Fans Need to Support the Players

I have owned several businesses and was not always the highest paid employee, but when I sold those businesses, I was by far the biggest beneficiary.

DD

 

The lockout is idiocy writ large. The owners are victims of their own stupidity. No one made them hand out huge contracts to stiffs. What's driving this are conflicting desires by the owners. The big market teams want something closer to the status quo, the ability to spend more than most of the other teams in order to stay competitive with the other big market teams, and the few small market teams that can seriously challenge them because of good management and luck. They also want to make more money, so in that sense, their desires merge with the small market teams. The small market teams want revenue sharing that gives them a decent chance at success on the court and a possible title. Given the desire of the big market teams to stay on top and have as little revenue sharing as they can pull off, driving down player salaries ends up being the best shot the small market teams have of fielding a competitve team. So you have a convergence of the owners on slashing salaries, even though what makes the most sense is revenue sharing that isn't just lip service.

The players? They need to accept lower salaries and shorter guaranteed contracts. I think the majority are willing to do that if they are given a fair shake. Locking them out and killing the season isn't the way to come to an equitable agreement. It's like using a high tech drone with a Hellfire missile to shoot a deer. You are apt to get collateral damage. That would be us, the fans, getting screwed by losing the ability to enjoy the sport we love. The owners are pissing on the fans. Instead of being serious about coming to an agreement with the players, they're hitting us, the fans, over the head with a sledge hammer. They're taking us for granted. The last time the owners locked out the players and lost a huge chunk of a season, it took years for the fans to come back to the sport and support it like they had been doing.

Sure, many of us here will support our team come hell or high water. I know I will, regardless of what happens, but we aren't just your average fans. We're a bit more than that (maybe a hell of a lot more than that!), or we wouldn't be here. I don't know about the rest of you, but this ticks me off. I can't see videos of our new guys working out with the staff. I can't read reports about how they are doing learning our offensive and defensive schemes. I won't be able to follow summer league, and we always have some great people from the board covering it for us. Training camp and pre-season have been a joy to follow, and they won't exist, short of a miracle. The worst? Losing games that count and realizing that no matter how we do in a truncated season, it will always have an asterisk next to it. This sucks, and I don't blame the players for it. The owners have locked the players out, the players didn't go on strike. The owners haven't negotiated in good faith. They've been planning a long lockout for a long time. Sure, some of them might disagree with this strategy, but how many of them have howled in protest? Are those crickets I hear chirping?

Blaming this on the players is like blaming the falling tree for its demise, instead of the axe and the man who welds it.

 

It is the people who are employed at the arenas that will be losing out on the league being out. I just wish both sides could come to an agreement which is fair to both sides. I don't agree on the pay to be at 7 million per player in the 6 year of the 10 year contract.

 

You guys act like an NBA business is the same level as opening a restaurant or a factory.

The reason the players get paid so much and have so much collective bargaining power, is because their talents are unlike anyone elses' in the world. That's why they can demand a lion's share of revenue and why owners pay.

Also, I don't begrudge the owners a right to make a profit, but these teams are vanity projects for many of them. Cry me a river.

Owners should have been smarter and not paid Eddy Curry, Elton Brand, Michael Redd, etc guaranteed money. There's no reason it couldn't have been tied to incentives or something.

Its the teams' own fault for turning contract negotiations into a race to the bottom. I have NO sympathy for bad contracts (especially when insurance pays out on injuries). The teams that are losing money are poorly run, and that's not the NBAPA's fault.

 

I pay the owner for my tickets. Whatever it takes to lower ticket prices or league pass prices, I'm all for it. I will buy more if I can afford it.

 

Players don't care about fans, they are just interested in money.
Earning always more and more money is their goal.
I respect a lot more the owners who want to say STOP than the players.

 

OK, let me state this... I own a business, no employee deserves a profit share. They get what I pay them. Period, end of story. BUST ALL UNIONS!

 

I understand what you and MadMax are saying. And I'm not naive enough to think my ideal NBA would ever be implemented. I mean, imagine an NBA without agents! (Imagine an America without an IRS or its industry of CPAs, tax-preparers, and lawyer-parasites.) How could all the interested parties in such a complex system ever simplify it?

If the NBA lockout goes on so long that the league dies, then the next NBA might look like my ideal. Simple, pure competition. Greed sublimated and expressed on the court.

 

Greedy Players and Greedy Owners, each trying to satisfy the greed of each.
After a while they all calm down and both sides recognizes they are all human beings after all , all with their needs and they try to work it all out.

 

Dude...that's just for a minority owner, or people who don't own significant shares of stock. If you bought 1 share of Exon Mobile, Exon isn't gonna go to your house and demand money if EM suddenly needs cash. OTH Person X who owns a significant part of EM is in charge of operations and would probably have to shell out money from his own pocket if he want EM to stay afloat.

