3 year contracts? Do you like the whole 2010/Knicks and Nets tanking/Lebron sweepstakes crap? Yeah, expect that...every single year. I really don't have much of a problem with the way things are now, GM's need to manage their teams better. Guaranteed contracts are a gamble for the organization AND the player. If something is to be changed it should be along those lines, equal risk for the organization and the player. If contracts are no longer guaranteed to the player they shouldn't be guaranteed to the team either.
Interesting thought, Leeb. I'm not sure what the league is going to end up doing, and I trust Stern as far as I can spit, but there certainly isn't anything remotely like parity among the teams, as everyone knows. There are a few "haves" - a few "maybes" - and many "if Hell freezes over, we can go all the way!!" All things considered, the Rockets have done pretty well when you look at it that way. We haven't been a "when Hell freezes over!" team in a long time. People thought we'd be this season, but Adelman, Morey, and the guys had a different idea.
Hard cap wouldnt be a bad idea, but they would have to completely revamp the entire salary structure for a sensible one. Most people here wont like it because itll change up the whole "trade machine" culture. Something tells me we've probably put more collective thought into it in this thread than David Stern has. He's probably hearing in his ear "We're losing money!" and immediately wants the hard cap put into action. If the negotiations with referees are an indicator of what will happen, they'll probably push it to the wire to get the season started on time. And the refs salaries are a drop in the bucket compared to overall NBA expenses. There arent many players in any of the sports leagues who have 10+ year careers with any team anymore. Regardless of the kind of cap, free agency will always have players changing teams.
Stern needs to be careful the NBA is not as popular or as connected to main stream society as it used to be, they have lost a good number with this economy, and the attitude of some of the players has been a turn off. While not as bad as the NHL by any stretch, his house is looking awfully glassy, he needs to not be tossing stones around in there. DD™
Football players have really common hold outs in the skill (glamor) positions and large parts of their contracts are still guaranteed. Every position in the NBA is a glamor positions. Not to mention, since the teams are smaller and players are more important, one Brandon Marshall could really poison the team really quick and ruin a season.
What about having partially guaranteed contracts but cutting a player means wiping the whole contract off the books? I remember the NBA allowed that to happen before. They could institute like a buyout rule wherein you could buy a player out for half his salary and instantly wipe the contract clear off the books.
The problem with your argument is that the situation is not symmetric. When a player signs a contract, that is a promise that he is going to go out and play to the best of his abilities for that organization. When a player starts dogging it as soon as he signs, he fails to live up to his contract, so perhaps the organization should be able to terminate the contract. On the other hand, if the player improves drastically, as long as the team continues to pay him, they are living up to their end of the deal, so why should he be able to get out early? I don't have a problem at all with ending guaranteed contracts, under the condition that teams are still on the hook for the salary of players who are seriously injured performing their jobs. Players shouldn't lose out on future salary when injured on the job.
When a team agrees to a contract, that is a promise that they will go out and create a winning team to the best of their abilities. When a team starts dogging it, they fail to live up to what they told the player before he signs, so perhaps the player should be able to terminate the contract. It goes both ways. If a player has an albatross contract he can be cut, saving the team millions. If a player improves drastically like Hedo he just ends up losing out on millions of dollars that he would had he not been locked in. I seriously don't see how that sounds fair at all, to anyone. If a player declines, for any reason, a team can void his contract. If a player improves while under contract he can't. How the heck is that fair to the player? Basically the team can lock a player into a deal that is beneficial to them but has an out when it is not. The player has no options if the team shows they are no longer committed to winning, if they outperform their contract, or if he is no longer in the same role the team promised him. And, don't act like all of these bad contracts are underperforming players. I'd say the overwhelming majority of these contracts come form GM's projecting that these players have "upside" and will become much better. Everyone seems to think Dampier is playing so poorly after getting his contract when in reality (if you look at his per 36 min stats) he's played at about the same level his whole career. He had a very slight increase in production his last year with the Warriors but most of that came from him playing a lot of minutes. It's the same with guys like Darko Milicic and Kwame Brown. Teams overpay them for the chance to get their hands on a player with "huge upside". They are intentionally taking that risk. If you eliminate guaranteed contracts (but only when it is beneficial to the player) you eliminate that risk on the teams' side only. If Darko became a superstar he would have been stuck getting paid 7M or so. Also, since there isn't any risk in it teams with money will offer up huge contracts to any and every player who they think could be special. It takes away from some of the effectiveness of savvy GM's like Morey. Yeah, we would easily have gotten rid of Mcgrady's contract but it's not like we could get our hands on other teams' productive players (Iguodala, Butler, Martin,etc) because they could just as easily get rid of their bad contracts. Morey would basically be stuck until he drafted a star while the dumb GM's could just keep cutting their mistakes and keeping the good players.
