Shandon Making MJ Money In 11 Years....

Of course Shandon won't be around 11 seasons from now, but the NEXT Shandon Anderson will and he could be making $30 million PER SEASON!

http://www.realgm.com/src_gm_articles.php?artid=canada


Why Vince Carter Did Not Leave Canada - a Long and Nasty Tale of Average Millionaires, Supply and Demand and, of Course, Our Old Friend, Mr. Greed!!

Vince is not the greedy one - he just took the best deal he could get. To really figure this out we have to go back to the crafting of the league's current collective bargaining agreement and just what it means to the average player. Yes, I know Vince is not average but the average guy is much more important in all this than you think.

There are only so many inequities a normal person can stand. When the average player in the NBA starts getting $30 million per year (yes, per year), I swear I'm going to give up watching this game. Either that or my 11 year old is going on growth hormones. Anybody know a sleazy doctor who'll work on commission? I'll handle the kid's stroke mechanics, someone just get me the syringe!

I'm sure the budding capologists out there have already cottoned on to the fact that there is trouble brewing. If the average salary is heading to Air Jordan territory, the salary cap has got to follow the same curve. But before you go and say, what an outrage - how can any poor owner afford to have a salary cap of $300 million dollars? Think about this. If the average team in the NBA is worth at least $250 million now (Michael Heisley got $100 million for 49% of the Memphis Grizzlies!) then the likely worth of a team in 2012 will be…wait for it…oh, approximately 1.5 billion dollars. The average salary and the cap are based on something called "basketball related income" and that figure will move along the same curve to where teams will be
raking in enough money to make the asset value of franchises go to this kind of rarified air. Do you really think that Mark Cuban is so basketball crazy that he's going to go broke supporting the Mavericks? Yeah, crazy like fox, crazy like piranha, crazy like TRex. Cuban sunk major dollars into the Mavs and even bigger dough into the American Airlines Arena partly for fun but also for one other big reason - the phenomenal rise in his net worth when he gets a championship or three. Donald Sterling bought the Clippers for a couple of parking garages way back when. We all think the other owners hate the guy. He's probably their freakin' hero for getting in on the ground floor!

All the wise guys in the sports pages are bemoaning the fact that their team can't improve because their owner won't go near the luxury tax. They also like to point out how we're going to have a two-tiered league with the luxury teams - Portland, Dallas and New York and then all the rest. If they'd ever go down the hall to the little nerd in the business section, he'll whip out his first year economics textbook and show them the supply and demand curve. It won't happen next year or the year after maybe, but Paul Allen and Mark Cuban know that the other owners will eventually be paying the luxury tax - to protect their investment. A non-competitive team will be worth about a billion two or so in eleven years and a competitive one will be worth 2.2 or more. I think you can afford to double pay some guys when you've got around a hundred million in asset rise per year to play with. Owners who are saying they won't ever pay the luxury tax based on some kind of "principle" will find other people throwing big money at them for their franchises and they'll realize it's just a cost of doing business. Owning a basketball franchise is like having a Picasso - a rare thing worth whatever the market will bear. If the cash flow is decent, it's a vanity purchase that may make you even richer. Allen and Cuban are just the first guys on the bus.

What this also points out is why the NBA is the envy of other major sports:
*They have relative labor peace;
*The average player in the sport is going to be very well taken care of (docility is the friend of the business man);
*The owners have established a predictable rate of expenses to plan their investments (particularly their stadium investment).

Let's not forget that the real money to be made is in the whole package -- the stadium with the two major sports in it, the concert revenue, the naming rights, the land and the state o' the art building - all made possible by city fathers who roll over for you like bad dogs. We're talking Anna Nicole chest measurement dollars here folks.

To get back to the case for Carter, the Raptors are owned by a little entity called Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment Ltd. and they also have the hockey Maple Leafs and the Air Canada Center. This little fun group of sports fanatics is heavily backed by one of the wiliest set of pension fund managers in the world - the Ontario Teachers Pension Fund (a little 9 billion dollar corporation). Why would a super-conservative money management group like this be in the sports business? Well, there are rumors that they've already made their conservative percentage on the asset value rise of the franchises and stadium and it's time to cash in. So Maple Leaf is on the block and the starting price is 1.5 bill but the smart boys on Bay Street (Toronto's Wall Street) are saying the bids may end up at 2 or 2.5.

What does all this mean to our boy Vince and the Raptors? Maple Leaf is selling alright - likely a year from now. There is lots of talk of a major media giant pulling together the Raptors, the Leafs, the Blue Jays and a couple of stadiums - largely so they can cable-gong everyone in Canada (a market as big as California).

You have to sniff the wind folks and put all the similar smells in one place. Sniff, sniff… the Leafs have been buying up some very high-priced hockey talent lately (Mats Sundin gets $9 million a year to be the fifth or sixth best center in hockey). The Raptors have sunk major dough into Antonio Davis, the Junk Yard Doggie and Alvin Williams (nice players but not exactly the Showtime Lakers). Don't be surprised now that Vince has said he'll stay, said media giant buys the whole package and gives Carter a mega-deal for endorsements to go along with his max contract. Sniff, sniff… didn't Carter's mommy get her "Embassy of Hope" charity going pretty big time right off the bat? Sniff, sniff… isn't it funny that Carter gets his own candy bar? Sniff, sniff… isn't it passing strange that Maple Leaf Sports has invested 330 million dollars in future contracts this summer and then they won the Hakeem hunt? Sniff, sniff… Toronto's Globe and Mail reports: "The most immediate impact of Carter's commitment may be on the Raptors' new digital cable TV channel, Raptors NBA TV, a national service that will be launched in September. Subscriptions are expected to increase." (Emphasis on "national" is mine).

Make no mistake, Vince Carter is the jewel in the crown for what amounts to a $4 or 5 billion package when some big outfit gets all three teams and the Air Canada and Skydome barns. Paying Vince, say, 30 or 40 million extra for advertising every second product in Canada is a price tag very few American teams will be able to match. The beauty of it is that his salary, although monstrous, will not look so bad in six years thanks to the greed of the average player and stability loving owners. Without the average player's consent on the CBA, guys like Vince would be pursuing stratospheric A-Rod, KG plus type money and the only markets big enough would be L.A. and New York.

Look at it this way, Canada (not just Toronto) is a market that is as large as and potentially more lucrative than any other major city in the U.S. (except L.A. and New York) because of that border. You can't look at Toronto and just compare its metro population to other major U.S. cities. A media megalith that captures the full sports package north of the border has an instant sell nation-wide because 33 million Canadians will look at the Blue Jays (when the Expos fold), the Leafs (who seem to be the only Canadian team able to build a championship contender) and the Raptors, as their only legitimate window on the big leagues. A few dozen sponsorship deals for Vince will be cheap money to build this cable juggernaut.

Now I'm not going to go out on a limb and say that Vince will stay in Toronto forever. When huge dollars are at stake, evil and horrifying things can go down. If a guy who testified in the Gold Club case who calls himself "a pizza shy of 400 pounds" will slit a guy's nostrils to insert a lit cigar over a gambling debt, you can bet some major skullduggery will be attempted to get Vince to move stateside in six years or even before should the Raptors falter. However, all people, the bad, the good and the talented need to be paid and Mr. Greed on the northern side of the border is a lot bigger than some people think.

Now if Carter could just do a successful Jordan two sport career… hmmm, starting in Right Field for the Toronto Blue Jays or in Goal for the Leafs…half-man/half-goldmine…Grizwold