Comments on: Winderman: Want to stop superstar defections? Toughen the new CBA.

By: Clevelander

Clevelander — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:37:26 +0000

Not the mentality of a slaveowner, the mentality of a consumer who no longer likes the quality of the good he is being asked to purchase. Your statement that “[s]ports is the only industry where third parties think they should be able to dictate to the employee the amount of money they should be happy with,” is incorrect. Look at very vocal criticism of Wall Street salaries and CEO compensation. Employees throughout the Country are required to sign non-compete agreements as a condition of their employment on a routine basis. This limits their ability to work where they want. You also noted that the majority of NBA players are people of color. While this is correct, the majority of ballplayers in MLB are not and I have the same feelings about that sport.
Concepts like loyalty, accountability, and respect are either relevant in sports, or they are not. If you, and a few players, want to reduce sports to simply another form of entertainment industry, you are free to do so. However, the NBA will, in the long run, lose its brand loyalty and will cause the league as a whole to suffer financially. You will also find that these athletes, who were adored and served as role models, are held in the same regard as Wall Street bankers by the American people.

By: (Not Really) Jesse Jackson

(Not Really) Jesse Jackson — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:51:03 +0000

Your article espoused a slaveowner’s mentality. Athletes are independent contractors, not chattel. And I’m not interested in the argument about how they’re highly paid and should just be satisfied. Sports is the only industry where third parties think they should be able to dictate to the employee the amount of money they should be happy with. The majority of NBA players are people of color. But you folks say “please stop making references about players as slaves”. Really? Should Tom Cruise make $20 million a picture? Should Madonna have made $58 million last year? Fans could stop watching Tom’s movies. Fans could stop paying $80 bucks a pop for Madonna’s concerts. Sports fans could stop buying tickets, apparel, TV League Passes, etc. What if someone told you to take less money, even though the market would pay you more?
The “average fan would have to work 20 years” argument should be banned from use. The “average fan” is just that. A fan. If they had the athletic talent and competitive drive to be on the court/field, they would want to be paid according to what the market provided.

By: Chrmngblly

Chrmngblly — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:23:45 +0000

The danger here, of course, is that these players may be killing off the goose that laid the golden egg–the NBA itself. I don’t know what the solution is.
About the Miami situation, I am amazed that there is no assertion of collusion between these three players and Miami management to pull this off. Everyone knows this is wrong and can only hurt the competitiveness and viability of the whole NBA. As a kid, the other kids would never let my brother and I play on the same team. If they did, we just wiped the field with all comers. This is what they want to happen in Miami. Not good.

By: Clevelander

Clevelander — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:35:04 +0000

The NBA is in serious danger of becoming MLB. Four or five teams with the majority of the talent while the rest of the league operates as a de facto farm system (and hoping to literally win the lottery). For those who think this acceptable, they may want to consider how viable such a busniess model is in the long run. 18 months ago more than a handful of NBA teams had to borrow money from the NBA to meet payroll. How many mid-market teams can afford to have half-filled arenas going forward? What will the Neilson ratings look like if the fans in the mid-markets stop watching the nationally televised games?
On a final note, please, please, please, stop making references about players as slaves or virtual slaves. Professional athletes are extraordinarily privileged. The vet minimum is $1.5 million. $1.5 million for playing basketball. The average fan would have to work for 20 years (or more) to make the vet minium at a job they might not even like. This is to say nothing of the perks that come along with being a professional athlete. There is a serious disconnect between the athletes, journalists who cover the athletes, and the fans who ultimately pay their salaries. I believe that a financial reckoning may soon be on the horizon.

By: SoCal

SoCal — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:06:59 +0000

Yeah, he’s the best ringless MVP… No ring, No King.

By: All knowing

All knowing — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:49:07 +0000

Ira that was very anti-American of you. “Superstar Defections”. You should be ashamed of yourself. You gave up being a journalist for the money I see. Long-live-free agency!

