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Adrian Peterson, the Sooner legend and current NFL superstar, recently compared his plight to that of the early-American slave. Slated to make $10.72 million if the 2011 season occurs, just about everyone who can complain about “A.D.’s” bold pronouncement has done so. The thing is, he might have had a point, even though he did a poor job of making one. If NBA owners get their way, basketball players will be next in line to talk about “modern day slavery.”
The hang up for most who gripe about Peterson’s lack of tact is that he will make more for one game than a vast majority of un-enslaved Americans hope to make in a lifetime. However, it was not the poor wages and fringe benefits that made the slaves slaves. Freedom, or more accurately, the lack thereof, was the foremost issue. By the system that is being negotiated currently, the NFL restricts the ability of their players to control their own destiny worse than any other sport. Read more…
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League owners ask, “Where have you gone Che Guevera?”
(If you missed any of the previous installments in this series, click here.)
Throughout this series, there has been a common theme. When it comes to the Collective Bargaining Agreement discussions, the owners have the advantage. Thanks to the NFL Players Association, though, the court may have just been leveled.
In order for the union to beat the owners in the NFL’s battle, they ceased existence. The fancy term is “decertification,” but what it really means is that the players are no longer a collective unit. As such, they cannot collectively bargain anything. To which most people, if they are anything like me, would initially think, “Doesn’t that mean the owners won?”
If this were thunderdome, that would be the case. Two entities went into the ring of collective bargaining, and only one entity exited. In this case, however, death becomes the union. Read more…
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This is Part V in a series of posts discussing issues of the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement. Part I of this series discussed why there will be a lockout and Part II looked at the possibility of contracting teams. Part III was on age limits and Part IV on the D-League.
If there is one thing NBA Commissioner David Stern has been tasked with doing in the current Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) negotiations, it is cut costs. Despite record high revenues, many teams in the league claim an inability to continue with the current system. Stern claims that the Association needs to reduce player salaries by 1/3rd for the league to become profitable.
The nuclear solution being tossed out by the owners is simple: a hard salary cap similar to what the NFL employs.
For many reasons, the Players Union will fight to the death (also known as, “decertification”) to prevent this from happening. Under the system that is now in place, the NBA has a salary cap framework that really is easy to circumvent for teams that desire to spend more. To illustrate that point, all but six teams (including the Thunder who are exactly at the threshold) currently surpass the imposed salary cap limit. Putting it into solid numbers, the NBA teams are collectively paying members of the union $287.4 million more than would be allowed if the cap were restrictive. Make that salary cap a valid barrier, instead of a line in the sand, and the league is about half way to cutting the costs they desire.
With the Union’s role being to increase their member’s share of the pot, one can understand why this is unacceptable to them. Their first, and strongest, argument is simply that it is not the NBPA’s objective or best interest to save the owners from themselves. While Stern and his staff toss out figures showing financial data rigged to look like massive losses, the players simply have to say they do not care. If owners are truly offering contracts that they cannot afford, it should not be the players to say, “You’re paying us too much,” it should be team management making that call and reacting appropriately. Read more…
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The D-League: Shaping the NBA since…well, someday it might have an influence
When it comes to developing young men drafted by their league, Major League Baseball’s “minor leagues” is the premiere system. Unlike the NBA, which immediately guarantees a roster spot to a first round draft pick and guarantees the player millions of dollars, MLB has a system of incremental player growth administrated by the team that gradually prepares the player for the rigors of the sport.
In the past, the NBA had no real concern about developing players. When players had to prove a “financial hardship” to enter the league prior to exhausting their college eligibility, and Soviet rule kept players from defecting before they had passed their prime, the league used free methods of transitioning players from their parent’s (or government’s) oversight to a life of extravagant wealth. Then, about twenty years ago, the trend of players to quit school and start making money began. General Managers, not wanting to miss out on an elite talent, stopped emphasizing things like “preparedness” and “development,” instead caring more about “potential” and “athleticism.” The result was that a good number of players whose immaturity and inability to grow, that in the past would have become apparent when they clashed with their college coach, were drafted into the NBA and given multi-year guaranteed contracts. Even if some of those players could become valuable pieces, their development was stunted due to inability to get floor experience.
Over the past decade, basketball has attempted to emulate the plan of their baseball playing brethren. In creating the National Basketball Developmental League (“D-League”) some effort has been made to address the trend of players beginning their careers earlier. In ____, __ teams, mostly in the Southeast, were spawned by the NBA as a de facto minor league. It mostly consisted of second rounders cut by teams and free agents whose dreams of playing in the NBA still had a flicker. As time has progressed, the D-League has expanded, some teams (including the Thunder) have purchased franchises, and in the most recent CBA, the players relented to allow first and second year players to be assigned to teams affiliated with their club. This past Summer, the league allowed a bit more control regarding how teams filled out their D-League rosters by giving D-League rights to the affiliates of teams that cut the player during training camp. Read more…
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College could have taught these guys some humility.
Kobe Bryant never played a college basketball game.
Kevin Garnett never attended a college class.
LeBron James never even considered going the college route.
Prior to the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, high school players were allowed the option of declaring for the NBA instead of playing college basketball. As a result, many of the best regarded teenagers in the sport chose the big money instead of the traditional progression represented by walking on a college campus. It is undeniable that many of those players made perfectly rational decisions. Just as easily as one can chastise the Gerald Green’s and Ndudi Ebi’s for wasting their potential by getting under the big lights too early, someone can defend them by saying they got paid when they could just have easily flamed out as NCAA indentured servants.
All of that discussion is completely and totally irrelevant.
Basketball players will generally all argue that there should be no age restriction—but even then they aren’t being totally forthcoming. It is doubtful anyone is truly suggesting that that the NBA transition to a European-style philosophy of allowing youth players to sign with teams. (For instance, Ricky Rubio signed with DKV Joventut when he was 14 years old.) What they really mean is that they want to return to the old status quo that said players could enter the draft when they had exhausted their high school eligibility. They only take issue that the NBA says they have to go to college first. Read more…
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If you missed the first part, “Introduction to the Collective Bargaining Negotiations,” that discussed the imminence of a lockout, you can catch up here.
Since most Oklahoma City Thunder fans were originally New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets fans, we are already fully aware of the problems the Hornet franchise was going through. In the days when I was a contributor at HornetsCentral.com, the discussions on the message board typically centered on how the New Orleans market was never a fit for the NBA, the ownership being atrocious, and how the team should have stayed in the 405 permanently.
Being that we still believe all three statements to be true (even though, in retrospect, we are pleased the third did not come to fruition) it was of very little surprise when we saw news that the league had wrestled ownership away from George Shinn. The guy was a cancer to the league brain trust that openly poisoned the Charlotte market so he could take his team to be the second banana in a place that had already failed the NBA despite having a hometown hero and basketball legend in Pete Maravich to buoy the team’s appeal. Then, if rumors are to be believed, Shinn lobbied to stay in Oklahoma City rather than return to hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, only to have David Stern veto that idea to keep the Hornet owner from ruining the emerging market permanently. Read more…
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