it "more American".

Seriously now, having a salary cap is a good thing. You wouldnt want situations like we have in European football (soccer), one team paying >100 million for their players and other teams can barely afford 5% of that (both teams playing in the same league). Furthermore some teams pay >200 million every year to sign new players (additional to their regular salaries). That just takes away most of the competition when one or two teams in each league are allowed to spend infinite amount of money. Furthermore those teams in Europe mostly pay those insane numbers with loans and basically have no "real" money, they own billions to multiple banks (worse than the US government ) and are only able to pay back interest rate because they are guaranteed to have success due to paying so much money for the best players (like signing 10 all stars and knowing you will have the best chance at winning).

And what exactly would happen without owners? Oh right, without teams, there would be no league. No stadiums. And no players. Let's call it what it is. There. Would. Be. No. NBA. If not for the owners.

Both sides need each other, obviously. Players wouldnt be able to manage everything on their own and there would be no game without the players. Why should either side get more money than the other? I think that would be fair. If any of the players thinks its unfair, he is free to do chose any other job he wants. Nobody forces them to earn millions in the NBA.

I totally have to agree with her at that point though. It is disturbing to force these guys to play basketball two nights in row (20-30 minutes each) to get paid millions of dollars. And once the season is over they actually have nothing to do for 4 months but working out a little bit to avoid getting fat. That's just unfair, they shouldnt be forced to do that. Horrible working conditions compared to people in the military, firefighters, police officers and every single regular worker out there who earns 0.something percent of what these guys do for multiple times the effort and work. Honestly, it's disgraceful to hear guys getting paid millions playing games complain about working two days in a row. Are you kidding me?

 

with the kind of revenue the league figures to be bringing in with the new TV deal, there's no reason why the NBPA shouldn't hold out for a CBA along the lines of Major League Baseball's.

Not that they will.

 

I'm with SamFisher on this.

She meant that Lebron is not replaceable. The players are not replaceable like the owners are.

She is merely saying this is entertainment, and the talent is what makes the product, not the owners.

In the Entertainment Industry, talent is not as replaceable as the producers/owners are. How can you not agree with that?

 

It isn't difficult... just use the same model as the NFL.... hardcap without every contract being fully guaranteed.... the NFL has all its problems, but the business is still a monolith! With the new TV revenue, NOW is the time to do it - raise the cap a huge amount (20-25%) to obtain signoff...

 

The NFL salary cap is not the reason the NFL is the force it is now. It's just a better product, with better minds, marketing, tv deals and national interest. The NFL could do away with the salary cap tomorrow and no one would care. You still have less parity in the NFL than people think.

The NBA is never going to be the NFL.

Ownership in the modern day sports league is so extremely overrated. It's just rich people trading places with the next rich person who sits around and watches millions flow in until he wants to trade it to the next rich person.