A lot of first round picks and other free agents are going to be stolen by Euroleague teams this season if the owners don't drop these demands.
The NBA needs contracts to go one way only?The NBA needs to be more like the NHL and NFL rather than have a soft-MLB type of system. Also non-stars make way too much money for far too long in this league.
There's no way in that the cap will lower to $45 mill but the NBA desperately needs to revamp its system. And@ the idea of the players starting their own league.
According to Hoopshype teams are locked into the following salaries for next season and how many players make up that number. This does not include any team options or qualifying offers or rookie contracts.
Team................Sal in Millions.........#of Players
Atl.......................64...................... ...7
Bost.....................72....................... ..8
Charl....................47....................... ..9
Chic.....................61....................... ..10
Cleve...................56........................ .13
Dall......................63...................... ...10
Det.......................48...................... ...9
GS........................51...................... ...9
Houston................46......................... .10
Ind.......................37...................... ....11
LAC.......................45...................... ....10
LAL........................95..................... .....11
Mem......................37....................... ...9
Miami.....................68...................... ....12
Milw........................52.................... .......11
Minn......................48...................... ......13
NJ..........................40.................... ........8
NO..........................42.................... .......5
NY...........................65................... .......9
OKC.........................49.................... .....12
ORL.........................75.................... ......10
Phi...........................54.................. ........8
Pho..........................48................... .......10
Port........................66.................... ........10
Sac.........................29.................... ........8
SA...........................70................... .........10
Tor..........................45................... .........10
Utah........................52.................... ........8
If there is a hard cap around $65 million with the ability to have one contract included in an amnesty virtually every team except the Lakers could field a team next year. The Lakers would have to amnesty Kobe to have any shot (which would just be too funny to contemplate). The teams that appear best suited with current talent locked up for next year are Chicago, Miami, and OKC. If the Spurs jettison RJ they should be able to sign their 2 draft choices, but would leave a rookie starting at the 3. Almost assuredly they would have to allow for the re-negotiation of contracts as part of the deal. Otherwise, teams like Boston would have jettison one of their big 3, for example.
waaay too low
No chance
Thanks for posting the article... tricky times indeed. I think the owners will concede a greater cap figure provided its fixed. However, the greater the figure the more they push back on length of player contracts. Frankly, hearing people on this forum about RJ's contract, I'm surprised there isn't more sympathy... but I digress. The escrow amount demand smells to me of a bargaining chip: don't be surprised if the owners "generously" concede it.
Seems to me the real battle for the owners is the $2B BRI figure because that takes into account revenue from player imaging, increased in available media delivery options (not just tv rights, but this mobile media), and international growth projections (Euro expansion anyone?). Maybe the owner could guarantee the players the greater of $2B or a floor of 45%?
No doubt, we've come a long way since the mid-1990s when players like Derrick Coleman could demand 90M for 8 years. Still long term deals even by today's standard impact small market teams the most. How many times have we seen small market teams overpay for unworthy players in the hope of retaining some semblance of compe iveness?
The way the players run their business they'd have the league 600 million in debt in no time.
I'm not pushing for a league managed by players but they should seek other investor. I find the NBA quite weak at drawing money. A new and more commercial league should be able to be both profitable and pay big salaries to players.
The NBAPA is comprised of 25-30 rich players and a whole bunch of minimum to LLE players who will be missing their paychecks by 15 November. It's one man, one vote. Stars don't have any extra pull.
You make it seem as if the owners are any better? Its absurd.
Actually, a hard cap would drive even more players go to big markets strictly for the marketing potential, thus creating an even larger disparity.
There's not going to be any $45M hard cap. Absolutely no way. And most of the people here know better, if they stop to think about it for a minute. Both groups are greedy bas s, and the fans and taxpayers are footing the bill for their extravagance. The salary distribution got out of hand, and there needs to be a correction. No - there's going to be a correction.
The biggest thing is that the correction came at a time when the whole economy is in the tank. The owners are negotiating as if it will always be this way, and the players are negotiating as if there's no recession/depression going on at all. The owners will talk about a $45M hard cap, and the players will talk about basically a one year freeze on increases. Both sides know the end result will be in the middle. Why get all twisted speculating about something we all know is just a bargaining chip?
Oh, come on Bruno. Seriously? I know you think the players have all the power, and should strike out at the capitalist overlords and all that. But c'mon... if there's one thing the league has done is merchandise the out of their product. Arena seats are as expensive as they can reasonably be. The merchandise is everywhere, and the league is VERY aggressive with licensing fees. They have strangled billions from the networks, and started their own network for the games that aren't being televised elsewhere. It's hard to imagine them pimping All-Star Weekend any more than they already do. What more do you want them to do?
Oh wait... I know. Make the rivalries more intense so that people riot and assault opposing fans in the stands. Find a way to convince people that the winner of a sporting contest really MATTERS - and if their team wins, it means that their city/state/country is superior. Nothing like a little gladiator action, to make the masses forget that the empire is crumbling. We may be a nation of mindless zombies, but we're still a step above ing World Cup fans.
The NBA weak at drawing money. What a bunch of horse . But hey, if you admit that the league and owners serve a purpose, then there's no justification for the workers to rise up and take over. Or maybe it's just that you think they should join up to become part of FIBA, since Europeans are always superior at doing everything?
You know a lot about basketball... avoid politics.
How come no one seems to be mentioning this as a possibility for the players? If the owners indeed decide to go with a $45 million hard cap I could see a lot of players choosing to either stay in Europe or for American players to go play over there to make more money. I could see quite a few of the second and third tier players going to Europe.
