The Legacy of today's Free Agency system. Is it good for the NBA?

The business of the NBA is not BASKETBALL
That is only the means
The business of the NBA - IS TO ENTERTAIN -

If I wanted to see blowouts and all star teams versus scrubs
I'd watch the GlobeTrotters versus the Washington Generals

It is definitely reaching a point where it is not entertaining any more
As of now. . . I don't even bother with it until after the All Star Break

Next Season . . . Maybe won't bother with it until the Finals
What's the point?

Rocket River

 

When Wilt forced his way to the Lakers a contender was chopped off in Philly. His team there came closest to beating Boston the previous season. Next year the Warriors will be insane favorites just like the 96-98 Bulls or the 3-peat Lakers. Same thing, different day. Options are different only because more options are available.

I see what ya mean about all the players getting the money.

 

Your missing the point here - there are several good teams out there that ESPN could be talking about but they don't because they are selling the Warriors. Why are they selling the Warriors? Because suburban kids and soccer moms see Curry and find him relatable/non threatening because he is one of them. ESPN is in it for ratings and selling premiere sponsorship deals/ads so they are coalescing around the marketable star who is on the good team who brings in an audience that normally wouldn't care too much about basketball. That audience won't tune in to watch a kid from the hood(like let's say Harden or Kawai) win games but they will tune in to watch the light skinned kid with a pretty mom and white collar family and ESPN is taking advantage of that.

Two facts here are:
- we still live in a very classist society - even racist at times
- ESPN is in the business of driving viewership and selling their market to advertisers

...you may think I'm wrong but I can tell you I worked nearly 10 years for a marketing company consulting large corporate brands and you better believe audience acquisition drives operating strategies in all major brands.

 

Make sure to tune in after the game where the Warriors starting lineup faces the best in the East.

 

i'm not saying there haven't been lopsided teams before. i was just saying that the players essentially voted to have a lopsided team even though in theory they should want as many contenders as possible because it presents a bigger market of winning teams where you can also go get money. as of now, you're choices are pretty much play in golden state and play for nothing money-wise, or get paid and play for nothing winning-wise. before you could at least hope that signing a max contract with a mid-level team could vault you into contention. now it just vaults you into still not being as good as golden state.

 

I just don't think it matters why people like or relate with the Warriors. At all. Of course everything you say about marketing is right because well that's how the world and business works. Curry and the Warriors drive viewership and dollars...... So what?

Your implication is it detracts from their success, else why even mention it. It wreaks of pettiness and jealousy. Like if ESPN would have covered the Rockets better, Durant would have joined our team (which is an insult to Durant, frankly) ignoring the fact the Rockets were a team in turmoil, underachieving, lack effort, barely. 500. Why on earth would you even waste time on a team like that??

Did they win 73 games because of ESPN? Did they go 33-0 because of ESPN? I honestly don't even have ESPN, but plenty of other places had Warriors coverage... the Atlantic even had articles on them of all places, why because what they did last year was exceptional. That's the bottom line. I don't care what ESPN thinks, it has no considerations towards any basketball outcomes.

 

So by marketing and selling the Warriors, it's safe to say the league and referees at least tried to influence / drive / steer this story by allowing the illegal screens, Draymond to get away with pretty much anything and not getting criticized for basically anything? Sounds about right..Curry and Klay being light skinned and rich kids definitely helps. Stern was a racist prick and Silver might be as well.

 

oh look people ...everytime something bad happens from now on, NOONE should oppose it or complain about it or do smth to change it..
BECAUSE it has already happened before!!

What kind of reasoning is that?

We should be fine with that because it happened in 1969 when most of us here weren't even ALIVE?
That's the point of changing and improving so this crap does NOT happen again.
So you can have a competitive and league with more parity.
So that people for more than a single team are interested in watching.

 

The current players voted to get the majority of them paid this summer and the next. There are 450 roster spots in the league. 174 players were set to be free agents this summer and 110 next summer (http://www.spotrac.com/nba/free-agents/). 63% of players were in position to benefit from free agency this summer or the next. Most of those players would never see the type of money they will see now. That's why players didn't want cap smoothing. Sure, a superteam could be a byproduct of guys cashing in. But superteams are a constant in the league, so why not cash in?

And GS is no bigger of a favorite than the 3-peat Lakers or 2nd 3-peat Bulls. The Bulls almost lost a few times. LA did ultimately lose, to a team with 1 star and role players at that (2003).

 

Oppose it all you like. But complaining that he did something no one else would ever do or created a situation that hasn't been constant in our league (stacked teams) is silly. Let me complain about a superteam when I've been watching superteams since the league has existed. What kind of reasoning is that?

That was just one example. You could list examples of superteams or players signing off on superteams or forcing moves to form them for damn near every decade.

Yet it keeps happening, no matter how many changes are implemented. You can't, and shouldn't, be able to tell a player he can't control where he plays at some point in his career. This is season 10 for Durant. You want a player to not be able to go wherever he wants 10 years into his career? What kind of reasoning is that?

The league is just as competitive as it has been in any given year. You have around 3-4 teams with a legit shot to win the title, just like last season and almost every season before it. Even if GS is the overwhelming favorite, it won't be any different from Shaq's Lakers or Jordan's Bulls, and I believe ratings did just fine tin those seasons. Ratings will be great next season as well.

