The Lockout & the Raptors: Players approve CBA, Owners too! (1944)

[Joey]

That's what they said before the last CBA. And the one before. That's what they said when Oscar Robertson challenged the reserve clause in the 1970s - "Something must be done to stop Oscar or the NBA will cease to exist!". Come on, we all know as soon as this is over owners are going to be tripping over themselves to offer Kris Humphries a 5 year deal worth $45mm, along with a laundry list of other horrible contracts. How do we know this? Cause it happens every single time.... Anyone who believes that this time it will be different and this new system will create balance and harmony is either incredibuly naive, completely ignorant of history or both.

All great points. Love this one the best. Haha

[mcHAPPY]

That bolded statement is laughable....coming from the source.

Boies was perfectly willing to argue the case for the NFL which has a hard cap. How free market is that? Is there any pro sports league which operates in a real free market? Does a draft occur in a free market? Maybe he is working too hard.

That is the thing. How can a professional sports league not have these 'anti-labour' measures in place and be sustainable and successful?

[Apollo]

That's what they said before the last CBA. And the one before. That's what they said when Oscar Robertson challenged the reserve clause in the 1970s - "Something must be done to stop Oscar or the NBA will cease to exist!". Come on, we all know as soon as this is over owners are going to be tripping over themselves to offer Kris Humphries a 5 year deal worth $45mm, along with a laundry list of other horrible contracts. How do we know this? Cause it happens every single time.... Anyone who believes that this time it will be different and this new system will create balance and harmony is either incredibuly naive, completely ignorant of history or both.

Right, so give up and let all hell run loose? Is that fair to anyone outside of those handful of teams at the top? If you want to be successful you do the best with what you have to work with and hope for some good bounces. You learn from your mistakes and take measures to try and prevent them in the future. No doubt some owners will make stupid moves which seemed perfectly reasonable to them in their particular circumstances at the time but that doesn't mean its not worth doing anything to try and prevent it from happening in the future. Tim's analogy is bang on if only somebody would actually do something about the banks. Sometimes you need to set up mechanisms which protect people from themselves and others. It's not perfect but this isn't a perfect world. In my opinion you make the most out of what you have to work with or you're counter productive. Doing nothing to fix a problem because you're cynical doesn't sound like a great plan to me. It sounds like a great way to become stagnant/under productive.

[Tim W.]

All great points. Love this one the best. Haha

And that's EXACTLY why they need a good CBA in place. It's all well and good to say that the owners and GMs need to control themselves. It's another thing for them to go against their nature and 100,000 years of evolution.

[Apollo]

There are many reasons why people make draft choices or signings or trades which turn out to be mistakes. I would guess 99% of the time they're gambling on the future. I'd imagine usually due to the pressure to perform to expectations to keep their job or pressure to keep their star player on board or what have you. Most people take gambles when they feel they need to. I would like to believe most managers in the NBA aren't dare devils and they got to where they are by proving proficiency in their field and being shrewd businessmen. Colangelo is a prime example of a guy working against the clock who seemed to take gambles to keep his star on board. His gamble failed and he lost the hand(even though I feel the deck was stacked against him from the onset).

[mcHAPPY]

NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION v. WILLIAMS [1994]
In the collective bargaining of 1994 the NBPA demanded that the college draft, right of first refusal and salary cap system be abolished, choosing not to negotiate with the NBA until their current collective bargaining agreement expired. The NBA then filed suit in U.S. District Court claiming that the continued operation under the expired collective bargaining agreement would not violate antitrust laws because the continuance was covered by labor law rather than antitrust law and that they were lawful even if antitrust law was applied. The NBPA countered that a cartel such as the NBA member clubs should be barred from using economic coercion in collective bargaining. The court then ruled in July, 1994 that antitrust laws did not prevent employers from acting jointly when bargaining with a common union. On January 24, 1995 the U.S. Court of Appeals partially affirmed the decision of the U.S. District Court, ruling that antitrust laws could not be applied to the collective bargaining negotiations between the NBPA and NBA, and based on that, ruled that it did not need to address the college draft, right of first refusal and salary cap.