By: bryan madrigal

bryan madrigal — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:34:54 +0000

if im james i dont care abt.the price but ill play the games with my heart……in basketball im still the best….no body but me…

By: josh

josh — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:26:32 +0000

what kind of Commie BS is this? How can you possibly rationalize keeping players as virtual slaves, and denying them their freedom and rights to play for whoever wants to pay them. Is it to save the vital entertainment interests of NBA fans? Is that it? L-O-L

By: dunkapunk

dunkapunk — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:27:42 +0000

new name for Wade,Bosh,and James…”The Thrillogy” based on this Wikipedia definition of trilogy.”A trilogy is a set of three works of art that are connected, and that can be seen either as a single work or as three individual works”. like it or not all three of these guys are stars in the NBA and Star Wars and The Godfather, two of the highest grossing movies in history were both trilogies. i used Thrillogy instead of the obvious Trilogy as a nod to Michael Jackson and his biggest hit of all time “Thriller” and these guys will be “thrilling” audiences all season long come October.

By: Old Ironside

Old Ironside — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:27:00 +0000

Another thing that the league could do in the next CBA is a hybrid of the current CBA and the old CBA that expired in 1998. Institute “salary slots” along with maximum contracts. In other words, each team would be limited to two “max contracts”, two contracts between the MLE and the max (not two exceed 75% of the max), 2 MLE contracts, 2 bi-annual exception contracts and the rest at the league minimum for years of service or rookie contracts. It wouldn’t put a hard cap in place, but the cap would be pretty firm. There would have to be a grandfather clause for a few teams with contracts that don’t conform to the “slotted” system, but those teams could still be forced to pay a luxury tax.

By: Old Ironside

Old Ironside — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:09:16 +0000

In actuality I doubt that LBJ, Bosh and DWade left as much as $25 million on the table. I’d be willing to bet that they have opt-out clauses after three years that allow them to re-sign for the full maximum amounts (assuming the new CBA is similar to the one in place and the maximums are more than what they are making). In that case, they are leaving $6-7 million on the table but should make that up with longer term deals in three years.

By: Old Ironside

Old Ironside — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:00:38 +0000

In the past, the NBA put restrictive salary caps on expansion teams that prevented them from being able to just come into the league and go out and burn up all their cap space by signing several free agents at once. In the next CBA, the owners may want to put similar threshhold levels in for all teams that prevents gutting a roster like Miami did this year? In other words, no matter how far below the cap you are on July 1st, you can only increase by some limited amount (e.g. $25 million) during the fiscal year.

By: Lance

Lance — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:17:07 +0000

The current free agent movement is the star players' response to the lopsided Garnett/Gasol trades in 2007-2008. In 2007, the league’s talent was so spread out that a one-star team in a small market (Cleveland) could make the finals, coincidentally against another small market team (SA). League officials were understandably unhappy about the low TV ratings for this series, plus the sorry state of its big market teams. Boston was a lottery team, the Lakers were struggling with Kobe pouting for a trade (something LBJ, Wade, Bosh never did, by the way), and the Knicks just stunk. Then what happened? Three small market teams came to the rescue. Seattle held a fire sale and aided Boston (Ray Allen) and Orlando (R. Lewis), Minnesota handed Garnett to Boston (crony deal?), and Memphis donated Gasol to the Lakers. Popavich blasted this deal, but the other GMs/owners were mysteriously silent about these lopsided transactions. Go figure. This dubious player movement immediately re-shaped the league in favor of big market teams and left the remaining small market stars wondering when THEIR time would ever come (nobody was sending a 2nd star to Cleveland). Rather than demanding trades, the small market stars simply waited until they would have the power that their free agency would give them. One last point: player collusion is not comparable to owner collusion. When business owners collude, it’s usually to suppress wages and harm employees financially. If employees collude to essentially only determine WHERE they work and not for how much (in fact take less money), it’s laughably irrelevant from a business perspective. If owners can convince employees that there is something more valuable than money, then owners have won a significant battle. If anything, this free-agent player movement is beneficial to owners by keeping star wages down and creating star teams that drive interest and ratings. Superstar defections are the result of small market teams being unable (and unassisted???) to build champion caliber teams. Only SA has been able to do it and every time they’ve gotten to the finals, the TV ratings have tanked. I bet the NBA executives can’t wait for Duncan to retire. OKC is next up. Let’s see if Durant is still talking about staying there after 7+ years with no rings. I doubt it. http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=aw-heisleygasol060308 http://www.pe.com/sports/basketball/breakout/stories/PE_Sports_Local_D_lakers_notes_11.3ed9394.html

By: Smarter than you

Smarter than you — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:38:12 +0000

Of course, the performance based incentives would have to have some basis in team wins/playoff success.