Union VP Matt Bonner: Owners Proposing Worst Deal In History Of Sports
http://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap...tory_Of_Sports
sorry if already posted
don't the players get something like 57% of the total revenue? it's something over 50% IIRC.
anything close to 50% is fair.
lol Matt Bonner saying it'd be the worst CBA in the history of sports.
i'd love to supposedly get "screwed" and still get paid a million dollars a year w/o a spending two years in college (and choking, too)
ultimately the owners will decide whether they are worth what they are asking for, and i don't think the owners budge on this one. it'll be a comprimise and the owners will get more of what they want.
Check out what the current proposal from the owners does to the split.
See the current proposed CBA
TV networks aren't paying billions of dollars to broadcast the efforts of typical college dropouts.
Ken Bergers article is solid.
I have a different idea that would make the salaries more manageable: how about if the league makes it so that both parties have to sign the contract? That way when a GM doesn't want to pay player more than the club can afford, he can just not sign that contract! I think that would be the simplest solution to all the problems with overpaying the players...
Better still - how about when a player under contract refuses to play (like Spanoulis), he has to pay the club a few million in buyout money?
Or when a player like Fran Vazquez enters the draft, he has to do so in good faith. If he gets drafted and refuses to play, he owes the NBA team millions to compensate for the wasted pick?
Or better still, how about if a team signs a player, who then proceeds to suck, the team can cut him loose immediately without owing him any more money? When you buy a product at the store, and it doesn't perform as advertised, you get your money back.
That all sounds terribly fair to me, and should be easy to implement. That's all anybody wants, isn't it? Fair and practical?
Then how the are they still in business???
Yeah, well, that's not exactly true either. For tax purposes, they owners take a loss. But their tax losses include depreciation - just like every other business. But, unlike other businesses, the owners get to depreciate their roster.
Those of you who haven't fallen asleep (and have any sort of accounting knowledge) are saying, "What?" Or maybe "WTF?" Don't the owners already show their salary expenses for tax purposes? Yes. And they also get to show a depreciation expense every year for the players on their roster. Many years ago, they sold the idea that their roster becomes worth less every year, as players age. And therefore they should be able to show a business expense related to that decline in value. And, yes, that is in addition to the salary expense. Don't even try to find the logic. It's not there.
So the loss that the owners report doesn't mean that they lose that much money out of their pockets. It's an accounting loss. That's why I keep saying that both the players and the owners are full of . The truth, as always, is somewhere in the middle.
A lot of the people commenting about the lockout are naive as . And I don't just mean fans - a lot of the sportswriters are too. I started to make a thread about this a couple of times, but I get sick of all the flame war crap, and all the 12 year olds burying good comments in a sea of dirty diapers. But you can take this to the bank: the negotiations are being held up by two groups - the big market owners, and the superstar players. The interests of all the players are not aligned, nor are the interests of all the owners. This whole thing could be settled by giving the players about 53% of BRI, and giving the owners some kind of protection from guys who get huge contracts and then quit trying. The big roadblocks, are from the two groups above. And those two groups have all the leverage.
The two groups that SHOULD organize and weigh in on this are the fans and the cities/taxpayers. They would have some leverage too, if they weren't quietly sitting on the sidelines watching.
One thing I want to repeat: there will be no $45M hard cap. Period. Everybody knows it is just a starting point for negotiations. (Including some of the posters on these forums.) The union guys talk about it to try and get the fans riled up. But they all know that the union has already offered far in excess of that.
So why are the owners moving backwards? Because now that there is a lockout, the real negotiations begin. The union was hoping to begin the new negotiations from the highest offer the owners had given, and work their way upward. All the owners did was say that they are going back to their original position to begin negotiations. If you were negotiating to buy something, would you want to start at a high price, or a low price? Duh.
so if they lost so much money why did the gms give the players stupid contracts last year
can they not say no?
Nobody is in it to be a loser, Ducks. You know that. And when you're trying to build a team, and the free agent market is thin, you bid on what's available.
So what's the alternative? DON'T pay them? Would you really be happy if even more teams in the league had really, really ty teams? The only way the owners could effectively lower salaries would be to collude with each other, and agree that nobody offers big contracts this year. And if they did that, the players would de-certify and bring an anti-trust suit in a heartbeat. And, most importantly... the players would win that lawsuit. Seriously, the lawsuit would be automatic, and the win would be a no-brainer.
The other problem - big market teams can afford to swallow a bad contract and still make money. Small market teams can't. Would you really be happy if the league contracted to just 22 teams? Nobody can say that would be better with a straight face. If for no other reason than guys like George Hill and Gary Neal would spend their whole careers in Europe and China. We'd never get to watch them play. I don't know about you, but I would feel like I had missed out to never see those guys play.
You've got guys out there like Sean Kemp, who showed up for camp weighing over 300 pounds. Or Jackie Butler who got his contract, and went into early retirement. Or Stephen Jackson demanding a "mandatory" extension. What choice do small market teams have? It's either give him his extension, or take a chance that he might tank a season to express his unhappiness. Or... send him off to a big market team, in exchange for whatever they want to give.
The owners have some points. But a whole lot of their arguments are bull . The players have some points. But a whole lot of their arguments are bull . The argument that the GM's should "just show some restraint" is one of the bull ones. The current system is designed to make that impossible, if the team even hopes to compete.
One more thing nobody has mentioned. The teams make a large chunk of their profit from the post-season. Not their revenues - but their profits. It's a huge blow for the Spurs to go out in the first round, even. These teams that decide to "just not pay" the big contracts? They're screwed. They will have almost no chance of getting any post-season money. The deck is stacked in favor of paying big, long contracts. There's no way around it.
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