This free agency frenzy has me thinking about the longer term health of certain teams. Look at Toronto. They have done their best to try and draft themselves into a winning position, and yet every time they have a half decent player, they lose them to free agency. No one wants to play there. Before Lebron James landed in Cleveland, that team was on its last legs. Now, in the perfect situation where one of the best players in the game grew up there, they still can't hold onto him. If LeBron leaves, what type of future do the Cavs have? The Hornets are obviously a bit of a mess, the Grizzlies are a joke, the Clippers, well, the Clippers. We are going to end up with a league of haves and have nots. The salary cap is supposed to make sure that doesn't happen, but obviously that isn't working as well as it should be. Right now we are seeing players turn down millions of dollars to keep away from these have not teams. Its something the NBA really needs to look at I think. You don't want to end up having a competition where by young players serve out their time at poor clubs or even just unfashionable clubs, only to flee to clubs with bigger profiles. We are lucky as Houston fans. We are not an LA, New York or Chicago, but we are right behind them. We know we have a club that players are willing to come an play at. Imagine being a Cavs fan though, knowing that if Lebron leaves, you pretty much have zero chance to signing a big name star again. Its a bad situation.
I guess a way to rectify the situation is to make it harder for players to change teams, taking away their freedom to leave. Or...those teams could get halfway decent management like OKC. Their team is located in a butthole like Oklahoma yet they've still managed to put together a good young team and are keeping their players. It has less to do with crappy cities and more to do with crappy management.
Who in the hell wants to play in Detroit? I can't imagine it's anywhere near the #1 destination, yet have 3 rings and 2 other final appearances.
The Clippers have a lot of talent on their team. Then again they have always had lots of young talent on their team but never seem to be able to consistently put it together.
I'm an Aussie. We still have actual sporting clubs here. Detroit is an interesting one. In the last ten years they have won a title, but they didn't win it with an out and out superstar did they? They were a very good all round team. The Clippers are the Clippers. I think they are a bit different to look at because, year its LA, but....its the Clippers! Even with all the pieces they have there, what top level star in their right mind would really consider joining a team that is a sporting punchline? I think maybe the NBA needs to make the gap between what a players current team can pay them, and what they get get elsewhere much bigger than it is right now.
I think the only way to avoid it would be to have a hard cap, but if you set that too low you're going to have even more turnover with players since teams won't be able to go over the cap to re-sign players ... and players are still going to take as much money as the can no matter where they play. It's just the nature of the beast that the big market teams with good management and rich owners are going to be good, while the smaller market teams with poor management will be bad. The key for those smaller market teams is good management though- just look at the Spurs. They are lucky that Tim Duncan has been a very loyal superstar, but they've also surrounded him with a good supporting cast. Obviously players like Duncan don't come around too often, but that's where the luck comes in for these teams. With a little luck and good management, they can build a winner. Toronto was lucky enough to get Bosh, but never fielded a team that worked around him. Giving out a fat contract to Hedo Turkoglu is not good management. Memphis trades Pau Gasol for what was peanuts at the time (even though Marc has turned out well now, they should have gotten more). The Clippers continually go cheap and don't re-sign their good picks, and regularly pick busts in the lottery. The Hornets gave fat contracts to Peja, Posey, and traded for an overpaid Okafor. It's not like baseball where teams are truly handcuffed by their financial limitations- these teams are just digging their own graves.
