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Eiiiggghhht daaayyysss a week
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Intellectual property.
Last days of rest for Manu
Buck Harvey
Published: Yesterday
The Spurs have had Manu Ginobili on a basketball diet. He's been held to two informal scrimmages a week in the practice facility.
And if they didn't do this? Would he play six days a week?
"Maybe seven," said one in the organization.
But next year, at this time, they won't have this kind of control. There will likely be a lockout, and then Manu Ginobili will return to his Argentine team.
That's why a report this week surprises no one with the Spurs.
According to a South American publication, La Republica, the president of the Argentine Confederation confirmed Ginobili will re-join the national team next August. Luis Scola will celebrate, and other countries in the tournament will not.
There was a time when this would have made the veins in Gregg Popovich's neck bulge. Now the Spurs shrug and accept the news.
The Spurs would still prefer Ginobili didn't participate in international compe ion. He's under contract until 2013, after all.
But after this season they know they won't be in position to persuade or even plead. Besides, they did well to keep Ginobili home this summer, and this probably took some work.
No one within the organization has confirmed this, but last spring's back-and-forth contract negotiations surely included the international issue. In return for the contract, couldn't Ginobili rest this summer?
Ginobili, the new father, had other reasons to stay home. But the Spurs probably sold him on the importance of this season, and Tony Parker surely heard the same message. With Tim Duncan at this stage in his career, the team could not risk another summer injury.
But after this season? If the Spurs couldn't talk Ginobili out of China, when he had an existing injury, they have no chance next summer in a lockout.
Given that, Ginobili should enjoy these final days of rest. So should the Spurs. This time next year, they can't stop him from playing eight days a week..
Eiiiggghhht daaayyysss a week
I luhhhh-uh-luh-uh-love you
Intellectual property.
Be sweet if Manu played in the 2012 Olympics.
With the trend of the NBA going more international, this is going to become more of a general rule than an exception with players. Both the NBA and FIBA seem to be making amends to assimilate the two games. On Oct. 1, FIBA will begin using the square NBA-style lane and will also extend its three-point arc nearer to the NBA standard. For the past few years now, NBA teams have been making regular exhibition appearances in Europe and China. All of this is means to an end.
More and more teams are sporting foreign players who, summer after summer, will face decisions about their patriotism vs. their loyalty. On top of that, 12-15 other U.S. players will also have their teams biting their nails at home, but they don't seem to catch the same flack for supporting our country as other players get for supporting theirs.
I expect both Manu and Tony to play in 2012 (if they qualify).
Many NBA fans get angry and upset when international players participate in these summer FIBA tourneys. That anger is almost aleays directed at the players when it should be directed at David Stern and NBA team owners.
Going back to the original Dream Team, Stern saw the participation of the NBA's biggest stars in FIBA events as an important part of his plan to globalize the NBA brand. There have been several iterations of the CBA since 1992 and no effort to limit the number of FIBA events that an NBA player can play in. Quite the opposite. The current CBA guarantees the rights of players to participate.
The NBA, as a corporate en y, has no interest in keeping their players out of these events. The fact that an injury could adversely impact a few franchises is viewed as a cost of doing business. An owner like Cuban will occasionally make a little noise on the subject, but to no effect. The CBA will be renegotiated again in 2011. The owners will try to limit maximum salaries and contract lengths. History and money says that they'll leave the clauses on participation in FIBA events unchanged.
From this weeks news:
Spanish bank BBVA signs $100 million marketing deal with NBA
http://probasketballtalk.nbcsports.c...l-with-nba.php
If this article was about tony this thread would have taken a much different path.
"As I expressed before, my two previous experiences on the Olympics where the best thing that ever happened to me as an athlete, including the NBA rings, European championships and everything I lived on my almost 15 years of career, and I have no doubts in my head that I would like to live that again."
It's all Stern's fault.
Stern's and Joey Crawford's.
Manu would not be able to fulfill these ambitions, while simultaneously pursuing an NBA career, if the CBA did not protect his right to do so.
