The NBA has been in lock-out mode for over 3 months with almost no progress. This shouldn't come as a surprise considering NBA pundits were bringing this up during the NFL lockout. The owners have taken a real hard line towards the players. It seems very clear that they want to make sure the players miss paychecks so they rush to the bargaining table to make a deal that's favorable to them. The owners are claiming that the league is losing hundreds of millions of dollars each year so they need change now (whereas the NFL owners had to lockout the players because they weren't making enough profits).
The NBA does appear to be in trouble financially. The New Orleans Hornets are currently owned by the league and the Sacramento Kings, according to the owners, need a new arena or they need to move out of town. Other small market franchises claim to be losing money hand over fist. It is my firm belief that the owners & the league itself are at fault for their problems and here's why:
The players are guilty of being out of touch with fans, case in point the Carmelo Anthony nonsense from last season. Here's a guy who was in the final year of his contract and made it clear that he wasn't going to re-sign with the Denver Nuggets. However, only the Nuggets would be able to sign him to a max contract (roughly $22 million/year). If Melo goes free agency then he gets less money (around $15/year). See the problem? So in order for Melo to get a max contract, the Nuggets have to do a sign & trade with another team (or teams). However, Melo really only wants to play for Knicks and he pretty much stated such. So Melo makes this all public and even goes so far as to pat himself on the back for staying "focused" despite all these "distractions," which he brought upon himself! In the midst of a poor economy & joblessness, who exactly was feeling sorry for Melo? I wish he would've been quiet about it because it's tough to feel sorry for a guy who holds his employer hostage so he can make $7 million more a year and the Knicks & Melo took flack because they didn't turn into an elite team overnight.
I haven't bothered to confirm this (it's probably easy too) but a max contract for a player re-signing with his current team is 6 years for $132 million. So if that same player decides to sign with another team the max becomes 6 years for $90 million (that's a lot of money left on the table!). So I don't have any issue with a player wanting that extra $30 million, my problem is taking those issues public & trying to garner sympathy especially during the present economic climate!
Players also pretty much want to play for certain teams that either have good year round weather, no state income tax or in a big city. Those teams are the Heat, Knicks, Chicago, LA (Lakers only) & Dallas (too a lesser degree Boston, Orlando and perhaps San Anotonio & Houston). I agree with Bill Simmons, in the article I linked about the Maloofs, that a player should play where he wants to when he becomes a free agent. If had a choice to play in Miami or NYC as opposed to Indianapolis or Sacramento, I'm choosing Miami or NYC. Not to say that Sacramento or Indianapolis are bad, but they can't compare to Miami or NYC (in my opinion). That makes it difficult for the other 24 teams to attract free agents. It's also clear that most players don't really play until that last 2-5 minutes of a game & that they save it for the playoffs (although these criticisms have surfaced periodically for decades).
This is just a theory I've kicked around for a few years but the NBA's key demographic is 18-30 year old males, especially Black males. The problem is the NBA doesn't necessarily want this demographic (that buys the NBA video games, jerseys, hats & have a passion for the game) in the arena. The NBA wants the corporate (passionless), 40-55 year old crowd to fill the arena because the average fan probably can't afford season tickets (the same hold true for the NFL & probably to a degree). Gone are the days when the "average guy" can afford good seat season tickets. It's just another bogus mathematical theory of mine so there's probably a validity issue. Although I think that all the major sports want corporate money to fill the seats of the stadiums/arenas.
Fact of the matter is, I just don't care if the NBA plays at all this season. Be advised I was a HUGE NBA fan when I was younger and had the NBA package on DirecTV (when I lived a domesticated life in the mid-90's). I enjoyed the drama of the playoffs last year and have had in the past when interested. I've even heard the 73% of people also don't care if the NBA plays or not but that might have more to do that most casual sports fans don't care about the NBA until after the Super Bowl.
Recently, Amare Stoudemire stated that the players should go out and form a new league (or something to that effect). NBA pundits have stated that what he really meant that the players should barnstorm or something. Whatever he meant, a new league would eventually lead to the same problems. Add to the fact that most fans only care about 10-15 players anyway. So barnstorming wouldn't help the 8th guy off the Clippers bench. The owners also don't seem to care about players going overseas to play.
It will be interesting to see how everything turns out for the owners & the players. I hope that the NHL can take advantage of all this somehow. To me, the NHL is a better product (the NBA still runs marketing circles around the NHL) than the NBA but I also realize that's it's barely on the map compared to the Big 3; football, baseball & basketball.
The NBA does appear to be in trouble financially. The New Orleans Hornets are currently owned by the league and the Sacramento Kings, according to the owners, need a new arena or they need to move out of town. Other small market franchises claim to be losing money hand over fist. It is my firm belief that the owners & the league itself are at fault for their problems and here's why:
- Owners are the one's handing out max contracts to players that are not worth it (Rashard Lewis & Johnson coe to mind). The teams offer these guys the contracts so now the owners are asking the union to help them control their own spending because the owners can not do it themselves. Here's an arrticle by ESPN's Bill SImmons and Jonathon Abrams about some bad contracts teams have gotten themselves into & would love to get out of, http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7026680/welcome-amnesty-20-nba
- The league expanded too fast when the times were good (the NHL, MLB & the NFL are all guilty of this) and went into places that maybe they shouldn't have gone into . The Grizzlies open up in Vancouver in 1996 but moved to Memphis in 2002 (and stillhave trouble drawing). The Charlotte Hornets entered the NBA in 1989 then moved to NOLA in 2003, now they have no owner and the league runs their day to day operations to make sure they can honor the player contracts. The Timerwolves have had 6 straight losing seasons (5 in row with 50 or more losses) punctuated by going 15-67 in '09-'10 & 17-65 in the '10-'11season (ownership even took out an add in the newspaper asking the fans to be patient while the team sucks for a few seasons during the rebuilding process). Charlotte's new team, the Bobcats, entered the league in 2004 and have had 1 winning season in that span and having trouble drawing spectators.