EWING v. NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION [1995]
In response to ongoing labor negotiations a group of dissident players (with Patrick Ewing, Michael Jordan, Stacey Augmon, Dale Davis, Alonzo Mourning, Howard Eisley and Stacey King as the plaintiffs and heavily influenced by player agent David Falk) files an antitrust suit in Federal Court on June 28, 1995 in Minneapolis claiming that the NBPA, under the direction of Executive Director Simon Gourdine and President Buck Williams was not keeping them informed on the labor negotiations, with the group also circulating petitions to decertify the union. The plaintiff’s main contentions being that the salary cap and college draft were illegal because the previous collective bargaining agreement had expired. The filing of the suit derailed the agreement between the NBA and NBPA and led to a decertification vote by the NBPA members and a lockout by the NBA on July 1. In September Judge David Doty said he would await the outcome of the player’s decertification movement before deciding to life the NBA lockout. Later in the month the NBA players voted 226-134 against decertification and the new collective bargaining agreement was ratified 25-2 by team representatives the next day.

http://apbrbasketball.blogspot.com/2...1987-1998.html

History of Anti-Trust in the NBA.

[Tim W.]

That's what they said before the last CBA. And the one before. That's what they said when Oscar Robertson challenged the reserve clause in the 1970s - "Something must be done to stop Oscar or the NBA will cease to exist!". Come on, we all know as soon as this is over owners are going to be tripping over themselves to offer Kris Humphries a 5 year deal worth $45mm, along with a laundry list of other horrible contracts. How do we know this? Cause it happens every single time.... Anyone who believes that this time it will be different and this new system will create balance and harmony is either incredibuly naive, completely ignorant of history or both.

Create harmony and balance? No. Prevent overspending and level the playing field a little. Definitely. Yes, GMs are going to try and overspend because if they don't try and win they end up being out of a job. And GMs will try and out bid one another for players they like. That's human nature.

Unless you want to make GMs unfireable, then you're going to always have GMs that will gamble and give out bigger contracts than they should to try and win.

On the other hand, you could have a league of L.A. Clippers....

[Joey]

And that's EXACTLY why they need a good CBA in place. It's all well and good to say that the owners and GMs need to control themselves. It's another thing for them to go against their nature and 100,000 years of evolution.

But I've already asked how a good CBA will prevent a signing like that, and no one has been able to answer it.
Matt did say that the 'Stretch Exception' will offer some protection from that, but I'm not sure to what extent that will be effective.
The proposal everyone was pushing for the players to sign would have done nothing else (as far as I could tell) to dissuade a team with space from signing a player to a market ruining contracts. And as soon as it happens, another will get signed. And the market is effed.
A good CBA will limit the amount they can spend on salaries, yes. But everyone thought the old Salary Tax was bullet proof and no one would be willing to do thaat... whoops. They are going to abuse this one, and find the loops holes just they like did the others. They're 'savvy' businessmen, afterall.

[GarbageTime]

Create harmony and balance? No. Prevent overspending and level the playing field a little. Definitely. Yes, GMs are going to try and overspend because if they don't try and win they end up being out of a job. And GMs will try and out bid one another for players they like. That's human nature.

Unless you want to make GMs unfireable, then you're going to always have GMs that will gamble and give out bigger contracts than they should to try and win.

On the other hand, you could have a league of L.A. Clippers....

But that won't change. All the same things will happen just within greater limits. Which means less total bad contracts, but each bad contract is exponentially worse.

But you hit the nail on the head as to where the problem is:

GMs are going to try and overspend because if they don't try and win they end up being out of a job. And GMs will try and out bid one another for players they like.

A hard cap will not change that. Watching a team go bankrupt will.

[Tim W.]

But I've already asked how a good CBA will prevent a signing like that, and no one has been able to answer it.
Matt did say that the 'Stretch Exception' will offer some protection from that, but I'm not sure to what extent that will be effective.
The proposal everyone was pushing for the players to sign would have done nothing else (as far as I could tell) to dissuade a team with space from signing a player to a market ruining contracts. And as soon as it happens, another will get signed. And the market is effed.
A good CBA will limit the amount they can spend on salaries, yes. But everyone thought the old Salary Tax was bullet proof and no one would be willing to do thaat... whoops. They are going to abuse this one, and find the loops holes just they like did the others. They're 'savvy' businessmen, afterall.

But that won't change. All the same things will happen just within greater limits. Which means less total bad contracts, but each bad contract is exponentially worse.

But you hit the nail on the head as to where the problem is:

A hard cap will not change that. Watching a team go bankrupt will.