I'd like to see some sort of arbitration system. On the owner's side, I'd like to see them have the abilty to lower a player's salary to match thier level of performance. As well, I'd like to see a player be able to request arbitration to raise their salary to match their level of performance as well. This could only be done in the offseason, and limitations on how often it could be used. Injured players would not factor into the cap. You'd have to set a min and max cap, with penalties for going over or under. Perhaps money collected from penalties could go towards an injured player fund. You could eliminate salary matching in trades since talent matching would be a much bigger factor. I think this would go a long way towards eliminating teams that are hamstrung by bad contracts, and trades done for contractual purposes only. Teams would have to find the right balance of players. And unrelated idea...gradually increase both the number of games played and the roster size. Because of the number of games, you wouldn't play your best players every night, but rest them, like a pitcher in baseball. Because of the number of games, you could decrease ticket prices to bring in more fans, and possibly increase revenue from tv. I'd think you'd be able to pull in good players from Europe. I think you'd decrease the level of play somewhat, but also increase it since there would be more players getting more PT, and coach's would have to adjust by coaching a system more then just depending on raw talent. That idea is a ways off, but I think you could get there, especially as the minor league system develops. I seriously doubt the NBA would think about this as it hurts their 'star' system and is not the way basketball has been played. I'd like to see that since I'm more of a fan of a team then player, I can never get enough basketball, I'd like lower ticket prices, and I think it gives more oppurtunity for talent to develop. Just ideas.
I would agree with this if teams actually put it into the player contracts that they will try to put together a winning team, or guarantee a player the role he wants. But to the best of my knowledge, that is not in the contracts.
Well, I've never seen an NBA player's contract. Does it explicitly say the player must perform at "the best of his abilities" and who is to say what that is? And, isn't this ultimately about having equality so that no one gets shafted. Regardless, non-guaranteed contracts would create a different environment. I doubt teams would only be cutting the players who performed worse than they did before. When they notice the team isn't going anywhere they'd probably cut plenty of players who were on track with career averages.
pmac, I think you bring up a good point, but I think bad teams would still be able to improve fairly easily. The draft is always available, and I think there would be alot more free agents available. Trades would be more scarce, but I think they will still happen, soley based on talent. They would be more about sacraficing a position of strength for a position of weakness though.
Honestly, I don't really care if the players get "shafted." There are a hell of a lot more talented people willing to play basketball for a living than there are billionaires who want to own and operate an NBA franchise. With the exception of the top superstars, players are pretty easily replaceable.
Look at the example i gave or we could use DD's favorite whipping buy tracy. Let say only have the contract are guaranteed and the rockets are over the 65m tax threshold by 3m. They couldve cut tracy and only be penalized for half of his 23m contract for this year thus dropping them down to 54m. Cut cook and that another 1.5m vs the entire 3m. I think what it would do is not only force teams to place more emphasis on player development, but it would really help teams that are smart with their money and wouldnt entirely kill a team when they do make a mistake or the guy starts acting up or not performing. I think guys would play alot harder also without the 100% guaranteed money. Guys who are frequently hurt like you know who, wouldnt hurt your team as much either.
