Stern: Deal By Tuesday Or No Games Through Christmas

Don't know if serious. The owners are the ones SIGNING the players. If they don't want to sign anybody, they don't have to. Look at Morey.

Isn't it a fact that the owners have completely backed off their wants of no guaranteed contracts or a hard cap? Those aren't the problems being discussed right now.

The owners have backed off of a hard cap.

 

Very well said, this is how I see it too.

Stated another way, owners want to be sure if they lose a player, they will be able to adequately replace him (something that a hard cap & 4/5 year contracts will do).

I think the Melo situation turned the owners completely sour and then you saw Utah make a preemptive move to rid Deron Williams (allegedly). By having this "pay for performance" structure, you will have more free agents on the market and thus mitigate the damage if a team were to lose their star player.

Personally, I don't think the NBA contracts should be guaranteed. That would solve many of the owners' problems, but I'm pretty damn sure the players wont concede that.

 

What about Morey? When has he not made an offseason signing? I love Morey but even some of those signings were questionable. Ariza, Brad Miller, ect... Happens to all GM's. Even good ones. Unless you think an MIT grad is stupid.

The owners are the ones who sign the players, but the players play the game. How can you put all the blame on owners for signing players who become unmotivated or injured. Mind you, there are tons out there getting paid. I really can't tell if you are trolling....

 

Which sane owner signs off on his GM to sign Joe Johnson to a max contract?
Which sane owner signs off on his GM to sign Rashard Lewis to a max contract?
And I can go on.

How are Joe Johnson or Rashard Lewis unmotivated or injured? Logic tells you do not overpay guys who aren't that good. Even fans know that.

Do you even follow basketball in the past 10 years?

There is a reason Morey is considered one of the better GMs? He just doesn't sign anybody b/c he has to. Sure, not all signings are great, but he doesn't go by what the market dictates, which most dumb GMs do.

Great teams have great GMs who make their signings off of deliberate evaluations/scouting, and not what the market dictates.

 

ROFL Joe Johnson was injured this year.... do you watch basketball?
Joe Johnson is a 5 time all star. Not many players can boast 20-5-5 numbers and an elite iso game. How quickly we forget. Try making the same argument next year when he is healthy again.

Rashard Lewis was a very nice player. Averaged over 20ppg efficiently. A matchup monster. Then his knees went to **** when he signed with Orlando.

 

LOL What does this even mean?? HAHAHA.

All GM's go by what the market dictates. How else do you gauge value of players?

Remember when we resigned Carl Landry? Yea... We let the market decide his value....

If you don't let the market dictate player salaries, you could potentially risk overspending on a player.

Please....

 

Yet, the Hawks and Magic are in better shape than the New Orleans Hornets, which got taken over by the league. The Hornets are a playoff team and they are below the salary cap, but it was in worse shape than Orlando or Atlanta financially. You are looking at only the cost portion and not the revenue generated.

 

WTF are you talking about? Do you even watch basketball?

Joe Johnson got his ridiculous max contract last year after playing 76 games? He was in the same offseason as Lebron James? Were you living under a freakin' rock? Everybody knows that was one of the worst contracts of ALL time given out by the Hawks? Nobody else in their right mind believe Joe is a max contract player, considering his age and decline (as he declined immediately last year). And sucked like crazy in the playoffs the previous year.

And to Lewis, nice player does not equal max contracts. He played 3 years before he got injured.. And he never lived up to that contract at all in those 3 years, as all he is is a jumpshooter. Dumb GMs can ruin their teams.

Seriously, if you don't know what you're talking about, just pipe down.

PS - the Hawks won't be in great shape soon in a few years as they will be stuck with Joe's contract. The Magic have been mediocre. In terms of on-court success, NO was just as successful as those teams last year. All I'm saying is spending a ton of money doesn't always equal on-court success..

Now to your main point, that is why teams have to share revenue. The rich teams make a ton of money (Knicks/Lakers) from their TV contract deals, and their sellouts. The Lakers just signed one of richest deals with Fox sports; and we know the Knicks make a TON of money with MSG. And so on. But they don't want to share that equally with the poorer markets.

And yet the owners want the PLAYERS to do that for them.

Although MLB has no hard cap, they do have great revenue sharing. The Yankees have to pay like $30 million a year to the MLB so that can be spread out to the smaller markets.

But the NBA owners don't want to agree to that.

At the end of the day, what have the owners concede to?

The negotiations started with a laundry list of things the owners want to change from the previous CBA. They have backed off some sure of their demands, but that is not conceding.

The reason I feel the players are still in a standstill is b/c they don't feel like they are winning anything in this negotiation. When you're negotiating and working up to compromise, both sides have to believe they get something more from the previous deal if they are giving up something. But the players are not.

