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

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  • Matt52 wrote: View Post
    Then why didn't Impact Basketball become a huge success?

    Why haven't the players started their own league?

    Why aren't the players getting contacts as valuable as they get in the NBA to play elsewhere?

    Just as much as the league needs the players, the players need the league.

    If the players didn't need the league:

    Deron Williams would have signed his $15M contract in Turkey instead of only $5M.
    Bogut would be playing in Australia for $13M instead of sitting out because the teams cannot even come up with the $1M needed to insure his contract.
    None of the European contracts would have opt out clauses to return to the NBA.
    JR Smith and Wilson Chandler would get more than the approximate $2.5M each is receiving in China.
    Earl Clark wouldn't be leaving the team he signed with in China.
    Kobe wouldn't be turning up his nose at $8M to play in Italy.


    I respect your opinion on the importance of the players, however, the owners and league have the same value. This is why a straight 50/50 split of revenues seems very fair to me. Neither group can go it alone without the others (actually, the NBA could but it would not be the same).
    When did I ever say the players didn't use the league to their benifit? Not once did I say that. In fact I said this was a partnership... they have each used and benifited off of each other.

    My point was that the platform that is used to showcase the players and allow them to make the money they do was also built by a previous generation of players.

    People seem to be forgetting the importance of the product. As if teams or the league could just replace the best in the world with anything and fans will just show up. There is a reason the Cavs sold out everywhere they played in 2009/10 and barely drew a crowd outside their arena in 2010/11. There is a reason the estimated value of that same Cavs team dropped over 100 mil dollars in the span of 1 day.

    I'm curious as to how much the Clippers are valued at today compared to 2 years ago.

    Comment


    • No one is arguing that individual players can't increase the value of a franchise. The point is that, if individual player X wasn't doing that for the franchise, then individual player Y would be. If Lebron James ceased to exist in the world of NBA basketball, then Carmelo or someone would take his place. The game is bigger than the personalities, always. It's not a cliche.

      And this lockout has nothing to do with those kind of players anyway. It's the rank-and-file, $2-$10M per year guys who stand to lose the most, here. And those guys, if you believe in the star-driven NBA of today, *really* don't matter in the grand scheme of things. By the looks of things at this hour, they're starting to realize that, finally.
      Definition of Statistics: The science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures.

      Comment


      • jimmie wrote: View Post
        No one is arguing that individual players can't increase the value of a franchise. The point is that, if individual player X wasn't doing that for the franchise, then individual player Y would be. If Lebron James ceased to exist in the world of NBA basketball, then Carmelo or someone would take his place. The game is bigger than the personalities, always. It's not a cliche.

        And this lockout has nothing to do with those kind of players anyway. It's the rank-and-file, $2-$10M per year guys who stand to lose the most, here. And those guys, if you believe in the star-driven NBA of today, *really* don't matter in the grand scheme of things. By the looks of things at this hour, they're starting to realize that, finally.
        Even if you believe that is true, thats still another player. I fail to see how that changes anything.

        And it has alot to do with star players as they are the ones to loose the most, both initially and in the long run. A 5% pay cut on 20 mil is 10X as much as a 5% pay cut on 2 mil. If there is a harder salary cap its their salaries that will get effected the most as teams will not be able to afford their current salaries.

        Comment


        • So lets try a thought experiment. Here's the conditions:
          1. Negotiations are completely busted
          2. Owners claim they are starting over from scratch
          3. Owners publish a contract that has all of the conditions they are offering now and state that this is what players in the new league will get.
          4. They announce that the first year will have a four month season starting in February, then a play-off series with the top teams from each division meeting for conference winner, then conference winners playing in a five game finals. Next year everything goes back to the way it is now.
          5. Training camps open in the first week of January
          6. Players interested in playing must apply to the league by first week of December and all players must have previous NBA, NBDL, NCAA, or Euroleague experience. (You pick any other acceptable leagues...key here is that statistics for previous play must be available that demonstrate some level of competence and a high enough level)
          7. Salaries are based on draft position and are maxed out such that the hard cap is not exceeded in the first or subsequent years.
          8. Teams pick one player at a time from the existing applicants in rotation, based on a random drawing of names. Eighteen rounds. Teams then negotiate with that player over salary
          9. Teams can release 3 players before league play starts.

