LOL unfortunately the players have almost chance in winning here. 1) The league is owned by well...the owners. NBA players are just laborers and in the US the NBA is the only good basketball league, they're basically a monopoly in the US. At the end of the day the players need the owners more than the owners need the players. 2) The players are divided by many different interests for example the max guys like LBJ might want to do away with the max salary while smaller scale guys like Beverly want that max salary to stay so they can continue to get more money. 3) The owners can live with a lock out, if what Adam Silver is saying is true and 1/3 of teams are really losing money then this is definitely a good deal for them, they keep the value of the franchise while not paying out salaries. On the other hand a lot of players live day to day so they need to keep receiving their checks to survive. These guys will definitely put more pressure on the Union to accept a deal the longer the lockout gets.
Many of these players are young, uneducated men who don't have the first clue about how money is earned, invested and maintained. They get a check and POOF it's gone then they complain that they don't have enough. All the numbers, business terms, etc are like Chinese words in their ears. They just look at their lawyers and say, where's my pay increase? Meanwhile, teams are going belly up trying to stay in the business when they should just move their butts to cities that want teams and can sustain them like Vegas. I hate hearing about lockouts and millionaire morons crying "It's not enough!" When the whole rest of the world, who's yearly salary is equivalent to 1 games earnings to these players, has bosses and work for companies with owners that make far more than we do and we don't demand to make the same as them. It's ludicrous! We'd be out of a jib after bankrupting the company if we tried to pull this $hit. If the NBA wants to allow the mafia, excuse me Unions, to have this much power it deserves it's fate.
I really can't stand this b**** ass jealous attitude. What NBA team has went belly up? What NBA team has lost value? What risk is it to owning a NBA team?
Players got flossed last time..they will get that 60% this time & deservedly so. Teams were whining that they were barely making it..yet teams are selling at record prices.
That whole "they are labor" thing is a crock of ****. They are the product. If they were just labor then Major League Baseball would have a salary cap too Explain to me why MLB does not have a cap. It is pure market economy like Hollywood is. Actors don't have a cap. Letterman never did. Howard stern. Etc Why should athletes have a cap And even if you have an argument for why the NBA should have a cap and MLB and other entertainment talent shouldn't, least you could do is stop calling them "labor" The dynamics are so different than business vs employees. It shouldn't even be called a strike or lockout. It's a contract negotiation between talent and producers o the venue
Everyone says the NFL is so popular because of Parity. The second most popular sport in America is college football. There is little to no Parity in CF, but it is still super popular. With or without salary cap the NBA will be dominated by a handful of stars.
The deal is: owners can't stop themselves from over spending. They have to cap themselves. The owners can't stop themselves because this isn't their primary business. This is just a side cool hobby for them. And they will never loose money, because what they bought was a rare asset, a commodity, a NBA franchise license,,, not a business. They could run it into the ground and still make 3x to 10x on the sell of the license vs what they bought it to I'm so sick of this labor v business argument. The owners are playing the fans for fools. This is not a normal biz culture. Wake up fans
I don't get this, they're not really "just laborers." You can't just go get a scab to play as well as LeBron James or Kevin Durant.
Yup. The owners got a pretty decent amount of PR support last go-around. This time fans and the general public will be much less supportive of the owners crying poor when franchises are going for billions now. It will always be dominated by stars. The NBA, more than any other sport, would be ruined by a lack of salary cap.
Strong and fair points all around. Couldn't agree more. The anti-trust exemption (and lack of any other competition for the on-the-court talent), the massive public subsidies/sweet heart deals for arenas, the franchise license model combined with revenue sharing, etc. make for a very unique environment. A lot is made by the owners about maintaining parity but, at the end of the day, the NBA is about having the best player(s) of a generation -- which, at any given time is what, about 5,6,7 players? So only a few teams (players) are truly contenders anyway. There isn't much parity at all. If your team doesn't have one of those players, then tough luck. I wouldn't mind seeing the max contract gone so that teams have to better balance how they distribute money across the roster. Hell, I don't even mind seeing the salary cap gone, altogether, even if it means seeing the Lakers and Knicks (Mavs?) buying up all the top league talent. My thoughts have changed a lot over the years on these issues and I think it really is up to the owners (who clearly understand cash flow) to both exercise restraint when doling out contracts and, really, just move their teams to markets that can sustain them. I think parity/competitiveness can be better addressed via aspects of the NBA such as the conference system, qualifying for the playoffs, and the draft lottery. In the end, I just don't see the non-superstar talent in the NBA willing to acquiesce to any changes that may decrease their own earnings, even if it means every player earning "fair market value". The internal divisions within the two sides will likely factor more into the final deal than the divide between players and ownership.
