NBA owners have been crying poor ahead of the CBA negotiations next year. Stern saying things like teams are losing $400 million last year. If so, you'd think that they'd be more careful about their money rather than blowing $120 mil on Joe the Johnson, $80 mil on Rudy Gay, $40 mil on John Salmons, $34 mil on Amir Johnson, $32 mil on Drew Gooden. Hell, that's $300 millon right there. And this is after last year's "small time" FA class netted $50+ mil for Hedo and Ben Gordon, $35 mil for Charlie V, etc.
Most owners are stupid or don't care about their money, it seems. Could be most of them are billionaires and a 20 or 30 million loss is nothing to them. But that's no excuse for saying one thing yet doing the other.
you have to spend money to make money. if you don't sign big names you aren't going to sell as many tickets.
It still doesnt go along with the league wide cries of them losing big time money. Amir Johnson is NOT a big name in the least bit. I guess owners only look at the total payroll amount and not WHO the money is going to. Its making Trevor Ariza look like a bargain now. At least Ariza started all the games and was a starter on a title winning team, at a similar age as Amir Johnson.
To be fair, the teams that are in biggest financial trouble aren't the ones dealing out the crazy contracts, think of New Orleans and especially Indiana; all we hear about is how they're going to dump their franchise players because they're too expensive. As for Milwaukee, if you take a look at their books, they're very, very clean, and perhaps Michael Redd is going to be "T-Mac'd" this upcoming season, to where his contract will be insured and the Bucks won't have to pay the majority of it. Plus, there could be a very real chance that the Bucks could have homecourt advantage next year, depending on where certain free-agents land. One thing to consider about the Joe Johnson and Rudy Gay deals is that it is very likely that neither the Atlanta Spirit Group or Michael Heisley will own their teams in 6 years, so they really don't care about the backloaded ends of the contracts, only on making the playoffs enough times as to pump up the values of the franchises.
It makes perfect sense to me. The NBA is an arms race. If you want to win, you have to buy bigger and bigger guns. One owner, or even multiple owners in concert, cannot unilaterally decide to be responsible spenders, because they'll lose the arms race. Some other owner will take advantage of responsible spenders to hire away the talent. The solution is to make rules that all owners are required to live by, that they are bound to by mandate, not by promise or recognition of the common good. That's what the CBA does for them. It allows them to operate with fiscal responsibility without losing a competitive advantage.