Well, with Basketball becoming more global, there are other options for players (overseas). I also think I feel more for players, that usually doesn't come from an affluent back ground, TRAINED THEIR WHOLE LIFE FOR ONE CRAFT WITH SKILL SETS THAT ARE NOT TRANSFERABLE TO ANYTHING ELSE, and in a profession that can end instantly on a freak accident. Lastly, the number or billionaires are rare, but with only 32 NBA teams out there, number of fat cats (or in most cases investment groups) that are willing to take over for a crappy owner isn't in that short supply. That said, I'm not oppose to teams being able to cut or buyout players, I think that makes sense. However I like the Euro system where both sides negotiate the buyout amounts up front. Thus, if a player is doing really well beyond his contract, he can buy himself out and sign another contract immediately. If a team feel like a player is slugging it, they can buy him out and save some money. It's a fair and win win for both sides in my opinion. I'm not sure about the number of games, but they have arbitration in baseball. I don't think something like that is a bad idea at all. Like I've said earlier, I think the fair way to go about it (and it'll probably help get the players union to agree) is to make it a two way street. You see some one like Eddie Curry slugging it, cut him for 20% of the contract. You're Dwayne Wade and you want out, buy your self out for $4mil and go play with Lebron for the year. I do have another question though which is how likely would a player be willing to play through injuries in this case? Media gave Rashard Lewis flack for not playing through a injuries in the playoffs, but for him it made total sense (look at what trying to play through an injury did to Grant Hill). I know if I'm a player that knows a freak injury is going to not only end my career but wipe out half of my current contract, but good enough that I'll still get to stay one the team without going the extra 10% (i.e. a solid starter), I know I sure as heck would avoid any risky behavior like diving into the stands for a loose ball, or try to dunk in traffic.
finances, teams are losing money. perhaps stern is exploring ways for teams to be able to compete without losing so much money. seems like they should make millions off of food and refreshments alone, 7 dollar drinks and such haha
The problem with your argument is you are assuming the player is on equal grounds with the organization. There are only 30+ teams in the NBA, while NBA players number in the hundreds. So what if a player like Hedo gets locked in below his market rate? Boo-hoo! He's still making millions of dollars! Even guys like Landry who are grossly underpaid are multi millionaires! The "market" that allows these guys to earn their millions are the NBA teams, which is why the teams should be the one with the leverage, as it is with any normal Emloyer-Employee relations. In normal everyday work, people always end up underpaid, while they can be fired by their employers at any time (in big orgs requiring due cause, but in small businesses at the owner's fancy). Same thing here, and to be honest the mere fact they're earning millions kinda' means whatever complaints they raise sounds like b****ing to me.
Except in normal everyday work, job hopping is very normal as well. The cost of acquiring a new college graduate is something like $100K (recruiting + first year salary) in a lot of companies and obviously much more for other job transfers. I've had plenty of people astonished/telling me that it's not good that I'm working in the same place after college for 4 years since jumping ships is the fastest way to get a raise and promotion. This is a little different since the economic downturn, but if the economy normalizes, this is how things work. NBA players can't jump ship until their contract is up and as I posted earlier TRAINED THEIR WHOLE LIFE FOR ONE CRAFT WITH SKILL SETS THAT ARE NOT TRANSFERABLE TO ANYTHING ELSE. They're not saving lives but I compare them to Doctors, once you go down that road, it's that career or something significantly worse, except it's a lot easier to become a doctor (percent of doctors or nba players divided by number of people investing their whole life trying to become a doctor or nba player) and doctors have longer careers. Lastly, I've posted this in the past but if you're the top .001% of any profession, you get paid well. Look at some the contracts that executives in major corporations get (Golden Parachutes anybody?).
The redd injury is exactly why my idea of a hard cap would would work and only half the salaries are guaranteed. Undeer my idea, the bucks would be able to cut redd after this season, owe him zero, but pay a 9.15m cap hit next year . The team is still penalized, but for only half vs the yrs left. That would help any team big time. I think it would be great especially when a guy signs a big deal and gets hurt and dogs it. Cut his money, take the half hit and move on.