Nothing is a cure all. There is no perfect solution. But a good CBA will curtail too much spending that the league as a whole simply can't afford. The luxury tax did work to a point, but the problem was that there were still teams willing to go into the tax, making it even more of a have/have-not division between the rich and not-so-rich teams. The luxury tax was a starting point and all the owners were able to get in the last negotiations. It proved that it was simply not enough and now they are looking to expand on that. And rightly so.

A hard cap would most definitely work for the owners, since it would limit how much teams can spend. It doesn't work for the players, though, and it would kind of suck for the fans who would not get much continuity on their team because teams wouldn't be able to afford to keep all their best players.

The sweet spot is somewhere in between, but the question is where.

And, yes, GMs will give out bad contracts no matter what the rules are, but that's not really the problem. The problem is not a few players being overpaid, but teams having to pay too much for an entire roster in order to compete with teams who have a lot of money. The issue is not that bad decisions make it difficult for teams to compete, it's that even when teams make good decisions, they can't compete with the rich teams and if they do they can't make money.

[RaptorDan]

History of Anti-Trust in the NBA.

Nice find Matt. I remember some players getting pretty pissed off in 1995. Wonder if some current dissident players will emerge soon and voice their dissatisfaction. I was surprised that the union didn't put the owners latest offer nor the motion to disband the union (or whatever its called) nor filing of anti-trust suit to a vote.

[GarbageTime]

Nothing is a cure all. There is no perfect solution. But a good CBA will curtail too much spending that the league as a whole simply can't afford. The luxury tax did work to a point, but the problem was that there were still teams willing to go into the tax, making it even more of a have/have-not division between the rich and not-so-rich teams. The luxury tax was a starting point and all the owners were able to get in the last negotiations. It proved that it was simply not enough and now they are looking to expand on that. And rightly so.

A hard cap would most definitely work for the owners, since it would limit how much teams can spend. It doesn't work for the players, though, and it would kind of suck for the fans who would not get much continuity on their team because teams wouldn't be able to afford to keep all their best players.

The sweet spot is somewhere in between, but the question is where.

And, yes, GMs will give out bad contracts no matter what the rules are, but that's not really the problem. The problem is not a few players being overpaid, but teams having to pay too much for an entire roster in order to compete with teams who have a lot of money. The issue is not that bad decisions make it difficult for teams to compete, it's that even when teams make good decisions, they can't compete with the rich teams and if they do they can't make money.

I can't help but to disagree with the bolded part.

1. Again we go back to the evidence that the correlation between spending and winning is almost non-existent. People keep using this reasonging yet, time and time again, the evidence says it is not true. And even where a team that has spent wins, they also have the same resource a smaller salary winning team has. A superstar. The problem is not that teams don't spend enough. Its that there are not enough superstars to go around and no economic system change will effect that.

2. Every overpaid player means less resources (cash, roster spot, floor time, usage etc) that could be used in a different manner (ie. to improve the team) or saved to make the team more profitable. There is a level of waste that any overpaid contract creates... that waste prevents wins, costs money and effectst a teams bottom line.


That said, I do agree there is a need to find the 'sweet spot' in between (a completely free market system and a restrictive cap system). And I think what the owners are proposing is probably relatively close (I think the 'new' tax system is a bit to harsh early.... but should stay harsh at excessive levels). But at the same time, that sweet spot should also fit into something that will get the players to agree . Its time for the owners to give back... whether that be a part of the BRI (ie. the 52 or 53% the players wanted) and try to keep the system changes, or try to keep the BRI at 50/50 and give up some of the system changes.

Side note: I think, just my feeling, the sticking point is either the removal of the sign and trade from tax paying teams, which is unfortunate because it probably the second best way to keep star players in their towns (after actually building a good team) and/or the harsher tax system. But I also don't think that the sign and trade from tax paying teams or a harsher tax is worth giving up a season over... although, if the owners offered 480 mil over 6 years (ie. rough number of moving the BRI up to 52% and a 6 year deal), or vice-versa, and thereby giving the players the appearance of winning a labour negotiations they already 'lost', the players may get over it.

[Tim W.]

I can't help but to disagree with the bolded part.

1. Again we go back to the evidence that the correlation between spending and winning is almost non-existent. People keep using this reasonging yet, time and time again, the evidence says it is not true. And even where a team that has spent wins, they also have the same resource a smaller salary winning team has. A superstar. The problem is not that teams don't spend enough. Its that there are not enough superstars to go around and no economic system change will effect that.

