The CHeat are selling out stadiums 'cause the fans of most other teams hate them. That's not the kind of money David Stern or any other rational person sees as a good long-term business strategy.
Exactly. And it is not about less GREED. Most of them taking less 'upfront' money planning on making it back in endorsements. [The NIKE AFFECT] If you wanna see an Example. Look at the Carmelo Anthony Debacle. Trying to build his own super team in NY . . . He and fricking Chris Paul discussed it at a wedding for cripes sake. N.O. traded Colison to make Paul comfortable. . . but i feel he will jump ship any way. . . . or force N.O. Into a deal that will not be favorable Now you have a NY 'Big Three' In a Few year. . . Griffen decides he'd rather be with the HISTORICAL L.A. team Talk with . . i dunno . . .Love in Minnesota and D Will in Utah . . . . Let's goto the Lakers . Sure this is all Chicken Little talk . . . but . . what's to prevent it from happening. Hey . . it is they lives. . . they can do it. . but i don't have to watch it. and if alot of other decide to not watch it .. . then the NBA start losing money I bet you it will be addressed. Rocket River
You sure they're selling out cause of that? I mean, I'm sure there's people who want their all-star type basketball.
ONE MORE THING I think another reason for my dislike of the superteams is 1. The rule changes to a point where their is d*mn near a call on every play . . 2. The star calls. In the games I watch . . .even if you don't follow basketball you can instantly tell who is a Star and who isn't. Just by how Refs Call the game. The mix of these two things make super teams very unappealing Rocket River
Well they're rooting for their own team to win but I'm sure they love seeing the ooh and ahhs of that Miami team.
Do you know why most like to watch the NCAA tournament more than the NBA all-star game even though the ASG's star power is far superior? One word: competitiveness When half of the star players of the league stay on a few teams, 90% of the league become irrelevant. Competitiveness evaporates.
90% of the league would be 27 irrelevant teams. I'm pretty sure we can go back through the years and list plenty of seasons where we only expected 3 teams to contend for a title. I'm positive we can list numerous seasons where we didn't expect more than 5 teams to compete for the title. The league, as far as true parity is concerned, has rarely been competitive. Two teams have won over half of the championships. A few dominant teams have been running the NBA since forever. The only difference here is the guys chose to hook up on their own. If there are 2-4 megateams that only have a shot at winning....then it will look just like the league looks in most other years.
True, but in that future, 90% of the teams will look like the Cavs instead of even projecting the illusion of competence. The league will be like a Globetrotters game where your home team (minus 3 cities) is the Washington Generals.
Then its up to the owners/gm's to build teams up, that will entice players to stay where they are. The only reason Kevin Durant is staying in OKC is because of the talent he has there. If he had scrubs around him, he would be looking at FA as well. If teams fail to put talent around there star players because the owner is cheap, or have a bad GM, players will leave. If they are willing to spend, build a good team players will come eg Miami. Look at what Orlando is trying to do, to keep Dwight Howard. They are doing everything they can, do show him, why he should stay, and that they can get talent around him. People forget that Miami was in the finals last year, they didn't tank or bottom out to get Lebron Wade and Bosh. They had a winning culture, a good coach that coached one of the best defensive teams last year, great GM and a owner willing to do what it takes to win.
We don't have one star player and even we aren't the Washington Generals. I can't believe folks are arguing about parity or stuff being unfair when the golden age of basketball had one team going to 8 Finals in 10 years, winning 5 and another team winning 3 in 5 years. Or when basketball was at it's height in popularity there was one team winning 6 titles in 8 seasons. LA and SA have won 9 of the last what...12. Come one now.... The league right now does not look any different than it did 5 years ago or 10 or 20. You have like 5 (if that) teams with a legit shot to win the title and everyone else is praying for a miracle. Nothing has changed but the manner in which teams are assembled. Players finally woke up and started to think for themselves.
http://twitter.com/#!/STEIN_LINE_HQ/status/29434201069592576 There's a gem from Marc Stein. Time for this thread to be started in the GARM. Nene's third preferred team remains unknown but rest assured Rockets will also make trade bid for free agent-to-be if they can't get Melo
Have you ever seen the Lakers come into Houston? Fans love to see good teams and fair weather fans love to see great players. Lots of Lakers (or I should say Kobe) fans in TC when they play but the majority is still booing the Lakers and hoping for a Rockets win.
works for the yankees and MLB. works for cowboys, steelers, and pats and the NFL. every sport, you MUST have a team the general public hates. in MLB, it's pretty much always been the yanks. in NFL, it was the cowboys for a while, now steelers and pats. it generates interest in the general public. the casual fan doesn't watch the NBA unless something really piques their interest. and the heat are it. and if you mean to tell me if the heat run of 3-4 championships in a row, the media hype and casual interest toward them would die down, i would say you're crazy. when jordan dominated the L and pretty much no other team had a chance, the NBA had its highest ratings. when the lakers or celts were trading rings, it had high ratings. the NBA isn't like the NFL (historically). parity isn't the reason why the NBA was or has been popular. it's SUPERSTARS; and SUPERSTARS THAT WIN. ratings are highest when the NBA has a top 3-5 superstar win, and win repeatedly. shaq-kobe brought in the last highest ratings. and why would you compare it to the all-star game? the players don't try in the all-star. if they treat it like a real game every year, i'm sure the ratings would go through the roof. and even when they don't, it still pulls in better ratings than say the NFL or MLB all-star game. do you REALLY want to have the spurs-pistons 7 game series? NOBODY CARED. LOWEST RATED FINALS EVER. bam, the lakers made it again and ratings went up.
San Antonio won four championships in a nine year span. The Detroit Pistons made it to the conference Finals six years in a row. Those don't count as great examples of parity. They count as examples of a small market team being one of the three or four teams with a legit shot to win, but that's not what I was talking about. I'll give you Miami. They came out of nowhere, had a good two season stretch, then fell apart again.
So you think the NBA has 30 superstars? Because every team has a best player and most teams have a young "star" they're trying to build around. Cleveland is probably the only exception and that's because it's the first season of the post-Lebron era. Superstars are guys who are the face of the franchise and actually lead the franchise somewhere. Bosh was leading his team to April vacations every year. Pippen had one chance in his prime to lead his team without Jordan. Do you even know what he did? Despite having just lost the greatest player to ever play the game, he led his team to 55 wins and to within one game of the Eastern Conference Finals. Wade is a superstar. Lebron is a superstar. No superstar player would miss the playoffs five years out of seven, regardless of how crappy his supporting cast was.
The scenario you're describing here sounds infinitely more appealing to me than one in which a bottom-feeder team sends it's best player (still in his prime) to one of the leagues two power teams because the GM (or his predecessor) has ties to that franchise. You do realize that's what has decided the last three championships, right?
