Exactly. If only our former #1 had a decent PR skills like LerBon. Not to bring up the past or anything, especially since I don't like either of them.
Owners throwing money at players makes no difference since Owners HAVE to give players a set amount of money no matter what.
Some of the owners are not as well off as others, I suspect there will be a rift amongst the owners as soon as their revenue is not there as well. The Phoenix owner is hurting, New Orleans was probably bought out by the NBA to avoid Shin going nuts during a lockout. The union should decertify, and start the lawsuits...that is the only leverage they have....screw Billy Hunter getting paid. DD
I blame the Rashard Lewises of the NBA. He is tall and shoots 3 pointers. What does the guy care if he never gets paid $20 million again, he knows he's still likely to see something in the range of $7-10 million. If the guy were 6' 3" he'd probably never have sniffed a collegiate scholarship. The guys getting screwed over are the Chuck Hayeses and Earl Boykinses of the league, not to mention the fans. Earl Boykins is 5' 6" and once averaged 12 ppg in a season. If he were 6' 6" he'd be Michael Jordan.
How does this effect the international fans? I think the NBA has lost the majority of the international fans, especially with soccer out in full force. I think most don't even realize the NBA is in a lockout, they just forgot about the league as a whole.
that's what's crazy. the players are (or were) locked in at 57%. people keep talking about how the owners are sick of rashard lewis and gilbert arenas contracts, as if it actually affects overall player salaries. unless i'm missing something, it doesn't, and it hasn't. you know which owners should hate the rashard lewis contract? the orlando owner. you know which owners should love it? everybody else. that's just 20 million less that orlando has to spend on talent that you are competing for against them. and yet the owners just want to get rid of guaranteed contracts, as if it makes a damn bit of overall difference. it's like they all think, "wait, what if i end up being the idiot in the room, better make a rule that will protect me" and fight for this pointless, from a profitability perspecive, contract structure. and you know which players should love rashard lewis' guaranteed contract? rashard lewis. you know which players should hate it? everybody else. by fighting to the death to guarantee rashard's contract, you're just stealing 20 million away from every other deserving player. hell, arenas and lewis are making more than 1% of BRI themselves i believe. that's like 33% of the difference in sides right there. but it's like they all think "wait, what if i end up being the overpaid scrub, better make a rule to protect me" and fight for this pointless, from a being paid properly perspective, contract structure. the only thing guaranteed contract do is guarantee there will be overpaid and underpaid players, instead of properly paid players, by locking in contract values that may or may not make sense a year down the road. guys like hayes and lowry should love to have the chance to get at some of that rashard money when his team cuts his scrub ass. guaranteed contracts should really be an even bigger issue player to player than it is owner to player. kind of similar to the way something like the luxury tax should be a bigger owner to owner issue than owner to player. but these sides seem determined to argue no matter what they're really fighting for, so i guess let them.
based on what? you typing it here? why would international fans care relatively more or less about a lockout and missed games than american fans? i'm pretty sure they've been playing soccer every year the league wasn't in a lockout as well. granted, i wouldn't know because i don't watch soccer, but i bet i'm right. soccer probably wasn't shut down for the last 12 or so years between lockouts. i would find it hard to believe you could call yourself a "fan" and not know the league was in a lockout. i mean, hell, if you didn't know the league was in a lockout, then as a fan why would you forget about the league as a whole? do these fans just forget the league as a whole every offseason when games aren't being played? how do they even remember to become fans again? presumably, if you didn't know the lockout was going on then you would actually be getting revved up for the beginning of the season and only be disappointed when you tuned in for the first game and espn was showing world's strongest man instead of basketball because there was this lockout you hadn't heard of.