By now I think most (level headed) Spur fans can't take anymore Int. talk, players will go or they won't.
BBVA has acquired banks in the US over the last 2 years.
They came really cheap.
BBVA pays $100 millions to boost its brand name through the NBA.
Makes sense.
What it DOES NOT make sense is that BBVA pays $100 millions to boost its brand in Spain.
For that, BBVA correctly sponsors the first division soccer tournement in Spain (Liga) for a small fraction of $100 Millions.
That makes sense.
So the $100 millions received by the NBA has MOSTLY to do with the american market, NOT the spanish market.
Hence it has little to do with the "internationalization of the NBA" and even less the decision to let players play in FIBA tournements.
I definitely underestimated this chap.
I should probably follow more closely his logic-defying posts.
They are a case study.
You take a shot at the portion of my post regarding Stern and the CBA. I counter that and you change the subject. Case study indeed.
sounds about right.
Whether they like or not, international players will spend a few years in the US,
get vastly overpayed,
winning nothing,
and actually not caring much about winning anything,
bring all that money home,
where they will spend the rest of their lives, surrounded by people that will only remember what they did for their NT.
Maybe, just maybe, a lot of angry fans you mentioned would agree with this post?
Continued self-ownage.
Even beyond David Stern and the owners, thank/blame Juan Antonio Samaranch (and the IOC). Around 1986, the decision to "officially" allow paid athletes to compete in the Olympic Games opened the door.
What about the CBA?
That part of the current CBA is perfectly understandable.
There is a LOGIC in the decision to let non american players employed by NBA teams play in FIBA.
1) It makes the product known world-wide.
2) You get good players that might not come if forbidden to play in FIBA. Hence making the product better.
So that part is there to last.
So Mr Ginobili can be quite sure that he can do whatever he wants NT-wise, even with the next CBA in place.
That's exactly why he says the word you seem to like to read.
NBA franchises ing about NT is pure hypocrisy. When Spurs signed Ginobili or Parker, they knew that they were international players and playing for their country was important for them. You had to take the whole package or leave it.
And the NBA/FIBA system is crap because players are put in a awful position. A fair system would be that players are obliged to play for their NT and in exchange NT plays less way games.
Obliged????
How can you oblige someone to play?
I can imagine a game in which a few players are obliged to play....
This is nonsense.
It's not like the biggest sport in the world has a rule that oblige players to play for their NT.
I often muse at the professional sports scene today where $15-30M annual salaries are paid. The investments are huge and the efforts by pro sports owners to protect investments are at a high ebb. When I was a kid and young man, in order to make a decent living, pro basketball, football, baseball and hockey players were selling insurance in the off-season. Now, players are insuring their hair.
The rule should be changed so the NBA owners can put in players contracts that they can't play.
NBA players, more than any other major sport in the US (see NFL), make a ton of guaranteed money.
That way, the players can either sign the contract or not. Same with the owners. Not giving the owners the chance to negotiate when they pay that much money is bogus in my opinion. They already pay more guaranteed money to their players (even if they don't play due to injury) than any other sport.
Of course NBA teams know foreign players play for their NT's and pay them anyways. There is no choice and there is a market for those players. If you give them a choice, things would change. That is the only fair way.
The players give up nothing. The owners are getting screwed here.
The biggest sport in the world has a rule that obliges players to play in the NT.
Except that if the players do NOT want to play in the NT (plenty of examples, even at the last WC), they are simply not "selected" by the coach.
No coach is stupid enough to select someone that doesn't want to play.
Well, now we have real agreement. Most of what you say here was explicitly stated or clearly implied in my OP. We may well disagree on the primary motivation for the inclusion of these protections in the CBA, but the points you highlight were very likely contributing factors.
It all supports the main point of my OP: fan anger at international players for participation in FIBA events is misplaced. The players have a contractual right to do so and while ownership may appear, to the fan, to be harmed by this arrangement they have never tried to change it.
They have had multiple opportunities over the last two decades to place limitations on NT participation and have chosen not to do so. They will have another chance in 2011. I'll bet we see no changes.
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