Adam Silver thinks Durant joining Golden State is a concern, and I don't agree with his assumption

It's a concern because Silver is a LerBon fan.

 

It's a problem because 29 of the 30 owners, whom Silver represents, most likely did not feel positively about Durant's decision.

 

Only the owners of contending teams would feel negative about it. Rest probably don't care, for example, Les.

 

I would think most owners of teams in secondary markets would care regardless of their contention status at this moment in time. All owners are likely concerned that they would not be able to keep their stars and may continuously lose them to big markets or "super teams."

 

I didn't hear it all, was he anti-super teams or anti-leaving? I thought it was more super-team oriented. Salary cap spike is a rare occurrence. Curry's super cheap contract is a fluke/rare occurrence.

 

Isn't the real question did a big market team steal a small market team's player? I would not consider GS that much bigger than OKC. Maybe about 15 million, but not significantly bigger.

 

Lol, wut? 15 million?

The Warriors draw on the entire Oakland/SF metropolitan area of 7+ million people. OKC draws on about 1.5 mil.

 

As a old school basketball purist, I hate superteams. This generation of players are too friendly and don't have the same competitive spirit as they once did. Theres nothing Silver can do about players not having any heart

 

The Bay Area CSA with a population around 8.7 million is the 5th largest in the country (Oklahoma City CSA is at 1.4 million and Houston CSA is at 6.8 million)

 

I have no problem with players moving to where they want to go, and conversely I am OK with incentivizing but not forcing players to stay.

But I would say that when one team has Curry, Durant, Green, and Thompson - 4 potential All-Stars and two MVP candidates - that a frank look at the current parity in the modern NBA is a necessity. I think that's the main thrust of what Silver was saying.

 

Will be interesting to see what, if anything, he does about it.

 

Market as in money. There is little to no difference between GS and OKC.

 

The concern present is that one NBA team now has 4 of the top 20 stars in the NBA on it. Then Cleveland has 3/2. That means, 28 teams have to split 13/14 top 20 NBA players. That makes sense to me.

Look at it another way, if each of the top 20 players in the NBA were split up and on different teams, that means in any given year more than half the league has a top 20 player. That's great for ratings, that's great for fan draw, and that's great for parity. Furthermore, of those 20, conceivably 16 will make the playoffs with 4 sitting on the outside looking in. This will make the playoffs more entertaining and dynamic, more upsets, more basketball to watch.

From a money perspective I get it. From a fan perspective I get it. But, from a rationalist perspective I can't help but wonder why everyone is so quick to give the Warriors the title already. We learned from the drama with Ty Lawson last year that on paper doesn't always add up. While Ty is no way near a Durant, this pairing between Durant and GS by no means will automatically amount to a ring. Let's play out the games and see what happens. Who says on game 1 of the NBA season Durant doesn't land funny and suffer another Jones fracture? Who says Steph's ankles are going to be good to go? Who says Klay is ok playing 4th fiddle? Who says Green doesn't life in prison for kicking someone in the balls to death? Anything can happen.

 

I don't think the league really cares about player distribution. They solved that with the draft. What they care about is the big revenue teams stealing talent from the small revenue teams unfairly. They've always cared about that. I think Silver either incorrectly made his statement, or he has a new concern that the league has never expressed before.

 

Player distribution drives revenue. No one wants to go watch a team that is fundamentally sound but lacks stars. If you have an evenly distributed league, 2/3's of the NBA have that guy and can sell tickets just to see him. If I'm a fair-weather fan in bumf$&! nowhere, and we lose our superstar in free agency, literally the only games I might go to are the ones against the Warriors and Cavs. If we have a superstar, I go to more than that. Look at the warriors before they were good, no one went to the games.

 

But even if GS turns say 350 million more because Durant plays for them, they still are on an equal playing level with OKC in terms of acquiring Westbrook. So nothing really changes in terms of OKC's ability to retain talent and sell tickets. OKC lost, but they lost fairly in my opinion.

 

The Bay Area has Silicon Valley, banking and a large military presence (including NASA) there. I would definitely say that in addition to population, there's definitely more money in the Bay Area than OKC.

 

You're assuming it's a linear trend. If this was so, the NBA wouldn't expand passed 10 teams. It's cheaper to operate with fewer teams and it's much easier. No, there is a point of diminishing returns. The revenue Durant generates on the Thunder will not be the same as the revenue he generates on the Warriors. It will plateau. That's why the NBA expands out, that's why they want more teams. They don't want to saturate the market. The NBA doesn't want it to be Lakers/Celtics year after year, they want a new challenger every year.

Also, I'm not saying the Warriors did anything wrong. They worked within the rules, it's on the NBA to not put itself in a situation where the cap spikes dramatically the way it did. Cap smoothing would have been nice, but player incentives to stay could also be improved. Hence what we are discussing in the other thread as well.

 

Did you just compare the most expensive place to live in the US other than maybe newyork to Oklahoma ???

time for you to do ALOT of research on (BAY AREA) cities like San Francisco, San Jose & Palo Alto today

Come back here when that's done