i'm not really knocking teams for building the teams the way they have. my point is, its not good for fans for it to take place. as i said, its great for the league, they get incredible ratings. but as a fan, who cares about the ratings? i think of it this way. lets say wade, lebron, and bosh don't team up. lebron stays in cleveland, bosh say stays in toronto, and wade is down in miami. all 3 players, all star or mvp players. isn't it best for the fans, if say lebron is in cleveland and cleveland building around him to try to win a championship? or if wade is in miami and miami is building around wade, same with bosh in toronto. thats 3 cities with legit all stars or MVP type caliber players on their team to build around. now obviously it doesn't always work out, lebron was in cleveland 7 yrs, never won it all...but they were competitive. again, maybe the pieces they were bringing in didnt work, but if hes there cleveland has a shot to maybe draft or trade for a piece or two to get them there. same goes with wade and bosh. that gives 3 teams instead of one, a guy to build around. i think thats great for the fans. maybe there are years those teams aren't great, but at least they have a star to help build around. now with bosh and lebron gone from cleveland and toronto, those teams fans might as well be non existent. do those teams need to scout/draft like hell to get back on track? sure no doubt, but in some cases, the draft just doesnt offer up players like lebron. lebron is a one of a kind/generational player. you could draft 5-6 guys and never get the production lebron gives you. also with the domino effect this has essentially caused. look at the dwight fiasco. carmelo some of the same, but then again, knicks gave up quite a bit to denver to get him. teams are forced to now join up 2-3 all stars on one team to have a shot. the exception being SEA/OKC right? they did their homework and lucked out a bit, right? drafting durant, westbrook, and harden. can't stress enough, imo, for fans its not good to have 1 or 2 teams that might win the championship. for the league? its great, but think about cleveland, toronto and other "small market" teams might as well not even exist. thats bad for fans
Duh it's been happening since the 80's. That's why we're complaining about it. Doesn't make it acceptable.
Well you guys keep asking why people "hate" on the Heat, and you got your answer. Not sure how the NBA being a business invalidates our opinion, or why you would defend them catering to the casuals instead of the hardcore fans. Nobody cares? Well that's fine, but it certainly doesn't give you reason to label anybody who doesn't like the Heat an irrational "hater."
yeah i'm guessing there aren't many leagues looking to change their policies to get away from the "as successful as possible" zone. the nba has no reason to care about what policies some fans say they want until the money starts talking. if parity made the league and players more money than dynasties, they'd reopen cba negotiations and throw a hard cap in there tomorrow. look at the nba dish and how many replies any miami heat/lebron thread gets compared to everything else. the league knows where its bread is buttered.
yes, if the players have any say in it, then it's bad. just like leaving in a trade is always business and leaving in free agency is always personal. of course, it's funny the way people act like the heat formed their superteam in some sort of yankees style by just buying up a bunch of good players. they did it by gutting their team and creating an unprecedented amount of cap room. then they used that cap room. every team can do that. they just happened to have a superstar that made the rest of that cap room enticing. the idea that miami is up there with LA and NY as some sort of chosen city among free agents didn't start until july 2010 when lebron signed there. before that no one would have ever said that. miami is something like the 8th or 10th biggest city with an nba team. and i could sort of see the backlash if they all decided to take huge paycuts and only make a couple million a year to all join the same team and still leave plenty of room for other players, but they didn't. they basically used up all of miami's cap room with their max (or very near max) contracts. they signed for as close to fair market value as they could. but of course, none of it would have been possible if the parity people of the world hadn't artificially created that market value with a tool that is in fact a parity destroyer, not parity creator, the maximum contract. if lebron and wade could be paid their true market value, none of this would have ever happened. lebron could probably go get $30M and wade something like $25M if they were allowed. in a capped environment, miami would have struggled to sign just those 2, much less added bosh or anybody else. even in an uncapped environment it's doubtful miami would be monetarily willing to dish out something like $70M for the big 3 and then still try to sign a team, though i'm not sure how rich mickey arison is or how much he would be willing to lose money. and now, oh no, the miami heat have signed all of 1 player to a truly below market value contract in ray allen. a 37 year old shooter joining a championship contender for a smaller than market value contract because that's all the contender could offer? yeah, that's never happened before. could you imagine if a hall of fame power forward took something crazy like $1M just so his team could sign a hall of fame small forward to the squad to join up with his hall of fame center teammate? the nba would never be the same!
i want this heat team tro get more and more stacked, the ridiculousness of that bulls team in the late 90's helped lead to salary caps, max salaries, etc. A single super stacked team winning title after title after title will likely finally force the players to accept proper parity measures.
Your opinion is sound. I'm just saying its entirely unrealistic to believe that the NBA is going to care about fan opinions over maximizing their profit line. Defending them? I'm being a realist here. Its on the teams to adapt to the trends of the league. At least until Stern is replaced, maybe the new commish will care?
Well I think it'd be annoying to have Kobe, Lebron, Wade, Bosh, Deron Williams, and Dwight Howard all to take $19 a year to play for the Knicks. It's a b**** move and I don't want to watch that team.
That would never happen lol. At that point Stern would realize that's too much. People love watching superteams battle... but not a single superteam.
At what point do you stop it? What if Dwight came out and said he wants to play for the Heat now, abs nobody else. If he gets traded anywhere else he will just half ass or have medical issues. Oh and by the way, he will play for free cause he's got plenty of money. Sounds absurd but coming from Dwight its possible.
Yeah no. Just because you're rich doesn't mean you're going to turn down free money. Ludicrous statement. Not only that, but at that point Stern would step in. Taking a little less money is ok, taking a huge paycut as a superstar is not.
Wade took a 3mil pay cut for Lebron when he came to Miami. You think Rose who just signed a shoe contract worth 20-25 million (maybe more don't know off the top of my head) per year wouldn't take a MLE to play with a superstar loaded team of his friends if they asked him to? For the big time superstars, their contracts are nothing to their endorsements.
That would arguably be the best team to take a NBA court. I haven't seen one team in the past 2 years that's in the top 5 of talented teams. I haven't even seen one with more talent 1-12 than the 08 Celtics or 09-10 Lakers.