In this case you can think of each franchise as a business, wherein the owners buy the NBA license, get access to NBA players and in return get some part of tv money and earn revenue from fans who watch games at the arenas. If your team sucks ass and nobody goes to the arena to watch games, then you aren't going to receive money. However since all the contracts of the players are guaranteed, you are still on the hook for your entire salary cap for the season.

If for example New Orleans only made 50M in revenue, but they owe 60M in contract obligations who do you think has to pay the difference? In NO's case they had to borrow just to cover the expense/revenue gap, and when that credit line dried up the NBA had to step in and take the team away from the owner. So its not like the owner can sit pretty and not shell out money after he bought the team, there's a reason why the NBA has to screen potential owners and make sure they're loaded before they get their own franchise.

THe losses are real, its just simple math: Revenue-Expenses=profit or loss. If you keep getting profits it'll stay in retained earnings and you can use that to make the "value" of your franchise increase, or you can give out dividends and pay yourself. If on the other hand you get losses you can either borrow (get more debt) which will lower the value of your franchise, or you can invest more money into the franchise on your own. Either way its not as simple as sitting on your ass, looking at the stock market and waiting for the price to go up then hitting "sell" on the website.

You're right its not very complicated, which is why I'm not sure why you don't get it.

 

Considering JayZ and Magic are/were two of the more famous "owners", albeit minority owners, I'd say it is the same thing. The NBA isn't full of sole proprietors, it's almost all ownership groups with a bunch of investors just like most corporations.

Anyway, all of that is irrelevant since what you're saying about "real losses" is untrue. Read the article posted on the first page. The Nets 25 million loss was literally a 9 million profit. The Nets' owner didn't pay some guy 25 million to cover his "losses" lol, it's all accounting (legal accounting but a scam against taxpayers nonetheless). If the Nets owner DID have to pay 25 million every year out of pocket...well I don't really have to elaborate on how ridiculous that is do I?

 

Well, if we should support the players because we are their fans, then we should pay them directly. The owners are just middle men, right?

Wait... that wouldn't work...

 

It's useless trying to convince these people that when a team "loses 25 million" that doesn't actually mean the owner cut a check for 25 million and we should feel sorry for him LOL.

 

The 43% isn't profit - it's income. The owners would still have to pay expenses.

Lol, that's the one thing not coming out of the players nor the owners.

This discussion needs to be moved to the Dish.

 

The NBA franchise is different from stocks in the stock market. You don't log in to the NYSE and ask to purchase 5 shares of the Minnesotta Timbrewolves and 3 shares of the Bulls. The stock market is already a secondary market when you buy 2 shares of google that money you spend don't go to the google company, it goes to the owner of the that google stock. That's why google won't contact you asking for money just because you own two shares of their stock. Worst case is the corp. goes bankrupt and your shares become worthless.

On the other hand these ownership groups are the owners tagged to their respective franchises. If there's a cash shortage of say 20M they can't sit on their ass and not do anything about it, they need to either finance the money themselves or they need to order the franchise to borrow money, which will devalue the franchise. If you keep borrowing money you don't have to pay out of your own pocket, but since the franchise will devalue you will still eat up losses when you sell it.

There's a difference between accounting loss and "real" or cash losses. Accounting losses include intangible stuff like depreciation, so just because you're having a loss doesn't mean you literally have to pay money. But as I already said losses, even paper losses, will devalue your franchise so when you do sell it after X year you'll still lose money. So if Jordan purchases the Bobcats for 100M but he keeps recording losses for 10 years, when he does sell it the franchise will only be worth 90M or so.

Seems like everyone is making a mountain out of a mole hill out of this "accounting trick". Its not like the Pacers are secretly making a gajillion dollars but they're portraying it like they're losing a gajillion losses, you need to keep things in perspective.

in 2005 the Nets were worth 338M, meaning if somebody bought the Nets at that time he'd have to pay 338M, for that year if the Nets were honest they would record the 9M profit. So what? That amounts to a pathetic 2.6% return on investment. I'm not sure if you're familiar with finance and investment, but for an investment as big as 338M, 2.6% ROI is not that different from recording a loss. If you consider inflation to be around 5-7% then the Nets really did loss money. Their 338M investment is now worth 7% less than it did last year, but they only have 2.6% income coming in.

 

The answer is revenue sharing. They're scapegoating the players. This is really about competitiveness and an internal battle within the NBA Owners -- the players shouldn't lose money because of this.

 

Ridiculous. You're operating as if a team is outside inflation.

Not one team, the past ten years, was sold lower than its buying price.

 

Thats a definite problem. I thought they were looking at that "amnesty clause" option. I think thats something vital for all clubs, every club has a horrendous contract or two.

But then once again - is that players fault or the owners fault?

I cant believe owners want guaranteed profits. Thats like the players asking for guaranteed $10 million no matter what their skill level is, imagine Steve Novak demanding $10 million.

You have to work hard for profits in this life, just like the players work hard to improve their game.

How would guaranteed profits be fair competition? An owner would never sell that Franchise, you have the same owner for 50 years, then handed down generations. Its wrong on so many levels that its too much for my simple/intermediate brain to compute at once.