          How many existing players from the NBA do you think would apply to be part of the draft for the new league? I would guess 80%
          or more. So if all of the top three players from each team refused to join, you would have an NBA made up of the best 12 out of 15 players from each team, except that the talent would be completely redistributed for the first year. You would have a couple years in which the second round draft picks would have relatively more importance than they do now and in which free agent signings from overseas would likewise be more important.

          By the fourth year there would be little difference in the level of play between the old NBA and the new league. Probably less. How many top tier players would hold out for more than a year? 10? I doubt if it would be more than that.

          Just a thought experiment and I don't even know if the conditions such as I have outlined would be legal.

          I'm not pretending to have put a lot of thought into this. Like I said it's just a thought experiment. But think about it from the owners perspective. All past sins are eliminated. Everyone starts form ground zero. Fan interest is regenerated in moribund markets. And small market teams have a chance to compete again for at least a few years.

          Comment


          • GarbageTime wrote: View Post
            When did I ever say the players didn't use the league to their benifit? Not once did I say that. In fact I said this was a partnership... they have each used and benifited off of each other.

            My point was that the platform that is used to showcase the players and allow them to make the money they do was also built by a previous generation of players.

            People seem to be forgetting the importance of the product. As if teams or the league could just replace the best in the world with anything and fans will just show up. There is a reason the Cavs sold out everywhere they played in 2009/10 and barely drew a crowd outside their arena in 2010/11. There is a reason the estimated value of that same Cavs team dropped over 100 mil dollars in the span of 1 day.

            I'm curious as to how much the Clippers are valued at today compared to 2 years ago.
            I guess that is a reference to Blake Griffin. One could easily say:

            I'm curious as to how much Blake Griffin is earning today compared to 2 years ago (well, pre lockout).

            Neither the league or players are bigger than the other. Without one there is no other.

            Comment


            • joey_hesketh wrote: View Post
              And they are wrong in thinking this??

              Fans pay to see the best athletes in the world play and compete.
              Not the richest people in the world own.
              It's certainly not the owners that the fans to pay to see.
              Joey,

              I thought this was an interesting article and thought back to this comment. Obviously just one person's view.

              This mutual suicide pact among NBA owners, for example. They had another meeting Sunday night to suss out the details. Slow poison, or a quick bullet to the brain? We'll hear more about it Monday afternoon once NBA commissioner, executioner and grief counselor David Stern starts canceling regular season games. At least that's what we've been told. Or threatened. It's just the latest phony deadline in the absurd story of a nonsense lockout.

              We're on the brink! The whole apparatus is at risk! Save us!

              Idiots.

              Sorry. I had a whole polite thing worked up. Lots of statistics. Reasonable. All points of view represented. But this is just deeply, impossibly stupid. In fact, the more I think about it, the angrier I get, and the more I realize that any owner who can't break even on professional sports in this country is a moron. Or a liar. Honestly. If you can't manage a pro team at a modest profit in the United States of America in the early years of the 21st century, you shouldn't be allowed to vote or operate a motor vehicle. You shouldn't be allowed near the stove.

              At a time when the production and consumption of distraction are the only healthy sectors of the American economy, and when city, county, state and federal tax dollars pay for the arenas and the stadiums, to lose money on the operation of a pro sports franchise has to be grounds for involuntary psychiatric commitment. Or prosecution.

              And if any of this sounds familiar, consider where we've heard it before.

              The NBA, too big to fail!

              Because between the lines of all this basketball madness is just another example of the nitwit superrich expecting their employees and/or the government and/or the general public to bail them out.

              Save us from ourselves! they cry. Save us from our cartoon greed and our lurid excesses!

              These credit derivatives are a win-win-win right down the line!

              These credit default swaps are in no way a ticking time bomb!

              This Eddy Curry contract will never blow up in my face!

              Never!

              So here we are.

              Back to the sort of disaster capitalism we've seen from the leagues before. And from Wall Street. And from Congress. Another bogus stalemate in which the fan loses and for which the little guy pays. Same old con game standoff between management and labor.

              OK. Fine. Let it fail. I'm tired of being played for a sucker.

              There's basketball everywhere.