Rashard is playing for the Wizards.... Ironically enough, Orlando is bogged down by it's own set of bad contracts including Gilbert Arenas. Jason Richardson is a nice player, but who would really pay that much for him? K. That's really stupid...I know you like giving NBA players special immunity. That, or you are resistant to change... This is from Tim Donahue "Guaranteed contracts clearly can hurt the teams, but don't always help the players. Jamaal Tinsley and T.J. Ford got paid, but did they damage their careers? Guaranteeing money beyond three years is lunacy. You simply cannot see that far into the future on uncertain ventures like a player's career or team dynamics. The players' protection should be partial, not complete." Why should the owners guarantee that much money to anyone? What is the point of that? If it really doesn't make a difference, as you say, then why does it go to this extreme only in the NBA? If owners are truly losing money, don't you think the players should be somewhat held accountable? Not really.... There is currently no hard cap in the NBA... Half of the teams are paying luxury tax. I don't see how that makes a difference. There has never been a finite number that owners have spent on players. You know what will hurt player value? Owners losing money. Thats not true. Even if it were, that means owners are giving up that much more of the share of BRI. All because of guaranteed contracts... "wait, what if i end up being the overpaid scrub, better make a rule to protect me" Right because players are worried about becoming scrubs? No. Many players get paydays and then cripple an organization with apathy. (or trouble with the law...ect...) Why do you think a large portion of players do better in contract years? Sorry, they all don't "love" the game. Are you really asking owners to trust players with that much money? No one here can tell the future. How can you hold owners and GM's accountable to do the same? If guaranteed contracts worked, and players upheld their end, do you really think the NBA would be losing as much money? hmmm..... Seems you are against guaranteed contracts here. You just contradicted everything you said so far.... How so? Owners give players contracts do they not? Once again, no there is not some finite number the league as a whole must stay under. Ok, but the owners are going to win. Everyone knows it. If teams around the league are truly losing money during a season, then those teams should claim to be coming out ahead. Meanwhile, all players will be losing money. If a business is not working, owners of that business make the necessary adjustments to set things right. That is exactly what they will do. All the players are doing is prolonging the inevitable. They don't have the resources to go against billionaires. It is surprising to me, and many others here and around the country, that the players don't understand this. They concede or they lose the season. There is really no incentive for the owners to to make any more of a compromise than they have. Why would they agree to go back into a system where things haven't worked for them. So, in an attempt to retain what they had in the last CBA, the players will hold out. What they don't seem to realize is that the system doesn't work. They just want their money. Either way, players are going to receive millions and millions of dollars to play basketball. To essentially run the league into the ground for personal gain of these players is greedy beyond belief. Too bad it won't happen that way... It's only a matter of time before they cave....
This point cannot be made enough. I'm not strongly supportive of either side, but . . . For all the rhetoric that union leadership and other players have spewed about how the owners should not be rewarded for running their franchises poorly and for not having a more conducive revenue-sharing plan to allow for parity throughout the league, it is the UNION'S general lack of desire to have much responsibility over splitting of revenues that is going largely unnoticed. As David Stern and Adam Silver admitted to the press (assuming that you want to believe them), if the "system issues" could be worked out, the owners were confident that they could compromise with the union on the BRI split. Well, if that's the case, then the players will COLLECTIVELY get the same amount of money no matter what! I understand individual players wanting to fight hard for fully guaranteed salaries, maximum length contracts, etc. But beyond getting the owners to concede on partial/majority guarantees and reasonably shorter contract lengths, the union ought to give on most system issues in favor of a quicker resolution and a BRI split (in total dollars) that it can live with. If you recall, the NBA recently cut a check to the union in the amount of approximately $160 million, which was the amount by which 57% of BRI exceeded all players salaries plus the escrowed funds (which were distributed to the players pro rata). Technically speaking, the union can do WHATEVER THE HELL IT WANTS with that $160 million. Give it to the players, pro rata according to their salaries? Sure. Hold onto it as a Lockout Nest Egg for the players? That's fine, too. Buy Billy Hunter a new mansion? If the players vote in favor of it, then so be it. The fact is, even if the owners instituted a hard salary cap or an overly-burdensome luxury tax system, the players will still get exactly the same amount of money. The only differences are that (a) the league will likely be more competitive across all 30 teams and (b) the UNION will be getting a huge check each summer that it must decide how to divide among the players. Certainly, both agents and the big ticket players have put pressure on the union to avoid a situation in which they (or "their guys") aren't getting every single penny they "have coming to them." Hence, the union's lack of assertiveness in even PROPOSING a system of dividing up a potentially substantial excess BRI each year during the new CBA. I'm not saying that I side with the owners. In fact, I think they've been far too stubborn throughout this process and should have been more willing to concede more on the BRI split earlier on in negotiations. But I just hope everyone is aware that the union's lack of responsibility for handling the player's money needs to be factored into the public's apportionment of blame to all the idiots involved in this farce.