 

I think your projecting something I'm not implying at all. You took issue with the fact that I said ESPN was hyping up GS because it helps their bottom line. That's it, there is no "so what" - that's just a fact. I don't like the idea that my sports coverage(and ESPN is the clear giant in the sports news and analysis space) is influenced by anything else other than what's happening in the sport. My point is just that there would have been a million ESPN articles about the Warriors if they had just been a very good team like let's say the Clippers. You say that by being a 73 win team, that justifies the number of articles but that ignored the real problem of bias here.

For instance, as good as the Warriors are, they are super arrogant from top to bottom yet you rarely see that discussed on ESPN articles if at all. I have seen that sentiment outside of ESPN - in one example, Tom Ziller of SBNation roasted the Warriors in the playoffs for being hypocrites and poor sports, but you rarely if ever see that valid opinion within the ESPN network. Why is that you may wonder? Lebron can be the greatest player of his generation but ESPN still openly criticizes parts of his game or his leadership, etc. The Warriors can be the greatest team of all time and still have criticisms about what they do. They celebrate shots before they even go in, they say they are "light years" ahead of any other organization in the league, they have Draymond blatantly playing outside the rules by tackling Beasley, kicking Adams, punching Lebron, etc. They are still a great team - but the question here is why does the conversation of the warriors as they are covered on ESPN ignore those flaws? The narrative on ESPN is the Warriors are awesome end of story...meanwhile the narrative outside of ESPN would agree and add that there are still problems with the Warriors.

I'll say it once more time, I don't like the idea that my sports coverage is simply a way to market a specific team to me.

 

That's how it is with -every- single media company... You said it yourself. These media companies behave in a way that sells views/clicks/etc.

No one is forcing you to watch ESPN, Ever think about that? if you don't like the fact that a lot of ESPN viewers particularly enjoy Warriors coverage, then don't watch it!!

Like liberals watch MSNBC, Crazies read Breitbart, conservatives read Wapo, Warriors fans clearly tend to watch ESPN.

Like if you want to actually change their behavior, it's the absolute best thing you can do.

 

so lets say that those numbers are actually representative of free agency and that on average, about 1/3 of the league is a free agent in any given offseason. so you would have something like 174 this offseason, then 110, then 166 to add up to 450. if those were actually 3 completely independent groups, and we took this season's cap spike and even used the projected $108M for next offseason (since that was the value when the smoothing proposal came up), then these huge cap spikes would benefit the 174 without smoothing the cap increases and benefit the 276 with smoothing (with smoothing done over say 3 or 4 years). the first free agency class sucks up so much of the overall cap space that even the 2nd offseason free agents would benefit from smoothing.


now of course, the numbers are obviously much more complicated. for example, some guys this offseason will sign 1 year deals and be free agents and add to the 110 number so it's possible they might get the future benefits of smoothing. and your link shows that about 1/3 of next offseason's FA's are minimum contract guys. they don't stand to benefit from a cap increase like the mid-level guys because minimum contracts aren't negotiated. if minimum contract don't move with the cap, then they would benefit from getting some of the smoothing money i would think. and some guys are max contract guys and don't benefit the way mid-level guys do. where all the numbers exactly lie, i'm not sure. but it stands to good reason that the results would be similar to treating all of the FA classes independently. this cap spike is so much larger than all other cap increases that this one FA class is going to disproportionately gain from the overall benefits of the cap increasing over time.

in fact, i think the reason the cap for next year came down is because the players this offseason got paid more than they were projecting because this has been such a bonanza for this year's FA class. so in addition to how crazy the spending was projected to be, it ended up being even crazier and they literally took something like an additional $175M in cap room away from next year's class.

 

^^^^

Or we can just say over half the league was in a position to receive more than the minimum split, so it's not a shocker that they voted against smoothing.

 

What are you even arguing right now? I'm super unclear. Obviously this is how the media works - you don't have to lecture me because I MADE THAT POINT IN MY FIRST POST. I don't have to like it and if your point is, "then you don't have to watch" then thanks a lot for that illuminating point. By the way, you DO have to watch because ESPN has exclusive televised rights to some games. So I choose to watch ESPN televised games regardless because there aren't other options if I want to watch certain NBA games, and I avoid ESPN otherwise. Hell, I don't even have cable to watch it even if I wanted to - I'm league pass only.

My point I made earlier is that they are the media giant in the sports news space and they use that as a platform to market specific viewpoints and it influences the landscape of the NBA by changing popular opinion. Just because I don't agree with that and can choose to not watch, doesn't mean I can't have an opinion about it. If I don't like cabbage and I choose not to get it when it's available - that doesn't mean I lose the right to have the opinion that cabbage isn't very good....

 

Your problem is you think popular opinion changes "the landscape of the NBA" whatever that means. What does that mean? Is that wins and losses? Is that related to free agency/perception? You must think Durant joined GSW because they were the media darlings? Is that what you mean by landscape?

I'm just wondering what you actually want ESPN to do... do you think ESPN has a moral responsibility to be fair and balanced? or a media company that caters their viewpoint to their customer base? You can only choose one.

This is you not liking cabbage, eating it anyway, then complaining how bad it tastes.