              In an economy this bad, most of us will be happy to watch college ball the next six months; or the satellite package with Lega Basket Serie A on it and the Israeli Basketball Super League, down at the corner bar; or we'll thumb through our own season on the Xbox. Or just watch the kids play in the driveway. These are lean days, Clueless Billionaire.

              Or maybe the players will start their own league and barnstorm from armory to armory the way they did it back when. The value in the NBA is the talent, after all. And as start-ups go, it wouldn't cost much: just $89 to incorporate in Delaware. Call it the Peoples' Traveling Basketball League (patent pending). Twenty bucks a seat.

              Me? I'll go up to the Rucker, or over to 4th Street. Or I'll walk to Sara D. Roosevelt Park and watch the neighborhood game from a bench with the other old kibitzers. See some young men as gifted and ambitious and carefree as players anywhere. Beautiful to watch. Once it gets cold out, we'll move the game inside to the community center. Whole thing costs nothing. Unless we go around the corner to Yonah Schimmel's for knishes at halftime. Then it's $3.50. Try the kasha.

              Jeff MacGregor is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. You can e-mail him at jeff_macgregor@hotmail.com or follow his Twitter.com feed @MacGregorESPN.
              http://espn.go.com/espn/commentary/s...bsurd-nonsense

              Comment


              • Matt52 wrote: View Post
                I guess that is a reference to Blake Griffin. One could easily say:

                I'm curious as to how much Blake Griffin is earning today compared to 2 years ago (well, pre lockout).

                Neither the league or players are bigger than the other. Without one there is no other.

                Apparently only as much as the league will allow him to which is arguably a fraction of his full potential.

                Yet he needs to take a pay cut...........

                Comment


                • GarbageTime wrote: View Post
                  Apparently only as much as the league will allow him to which is arguably a fraction of his full potential.

                  Yet he needs to take a pay cut...........
                  But how much would he make without the league?

                  Kobe can't even make 1/3 of his salary outside the NBA despite his agent's best efforts.

                  And in this example of Blake Griffin, you are correct. Blake Griffin pays for himself. The issue is having to pay the Derek Fishers of the league $4M per year or Diop $7M per year.

                  Comment


                  • Matt52 wrote: View Post
                    But how much would he make without the league?

                    Kobe can't even make 1/3 of his salary outside the NBA despite his agent's best efforts.

                    And in this example of Blake Griffin, you are correct. Blake Griffin pays for himself. The issue is having to pay the Derek Fishers of the league $4M per year or Diop $7M per year.
                    For about the 3rd time I NEVER said this wasn't a 2 way street. In fact I stated clearly this was a partnership. BUT it can't be ignored that the reason the league has gotten as big as it is, is due to the players. They ARE the product.

                    Using that same argument, how much could any current NBA owner make owning a CBL team or Euroleague team or ABL team opposed to an NBA team? Why don't they just sell their NBA team and buy a team in another league if they are so worried about the cost?

                    Finally the owners still decided to pay those salaries. They agreed to it... nobody forced them to. On the contrary, Blake Griffon and Lebron James or Kobe Bryant ARE limited in how much they can make. Yet someone how its the players fault, and Griffon or Lebron or whoever have to take a pay cut because some owner was stupid enough to pay someone else too much money? The owners who we can only assume are telling the truth (as there is an unwillingness to be transparent), are apparently losing money because of contracts THEY made/offered. Now they expect every player to take responsiblility to pay for the mistake of the owners or there won't be a season because the owners locked out the players. Yet we are expected to put the onus of responisibility on the players? I'm sorry but thats just ridiculous. The owners took risks and failed and have now been holding fans and players hostage expecting someone compensate them.

                    They came in with an unreasonable inital offer (which we are supposed to see as 'good bargnaining techniques), demanding something they never wanted in the first place (hard cap), claiming poverty while flying around in private jets and blaming players for taking up too much of the costs because of contracts they offered.

                    How about the owners just accept the deal or try to sell their team if they don't like it.

                    Comment


                    • GarbageTime wrote: View Post
                      They ARE the product.
                      Indeed.

                      People would buy shetty computers if thats all that is offered. But thats because we 'need' them.
                      But don't expect people to pay top dollar for them.

                      People will pay to watch other basketball, because we love the sport. But we're still missing out on a better product by not being given the option of having it.