You basically said everything I believe in for the negotiations. You can't blame the players for wanting money guaranteed. You can't blame the owners for not having to pay 57% of BRI no matter what. Individual contracts do not matter. The only thing they do is hurt the team that gave the contract.
Wow, i just realized, we would be watching preseason games right now if it were not for this lockout. It's starting to set in now.
oh yeah, i forgot the wizards and magic managed to swap the two worst contracts in the league for essentially no reason. but my point remains the same - only those teams should be worried about those contracts. no, my point was that no individual contract matters, the players get (well, got) 57% of BRI. it doesn't matter if arenas and lewis make 45,000,000 or 45,000, the players as a whole will get 57%. based on many of your counters to my point below, i don't think you realize this is how it worked. i'm sure Bima understands more of the nuances than I do, but the players put 10% of their salaries in an escrow account. if league-wide salaries exceed 57% of BRI, the owners get to take money out of that account to make up the difference. and according to Bima's last post, if salaries fall short of 57%, the owners give the players union the difference. so guaranteed, non-guaranteed doesn't matter, it still always equals 57%. the only people rashard lewis is stealing money from is all the other players. an individual contract can certainly hurt an individual team. and the current length of contracts probably is too long to realistically expect anyone to gauge how things will be when they end, but at the end of the day, money to an overpaid scrub is just made up for by underpaying someone else because salaries are always the same league-wide. if the owners are losing money, they should account for it with the split of BRI they get, which they are trying to do. guaranteed contracts simply separate the good from the bad, the lucky from the unlucky front offices. there is no team by team hard cap, but there is a league hard cap at 57%. unless one of their contracts ended last season, which i don't think they did, then they are making somewhere in the ballpark of 1% BRI. only the stupid people who thought they were worth that much money are paying for it. exactly, they're worried about becoming scrubs and not getting paid for being a scrub, whether they arrived at scrubdom through apathy, aging, trouble with the law, or good old-fashioned lack of talent. they'd be losing the exact same amount. they'd just cut all the overpaid guaranteed players and sign more worthy players in the offseason. i was taking both sides of the argument, both the players and owners and trying to point out how generally absurd their views are. i agree, if a team really is losing money and not just lying, then from a business perspective they have little incentive to play. by holding out and trying to break the union, they could conceivably save money this year, return to profitability next year, and increase their franchise value thanks to a very pro-owner deal. the players can, uhh...lose money. the only real option the players have is the nuclear "form their own league" option. it wouldn't benefit anybody and they'd never make as much in another league, but if they wanted to really hurt the owners that's what they could threaten to do. telling a bunch of billionaires that you're going to take away a few million in profits (or losses) for a year isn't very scary. threatening them with a massive devaluation of their multi-hundred million dollar properties because they've gotta play the nbdl-level scrubs because lebron, kobe, wade, and howard all just formed their own, lesser league. that would scare them. but that's really too far-fetched to pull off. one man's greed is another's getting what he deserves.
Was not aware of that fact. Your point of view makes a lot more sense to me now. After arguing with Tmac1 or whatever his name is, I must have gotten you two confused and for some reason assumed you were siding with players. Didn't realize you were neutral on this. Anyhow, I think the players just screwed themselves no matter how you look at it.
More I have been thinking about this is that the Players Union need to do 1 of 2 things: Ask Stern an them to talk while using a 3rd party mediator to assist with discussions. OR Decertify and sue the NBA for collusion, hoping the courts rule in the same way they did in the NFL cause with a court-appointed mediator which amounts to the same thing. Essentially, I see no "quick" resolution without some un-entangled 3 party mediating between the sides to help them bridge their differences. If the NFLPA had NOT decertified, causing the courts to force a mediator on the two sides, I still feel that some of the season would have been lost. Yes they wait to the last minute anyways, but without the mediation having been in place, they would likely have been so far apart "at the last minute" that the time to resolve it would have caused games to have been missed.
Players are greedy, simple as that. Take the freaking paycut you assholes, you only have to play freaking basketball. How hard is that ?? Be happy you make millions doing basically squat, it's just sports, it's not even a real job.
