[ESPN] Cuban: "Players and owners should get together and create our own World Cup of Basketball"

If getting paid $15 million a year to play basketball constitutes slavery, count me in.

These guys make more in one year than most of us will in our lifetimes. Its a very strange argument.

 

Yeah but not much of the world will be watching this event which is kind of his point.

 

You mean the NBA?

 

Cuban is right. I don't know why so many in this thread are b****ing about what he said.

 

Because Cuban's alternative (limit involvement to 21 and under) defeats his initial argument. Why should the top players of ANY level consider playing for free? You might as well just do away with Olympic basketball.

 

This is something every major international sport wrestles with.

I like the idea of international basketball being influenced more by the NBA in terms of administration, but what needs to be remembered is that you have dozens of countries out there who are doing their best to develop their international sides.

When you start to make decisions based purely on risk to players and financial returns, you start to run the risk of destroying international competition.

Looking at a team like Australia for instance....we will never be able to put together a financially viable international series against anyone despite the fact we have produced a number of NBA players. It would be hard under Cuban's plan to justify Australia having access to the players it has produced.

From an NBA teams point of view, that might be OK. Cuban views these players as belonging to the NBA. The problem is a lot of players these days are born, raised and developed overseas.

 

I hate the people who want to take advantages with others pain.
Disgusting

 

We have been debating this over the years. So I am not going into it.

I just want to state that the NBA is not the World Cup of basketball. Cuban at least understands this. That's why he proposes to create a World Cup on his terms, rather than says, "Who cares about the World Cup? We already have the NBA."

 

Because Chandler Parsons

 

I'm still confused about the risk that Cuban is bearing?

Are the players uninsured? It's the insurance company paying for Paul George this season isn't it?

I would've thought Cuban benefited from the world cup? Any players he has who play (in a tournament that costs him nothing) gain international exposure, and make his product more marketable.

I've never seen an NBA contract, but I highly doubt it gives the owner the right to decide what a player does on their free time. If they are allowed to do what they like, then why can they not play world cup basketball?
If the world cup was DURING the NBA season, then Cuban might have a point, but since it is in the off-season, he doesn't.

 

He just wants the money from running it. He doesn't have the right to run it, though he can try.

 

Oh, I'm fully aware of that!

I'm just trying to put the questions he actually poses to the test. Seems there are too many in here who say 'yuh, Cubes is right, huh, huh'.

 

Which is a dumb point because millions will watch which is why networks pay a ton of cash to broadcast it and promote the **** out of it.

 

Any chance I get to play in the NBA World Cup? I got paulwtfk. We need 3 more.

 

We haven't been debating anything for years.

The NBA champion is recognized the best team on the world that year, and that makes you inexplicably upset for me to say that, because they didn't technically have to beat Murray State or the Shanghai Sharks, or a random exhibition squad of Croats.

Don't make it untrue

 

Yeah you're right.

What bugs me about Cuban is that he presents it as a moral fight of good vs evil and protecting players when he just wants more of the money. He's obnoxious.

 

What the hell is this nonsense? The owners take the risk because the players have traded off more money for the risk to be placed on the owners via guaranteed contracts. Burden of risk doesn't shift in contract negotiations for free and they were fully aware of international play and its potential risks 2 cba's ago.

He's either pleading ignorance or really is one of those lucky idiots.

 

The stupid thing is george did not get injured playing a fiba game. He got injured playing a practice game between usa players. Could also have happened during rec games in the summer or regular practice. Maybe cuban wants to stop practice since he is not making money of it. Iverson would have loved him.