By: Smarter than you

Smarter than you — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:24:51 +0000

The solution is obvious. Duh…
1) Hard Cap…period. This gives every team close to an equal amount to commit to their players. (Teams like Miami where there is no state tax still have a financial edge)
2) Longer contracts, with limited guaranteed years to start. IE Sign CP3 to up to 10 years, but only the first 3 years are guaranteed. After the first 3 years, the team has the option of to guarantee the next 3 or release the player/renegotiate the contract.
3) The worst team in the league get demoted to the D-league and the D-league champ gets promoted to the big leagues at the end of each season.
a) I honestly don’t know how to work out the Draft with this plan
4) Performance based incentives that are not cap restricted. Example: Average 20/10 and get a bonus $5,000,000 per year

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:19:45 +0000

The problem in this article is it ignores sign and trades. Thats how Lebron and Bosh came to Miami, ignoring the lower increases in salary

By: Nick

Nick — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:09:19 +0000

New Rule…no unrestricted free agents. Original team gets to match any offer.
Or…signing team (e.g. Miami) loses next ten first round picks.
Works for me.

By: Lion Woods

Lion Woods — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:45:25 +0000

Let’s see Lebron plays out two contracts in its entirety and yet somehow he has defected, or turned his back on his team. It is called free agency. Regarding Chris Paul, he is a superstar guard who is requesting a trade from his existing contract. Two different situations and yet the media continues to paint the two situations as one in the same. NBA ballplayers are free to move throughout the league. Other sports franchises have similar free agency rules. Yet the NBA is somehow patently flawed. Fair? I think not.

By: edgar

edgar — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:22:39 +0000

the league has been controlled by the players for quite some time…it it now coming to a head….a weak, ineffective commissioner, owners who are in awe of the athleticism of twenty year olds and hamstring their cap-addled franchises with stupid contracts have created a scene where arenas are routinely half-empty….it is a sport fading to irrelevancy outside its specific declining demographic

By: J. McCann

J. McCann — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:20:27 +0000

Why not just offer minimum wage if they switch teams? Now that they have FREE agency, they are not going to give it up.
They should go the other way, and they may well do this: Increase the max contract to half the cap. No more 3 superstars on one team, and 20 teams with no great player.
Shorter contracts all around do seem to be the way this is going, however.

By: Yosef

Yosef — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:13:30 +0000

I like how your guys’ go to picture when talking about the “superstars” is Lebron taking CP3 from behind. I’ve seen it like 10 times now, and I think I like it a little more each viewing. Quick, more articles where you can post that picture!

By: Moni

Moni — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:05:32 +0000

Your post is very anti-american in its position. You want to limit the freedom of players? And like kenny said, how can you call them selfish for taking less money?
Aside from what happened this off-season, using phrases like “restrict movement” make it seem like the owners have some sort of right over players to dictate where they go. I think the current system is fine. More money and an extra year. The goal shouldn’t be to eliminate player movement. I’d be more ok with leveling the playing field completely than i would be with making it harder to leave.

By: ed callaert

ed callaert — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:42:00 +0000

By: Kenny

Kenny — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:32:30 +0000

Sorry about the multiple postings. I keep getting messages to try again, because the ‘type the two words’ entry was not accepted. Probably including this entry.

By: Kenny

Kenny — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:27:30 +0000

If a free agent is willing to take a potential 25 million pay cut for a chance at an NBA ring, is he really being selfish? Just a few years ago, we were complianing about players selling themselves to the highest bidder. No team is guaranteed a championship.

By: Kenny

Kenny — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:24:54 +0000

If a free agent is willing to take a potential 25 million pay cut for a chance at an NBA ring, is he really being selfish?

By: Kenny

Kenny — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:23:23 +0000

If a free agent is willing to take a potential 25 million pay cut for a chance at an NBA ring, is he really being selfish?

By: Kenny

Kenny — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:21:37 +0000

If a free agent is willing to take a potential 25 million pay cut for a chance at an NBA ring, is he really being selfish?

By: m.cason

m.cason — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:39:31 +0000

the jury is still out on whether these guys can actually play together and dominate.2)they better have a real strong coach because a weak will bend to their aches pains i.e. coming off the bench.I beleive coaching still counts even with a talent laden team.If they can’t be coached they will self-destruct…