What's the incentive for the Grizzlies to jerk around Xavier Henry

What's the Incentive?

Written by Chip Crain

Wednesday, 28 July 2010

Everyone is aware that the Grizzlies haven't signed either of their first round draft picks yet.

However, what people may not be sure of is what the actual hold-up is. The Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) states what the scale is for rookie salaries and, while there is wiggle room around that number, the standard operating procedure has been for teams to give rookies 120% of the cap number which is the maximum amount allowed by the CBA.

Now, what's interesting is that in these negotiations, the Grizzlies are not offering less than 120% of the contract value. Instead, they don't want to guarantee the full amount as a foregone conclusion. Rumor is that they are offering 100% of the contract maximum guaranteed with the extra 20% being based on incentives. If the player fails to reach the incentive numbers, then he doesn't get the extra money; if he does reach his incentives, then he gets paid the full 120% allowable under the CBA's rules.

Basically, Michael Heisley -- and a number of other owners -- is attempting to change the way the league pays rookies and, as you can imagine, the agents for these players are not interested in being the guinea pigs for this particular experiment. The issue isn't simply reaching an agreement on what would be a just and fair incentive either since incentives is by their very nature problematic for team sports.

It has come out in recent days that agents have been accepting incentives in their contracts for draft picks for a while now. What hasn't been agreed on is what the incentives are and at what level are they considered fair.

Are the incentives intended to promote the player or the team? For instance, would it be a fair incentive to up into a contract that the player receives a 5% bonus to his contract if the team makes the playoffs? That would obviously be a team-oriented goal since it doesn't require the player to actually do anything to earn the bonus. If the team succeeds, then he is rewarded.

This type of incentive is usually not a detriment to team chemistry since everyone is on the same page in regards to the ultimate outcome of the game. Players do what is best for the team in order to earn more money. If that means passing to an open man or focusing their efforts on defense, then he will do it since it makes the team better ultimately. The better the team does, the better the individual does. Aligning the team's desires with the player's makes sense in this regard.

Conversely, the incentive could be based on an individual statistic, like points per game. This would put the incentive wholly in the realm of the rookie's contributions, rather than the effect it has on the team's goals. If Xavier Henry had an incentive that required him to average 10 ppg to earn that money, then he would probably feel justified in trying to score every single time he touched the ball, regardless of the impact it had on the game.

Individual incentives are dangerous because the team may not appreciate a player looking out for himself at the expense of the team. How would O.J. Mayo, Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol feel about a rookie like Henry jacking up shots to reach his incentives when they are in contract years themselves and their new contracts will be determined as much by team success as their own contributions?

Of course, individual incentives can also be manipulated by the team. If you don't play a player, then he likely won't be able to reach his incentives, so agents are hesitant to give a team that kind of power of a player's pay. If a player needs to average 15 minutes per game to reach an incentive and is only playing 12 minutes a night, is that a coaching decision or the organization attempting to manipulate the player's pay?

The solution that I think is logical is an individual statistic that will almost always translate into greater team success. They should base incentives on a new hustle statistic that combines such things as forced turnovers, deflected passes, shots altered, saved possessions and disrupted plays. I know that when Hubie Brown was the head coach of the Grizzlies, his assistants kept track of deflected passes. Why not have someone keep track of all those "little things" that affect the games without showing up in the box scores and create a per game (or even per minute) statistic for it. Imagine how much more appreciated players like Shane Battier and Bruce Bowen would have been with such a stat in place.

The best part about it is that players who make hustle plays are almost always helping the team in doing so. Whereas scoring, rebounding, blocking shots, making steals, and even tallying assists can be done in a way that never leads to any team success (and can often even be detrimental to a team's win/loss record), the "hustle stat" would show who was making the extra effort while they were on the floor. What better way to reward a player than by tying their salary to their effort level? Taller players grab more rebounds and block more shots, point guards rack up most of the assists and steals, and practically anyone can rack up enough shots to average double-digit scoring for a season; yet, a hustle play is something that always benefits the team first and the player second...if at all.

While many people, myself included, believe incentives to be a good thing in general, the actual decision on what to give incentives for can dramatically affect how effective these options would be for the team. In all likelihood, there is no single "right" answer, but we can hope that they will manage to figure out what the best answer is, even still. What better incentive to give a player in any sport than the incentive to win?

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