                      GarbageTime wrote: View Post
                      Now they expect every player to take responsiblility to pay for the mistake of the owners or there won't be a season because the owners locked out the players. Yet we are expected to put the onus of responisibility on the players? I'm sorry but thats just ridiculous. The owners took risks and failed and have now been holding fans and players hostage expecting someone compensate them.

                      They came in with an unreasonable inital offer (which we are supposed to see as 'good bargnaining techniques), demanding something they never wanted in the first place (hard cap), claiming poverty while flying around in private jets and blaming players for taking up too much of the costs because of contracts they offered.

                      How about the owners just accept the deal or try to sell their team if they don't like it.
                      I'm with GT on this one.

                      Comment


                      • GarbageTime wrote: View Post
                        For about the 3rd time I NEVER said this wasn't a 2 way street. In fact I stated clearly this was a partnership. BUT it can't be ignored that the reason the league has gotten as big as it is, is due to the players. They ARE the product.

                        Using that same argument, how much could any current NBA owner make owning a CBL team or Euroleague team or ABL team opposed to an NBA team? Why don't they just sell their NBA team and buy a team in another league if they are so worried about the cost?

                        Finally the owners still decided to pay those salaries. They agreed to it... nobody forced them to. On the contrary, Blake Griffon and Lebron James or Kobe Bryant ARE limited in how much they can make. Yet someone how its the players fault, and Griffon or Lebron or whoever have to take a pay cut because some owner was stupid enough to pay someone else too much money? The owners who we can only assume are telling the truth (as there is an unwillingness to be transparent), are apparently losing money because of contracts THEY made/offered. Now they expect every player to take responsiblility to pay for the mistake of the owners or there won't be a season because the owners locked out the players. Yet we are expected to put the onus of responisibility on the players? I'm sorry but thats just ridiculous. The owners took risks and failed and have now been holding fans and players hostage expecting someone compensate them.

                        They came in with an unreasonable inital offer (which we are supposed to see as 'good bargnaining techniques), demanding something they never wanted in the first place (hard cap), claiming poverty while flying around in private jets and blaming players for taking up too much of the costs because of contracts they offered.

                        How about the owners just accept the deal or try to sell their team if they don't like it.
                        The NBA is the factory that produces the product.

                        Flip side of the coin which is more likely at any job or in any industry or profession:

                        How about the players just accept the deal or try to get as good a contract elsewhere if they don't like it.


                        Why don't they? Because at the end of the day they are workers who will never have it as good elsewhere.

                        Comment


                        • It's official. First 2 weeks Axed.

                          Well boys ... it happened. We're going to miss our Raptors for at least 2 weeks.

                          I'm devestated.

                          David Stern Cancels first 2 weeks of Schedule

                          Comment


                          • Matt52 wrote: View Post
                            Then why didn't Impact Basketball become a huge success?
                            Not real basketball - for the most part.

                            Why haven't the players started their own league?
                            Logistics. Setting up a league just because you have one ingredient is looking at things in a short-sighted way.

                            Why aren't the players getting contacts as valuable as they get in the NBA to play elsewhere?
                            Besides insurance issues, there is that major factor of Commitment. Not a lot of Weems floating out there.

                            Just as much as the league needs the players, the players need the league.
                            Couldn't agree more.

                            I respect your opinion on the importance of the players, however, the owners and league have the same value. This is why a straight 50/50 split of revenues seems very fair to me. Neither group can go it alone without the others (actually, the NBA could but it would not be the same).
                            I still keep wondering how they ever settled on 57%. Since when does the Boss make less than the Employees.
                            Oh wait .... in a lot of small businesses. lol.

                            .

                            Comment


                            • I was hopeful, figured that 7 hours of talk would amount to something, maybe not a deal but the framework for one. Turns out it was all for naught. Two concerning tweets:

                              http://twitter.com/#!/WojYahooNBA/st...81734032904193

                              GM just texted me: "Now it gets ugly. God help us."
                              http://twitter.com/#!/WojYahooNBA/st...84017726570496

                              Another GM: "I think the best case scenario now is 50 games, but I can see the whole season gone."

                              Comment


                              • I really hope that this league and its players PAY. Both sides are talking about money. Well, let's talk about money afterwards when they do agree eventually. As for these players and their "charity" games, it's crazy how people pay to watch them play pick-up.
                                “The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.” - Martin Luther King

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