 

Another fact that dumb teams can ruin franchises:

There's nothing wrong with a baseball team turning a profit. What is wrong is a baseball team that cries poor while posting 18 consecutive losing seasons turning a profit. This difference is why the Pittsburgh Pirates, whose financial data from 2007 and 2008, the 15th and 16th of those seasons, was made public on Monday, are the target of such recrimination. While positioning themselves as the victim of "the system" and trading away an entire starting lineup, the Pirates have been one of the most profitable teams in MLB, pocketing $29.3 million in 2007 and '08 combined, years in which they cashed revenue-sharing checks for a whopping $69.3 million.

Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/20.../25/pirates.finances/index.html#ixzz1armH4U4l

 

as a fan I want to watch basketball at a high level on daily basis. I don't want to wait until it is Lakers vs Heat to see stars play. I want to watch bobcats vs. cavaliers and be into the game while watching it. I have always been against few teams having 2-3 superstars which leavs small markets with Kwame Brown and Rafer Alston. I want competitive basketball.

 

I knew spending alot of money doesn't equal success. I thought that was understood from your previous post.

I was emphasizing that Hornets are spending LESS money and are below the luxury tax year after year. They are the exact opposite of teams paying MILLIONS over the luxury tax for JJ or Rashard Lewis. They are not one of those teams that are constantly over the luxury tax threshold with mediocre players like the Magic or Hawks.

The team salary($41M) for 2011-12 is $30 MILLION below the luxury tax threshold ($71 M). The Hornets are still money losers and a new owner could not be found, so the league took over.

The biggest money losers are the small market teams like the Hornets are losing money, even though they are $30 million below the luxury tax level. They can't go below the minimum team salary, according to the CBA. What other options are available for the Hornets? When their salary is skirting the minimum team salary, losing money and they can't find another buyer?

 

ROFL TOO. MUCH. FUN.

Man.... lol

Do you know how many teams were offering money to Joe Johnson? The Knicks, Mavericks, Hawks, Bulls and even the Rockets were names to merely surface....
http://www.chron.com/sports/rockets/article/Rockets-mull-pursuit-of-Johnson-as-enticement-for-1601607.php

LOL. Ya nobody gives a max contract to a player in their prime.

You do realize Joe Johnson was 29? Not an old man, and certainly not at an age where players take a huge decline immediately.

He played through elbow and thumb injuries the entire year which would explain his drop in stats this year.

Rick Sund knows this. That is why he is still confident about the signing.

No he didn't.... http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/sports_magic/2009/03/van-gundy-says-lewis-has-had-knee-problems.html

He was having the same problems as Tmac. Yea... that 23 million dollar contract.... Les is just an idiot for signing him to that money right?

Rashard is just a jump shooter? I guess you never watched the Sonics....
What was the first part of Tmac's game to go? Yea.....

 

Parity is something that is hard to do, because of the way the NBA is advertised. The NBA doesn't advertise its teams, but more so its stars. And that's how Stern wanted it when he took over the league: he made it into a players' league. There is a reason NBA players have more advertisements deals, and make more money off the court the NFL players in America, despite the NFL being a much more popular sport.

I don't know why people want to keep making that argument; I think it's just a built-in excuse. The NBA had its highest ratings when the Lakers/Boston dominated the league in the 80s, or the Bulls in the 90s. That was when the NBA was at its PEAK. And there was VERY LITTLE parity then.

The NBA had the highest ratings last year b/c they had more stars than ever. Lebron joining 2 other stars, the emergence of Derrick Rose/Westbrook...

The NBA doesn't need parity to succeed, as their history shows. They need their stars to be great stars.

 

I don't agree with your Johnson point, but I can't argue that. In the NFL, they talk about the Ravens, Steelers, Patriots ect, not the Flaccos, Roethlisbergers, Bradys (although you can say he gets a lot of attention) But in the NBA, you hear about Wade and James, not the Heat, Shaq talk was about Shaq, not the Suns or the Cavs.

 

Again, that requires revenue sharing. Something the owners refuse to go up upon. The rich market teams that have lucrative TV contract deals with their local stations that go above hundreds of millions and sell out their games on a nightly basis do not want to share more of that with the small market teams. Teams like NO Hornets aren't going to sell out games and they aren't going to get lucrative TV deals. How else are they going to get their money? That is NOT something that is up entirely to the players to solve. The owners need to help each other out also.

Furthermore, your case is a small one. Look at Sterling, who makes profits every year despite his team sucking balls. Or Sarver's Suns who refuse to spend money just so he can save money (trading stars for draft picks, and trading those draft picks for more cash). And I can go on. The NBA has a lot of owners who just want to make a profit, but don't want to over-extend themselves. In order to be profitable, you have to show to your fanbase that you are willing to do something about your team to make them successful.