2. Every overpaid player means less resources (cash, roster spot, floor time, usage etc) that could be used in a different manner (ie. to improve the team) or saved to make the team more profitable. There is a level of waste that any overpaid contract creates... that waste prevents wins, costs money and effectst a teams bottom line.


That said, I do agree there is a need to find the 'sweet spot' in between (a completely free market system and a restrictive cap system). And I think what the owners are proposing is probably relatively close (I think the 'new' tax system is a bit to harsh early.... but should stay harsh at excessive levels). But at the same time, that sweet spot should also fit into something that will get the players to agree . Its time for the owners to give back... whether that be a part of the BRI (ie. the 52 or 53% the players wanted) and try to keep the system changes, or try to keep the BRI at 50/50 and give up some of the system changes.

Side note: I think, just my feeling, the sticking point is either the removal of the sign and trade from tax paying teams, which is unfortunate because it probably the second best way to keep star players in their towns (after actually building a good team) and/or the harsher tax system. But I also don't think that the sign and trade from tax paying teams or a harsher tax is worth giving up a season over... although, if the owners offered 480 mil over 6 years (ie. rough number of moving the BRI up to 52% and a 6 year deal), or vice-versa, and thereby giving the players the appearance of winning a labour negotiations they already 'lost', the players may get over it.

I completely agree about your argument about superstars. That is a problem and there's really nothing to be done about it except to clone Michael Jordan, Bill Russell, Larry Bird and Magic. I do disagree about the spending, though. I don't think there is a direct correlation between spending and winning, but there is certainly a correlation between keeping a winning team together and making them contenders and spending. Eventually any contender will have to start paying out if they want to continue to be one. It's inevitable. Even San Antonio, which has been one of the best managed franchises in pro sports, had to make a decision in order to continue to be contenders. They chose to pay the tax. I think that speaks volumes.

Miami isn't a tax paying team, now, but wait a couple of years with the old CBA and they will have been. It would have been the only way to add decent talent to their trio of stars. Oklahoma will have to make a decision eventually when the rookie contracts expire whether or not they can afford to keep everyone.

Last season, Dallas had one of the highest payrolls and won the Championship. The previous year, the Lakers won with one of the highest payrolls. The year before, Boston won with one of the highest payrolls. And then last season they traded away Kendrick Perkins because they didn't want to pay him and didn't make it to the conference finals.

Obviously simply spending money will not automatically make you a contender, but if you want to be one and stay one, eventually you'll have to pay through the nose.

And if every team has an overpaid player (which is pretty much true) then everyone is on a relatively level footing. Besides, it's simply not realistic to say that GMs need to stop giving signing bad contracts. You might as well say that players need to stop having career years in the last year of their contract. The chance of either not happening are pretty much the same for the exact same reason.

[Quirk]

If it wasn't personal before now to the Owners you have to think it's changing.

"Personal?"

Yeah, I suppose the Owners could run the league without any players and simply play themselves right? The NBA would be awesome if it weren't for the damn players!

If it's "Personal," the owners would really show the players who's boss and get into a different line of business.

With modern finance, they may have trouble finding a place, there's not too many other industries where anachronistic "Tycoon Boss" types are still prominent. Most industries are dominated by shareholder corporations, boards, etc. Pro sports is the last vestige of the tycoon, and I suspect they will soon be extinct. As others have suggested being an old-school Boss in the public eye is probably among the reasons a lot of these goons become owners in the first place. It's quick sickening how many people identify with these plantation owners.

I understand Tim W's position, that team interests are more aligned with fan interests than player interests, and I have no issue with this position, this position would hold whatever the nature of team ownership, including shareholder based, and actually suggests the best model directly: Fan-based ownership.

It's not that "Tycoons" have interests aligned with fans, they don't since their whole mission in life is charging the fans as much as possible while paying the players as little as possible. It's that teams have different interests than players.

Bring on the antitrust. The Players should own the league, the Fans should own the teams. The Tycoons can go to hell. Simple.

[Quirk]

I think the owners could invent their own internal agreement(salary cap, exceptions, etc.) right now and start offering contracts. One catch would be that all 430 players would be free agents.

Such an "Internal Agreement" would be exactly what is illegal under antitrust law, same as the lockout is. That's what they call a cartel or "trust" which "antitrust" law is designed to break-up.

Also there would be far more than 430 free agents, all undrafted players too, since the draft is a construct of the CBA, which requires a union to exist for the "CB" part. No C = no Draft.