- There are a lot of owners who are no good at what they do. Take for example the Maloof Brothers in Sacramento. The Maloofs were billionaires with a lucrative beer distributorship (I think that's how they got their fortune, inherited if I'm not mistaken) and they owned the Palms hotel in Vegas. During their tenure as owners, the highwater mark for the Kings was their appearance in the 2002 WCF & subsequent shady way the lost the series to the Lakers (the infamous game 6), they've managed to take a small market franchise that has drawn well for years (an old SI article stated that the Kings fans would say "it's our team bad or worse but it's our team!), enjoy a nice playoff run which saw 7 straight appearances and see the team throw it in the tank with 5 straight losing seasons. For more info on the Maloofs check out this Bill Simmons article on them from earlier this spring, http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/110425&sportCat=nba.
The players are guilty of being out of touch with fans, case in point the Carmelo Anthony nonsense from last season. Here's a guy who was in the final year of his contract and made it clear that he wasn't going to re-sign with the Denver Nuggets. However, only the Nuggets would be able to sign him to a max contract (roughly $22 million/year). If Melo goes free agency then he gets less money (around $15/year). See the problem? So in order for Melo to get a max contract, the Nuggets have to do a sign & trade with another team (or teams). However, Melo really only wants to play for Knicks and he pretty much stated such. So Melo makes this all public and even goes so far as to pat himself on the back for staying "focused" despite all these "distractions," which he brought upon himself! In the midst of a poor economy & joblessness, who exactly was feeling sorry for Melo? I wish he would've been quiet about it because it's tough to feel sorry for a guy who holds his employer hostage so he can make $7 million more a year and the Knicks & Melo took flack because they didn't turn into an elite team overnight.
I haven't bothered to confirm this (it's probably easy too) but a max contract for a player re-signing with his current team is 6 years for $132 million. So if that same player decides to sign with another team the max becomes 6 years for $90 million (that's a lot of money left on the table!). So I don't have any issue with a player wanting that extra $30 million, my problem is taking those issues public & trying to garner sympathy especially during the present economic climate!
Players also pretty much want to play for certain teams that either have good year round weather, no state income tax or in a big city. Those teams are the Heat, Knicks, Chicago, LA (Lakers only) & Dallas (too a lesser degree Boston, Orlando and perhaps San Anotonio & Houston). I agree with Bill Simmons, in the article I linked about the Maloofs, that a player should play where he wants to when he becomes a free agent. If had a choice to play in Miami or NYC as opposed to Indianapolis or Sacramento, I'm choosing Miami or NYC. Not to say that Sacramento or Indianapolis are bad, but they can't compare to Miami or NYC (in my opinion). That makes it difficult for the other 24 teams to attract free agents. It's also clear that most players don't really play until that last 2-5 minutes of a game & that they save it for the playoffs (although these criticisms have surfaced periodically for decades).
This is just a theory I've kicked around for a few years but the NBA's key demographic is 18-30 year old males, especially Black males. The problem is the NBA doesn't necessarily want this demographic (that buys the NBA video games, jerseys, hats & have a passion for the game) in the arena. The NBA wants the corporate (passionless), 40-55 year old crowd to fill the arena because the average fan probably can't afford season tickets (the same hold true for the NFL & probably to a degree). Gone are the days when the "average guy" can afford good seat season tickets. It's just another bogus mathematical theory of mine so there's probably a validity issue. Although I think that all the major sports want corporate money to fill the seats of the stadiums/arenas.
Fact of the matter is, I just don't care if the NBA plays at all this season. Be advised I was a HUGE NBA fan when I was younger and had the NBA package on DirecTV (when I lived a domesticated life in the mid-90's). I enjoyed the drama of the playoffs last year and have had in the past when interested. I've even heard the 73% of people also don't care if the NBA plays or not but that might have more to do that most casual sports fans don't care about the NBA until after the Super Bowl.
Recently, Amare Stoudemire stated that the players should go out and form a new league (or something to that effect). NBA pundits have stated that what he really meant that the players should barnstorm or something. Whatever he meant, a new league would eventually lead to the same problems. Add to the fact that most fans only care about 10-15 players anyway. So barnstorming wouldn't help the 8th guy off the Clippers bench. The owners also don't seem to care about players going overseas to play.
It will be interesting to see how everything turns out for the owners & the players. I hope that the NHL can take advantage of all this somehow. To me, the NHL is a better product (the NBA still runs marketing circles around the NHL) than the NBA but I also realize that's it's barely on the map compared to the Big 3; football, baseball & basketball.
No comments:
Post a Comment