Take the Clips for example. Their fanbase is starving for success. Even a glimpse of success a few years ago with Cassell/Mobley/Brand and they sell out their games regularly. Look at OKC. Look at Memphis (as Memphis is finally making the right moves and willing to dish out money). Teams make a ton of money from selling out games, and other sources of revenue from games.

I just don't think it's fair to ask the players to give back to the owners to solve all their problems (which they have conceded already some), while the owners don't have to take much responsibilities.

Increase the revenue sharing between teams. It's a fact that bigger market teams like Knicks/Lakers/Bulls refuse to help out the smaller market teams like a Hornets. Telling the players to reduce their BRI won't stop the bleeding in the future if the bigger market teams still refuse to help out the smaller market teams.

Good info here: http://harvardsportsanalysis.files....-nfl-business-model-and-potential-lockout.pdf

The $147 million in centrally generated revenue that the Packers receive consists
of road game ticket receipts, NFL Properties revenue, and television and radio deals. Of
Green Bay’s $47 million in ticket revenue, $17 million is sourced from road games. This
breakdown exists because the NFL has a 60-40 policy whereby the home team keeps 60
percent of gate receipts and gives 40 percent of receipts to a pool, which is then
distributed evenly among the 32 teams. The NFL has the most comprehensive system of
shared gate receipts. The NBA and NHL do not share ticket sales, and MLB home teams
keep 85 percent of ticket revenue.
7
The $95 million the Packers make from television and radio is also generated
centrally by the NFL. As Appendix 3 shows, the NFL’s national media revenue is the
backbone of the business. National media is 38 percent of Green Bay’s total revenue,
twice the amount of local ticket revenue

The NBA owners need to learn from this. Like I said, increase team revenue sharing between the owners and it can go a LONG way to solving things. Forcing the players and putting them in a chokehold isn't going to help much, and solving things in the long run.

 

Having 4 teams(Knicks/Lakers/Bulls/Clippers) give up a portion of their profits to 22 money losers will still leave those teams as money losers. The rich teams were already giving up millions in profit to the poor teams through the luxury tax. We still ended up with money losing small market under the luxury tax teams.

Unless, the big market teams are giving up so much money that they become money losers also. All the franchises become devalued at that point, so they even give up on asset appreciation on a money losing business. The other option is to change the split to 50/50 or flip the money losers from 22 to 8. If there were only 8 money losing teams, then the other 22 teams would be contributing to their welfare. It would be less of a burden, since the split is among 22 teams instead of 4.

 

The players already are giving back at least 4%. I'm sure they're willing to bend for another 2-3%.

Look, we're not talking about giving back everything. The NFL revenue sharing shares "some" of its ticket prices from road games and TV contracts. Just a little bit can go a long way.

In 2009, before the new CBA for the NFL,

Perhaps the most notable insight is that approximately 60 percent of total
revenue in the NFL is generated centrally and distributed evenly among the 32 teams. The Green Bay income statement shows that $147 million of its $248 million in revenue (59 percent) is generated by the NFL league office.


So more than half of the Packers' revenue is generated by revenue sharing from the NFL office. That's HUGE. That's A LOT. That doesn't devalue the NFL franchises at all, and they follow a 60/40 split at the time

For the NBA revenue sharing RIGHT NOW: national TV (not local), and luxury tax. That's it. And that's pathetic. The Lakers just signed a $3 billion dollar TV contract with Time Warner and they are going to keep it all? C'mon now. And you want to blame the players?

In 09-10, the NBA shared only $60 million of its revenues between teams, and only 10-15 teams were involved, and the max a team can get its $5 million. The MLB shared around $400 million in 2010, with the yearly big players like the Yanks/Red Sox having to pay over $30 million each, if not more.

And like i said in the NFL, they share local TV deals, ticket sales...

Really?

 

I could care less about numbers and rankings. I am just a random NBA fan who wants to see competitive basketball instead of watching a team lose 25 games in a row because their star has just left.

What I 'm saying is that I really understand small market teams as it makes no sense for them to be there in the future

 

NBA revenue is less than $4 BILLION. NFL is $9 BILLION and the MLB is $7.2 BILLION . http://www.plunkettresearch.com/sports recreation leisure market research/industry statistics

Yes, the NFL can do 60% more revenue sharing, when they are pulling in 125% more revenue($4B + 125% x 4B = $9B). An additional 60% on $4 B would be $2.4 B. Where is the other $2.4 B/year coming from? It's not the Laker's tv contract. Lakers contract is for 20 years. Divide $3 B by 20 years, and you get $0.15 B per year. That's if they Lakers gave up every dollar of the new contract to the other teams and collected nothing for themselves.

Revenue sharing is not very effective when 15 teams out of 30 teams are money losers despite being under the luxury tax. That's half the league that the Lakers are expected to subsidize. They make a lot of money, but they would need to make enough to support 15 other teams and them selves. They don't make 1500% more than the money losing teams.