NBA Thread 2011-12

[EddieG]

I got it, just had to post that video after Quom's post.

[ROZAY]

Could have been fun to see players call their fouls for a while.

D-12 would set every free throw record ever and still somehow only manage to shoot 60% from the line.

In other news, fuck Cleveland and Phoenix.

Owners and players initially found reason for optimism during Tuesday's meetings. Commissioner David Stern and Peter Holt, the head of the owners' executive committee, felt that the players' proposal to take 52 or 53 percent of basketball-related income, compared to 57 under the previous agreement, was basically fair, sources said.

Owners were seriously considering coming off of their demand for a salary freeze and would allow players' future earnings to be tied into the league's revenue growth, a critical point for players. The owners also were willing to allow the players to maintain their current salaries, without rollbacks, sources said.

But when the owners left the players to meet among themselves for around three hours, Cleveland's Dan Gilbert and Phoenix's Robert Sarver expressed their dissatisfaction with many of the points, sources said. The sources said that the Knicks' James Dolan and the Lakers' Jerry Buss were visibly annoyed by the hardline demands of Gilbert and Sarver.

Edited September 15, 2011 by The Aztec Warrior

[naiwf]

At least we know which 2 teams want to be contracted if things get ugly.

[gunnar hendershow]

Robert Sarver in penny-pinching SHOCK.

[SeanDMan]

How can you say the owners are being unreasonable? What is it..like 2/3s of the teams in the NBA are losing money because so much is going to payroll. You have no name players who ride the bench making upwards of 10 million a year to basically come off the bench for a few minutes each game. The player salary in the NBA is out of control and needs to be rolled back

Agree with you completely. If there was ever a lockout where you would side with the owners this is it. The salaries in the NBA have been spiraling way out of control.

The thing about it is, this is all the owners fault. Yes, player salaries are spiralling out of control, but that's because the big market teams keep getting them to redraft the constitution and include more and more exceptions so they can keep their big name stars AND still bring in top tier free agents. So for the owners, who created the situation, to say they're so hard done by is bullshit. They're being hard done by by themselves. If the small market teams would stop letting big market clubs shovel overpaid shit on them so they can load up on superstars then small market teams would be in better shape.

The NBA needs, more than anything, better revenue sharing and luxury tax systems. The payroll rollback is fair but it's just a stalling measure unless the NBA gets better at spreading the wealth.

[naiwf]

The thing about it is, this is all the owners fault. Yes, player salaries are spiralling out of control, but that's because the big market teams keep getting them to redraft the constitution and include more and more exceptions so they can keep their big name stars AND still bring in top tier free agents. So for the owners, who created the situation, to say they're so hard done by is bullshit. They're being hard done by by themselves. If the small market teams would stop letting big market clubs shovel overpaid shit on them so they can load up on superstars then small market teams would be in better shape.

The NBA needs, more than anything, better revenue sharing and luxury tax systems. The payroll rollback is fair but it's just a stalling measure unless the NBA gets better at spreading the wealth.

I also put a lot of the blame at the feet of Herr Stern. When all you do is market superstar players on superstar teams, and then continually tweak the system to allow things like LeBron moving from Cleveland to Miami then you get what you deserve. I'm sure we all remember that every single cap projection that year was that the cap would decrease and that no team would be able to have more than 2 max guys, and lo and behold it ended up going up JUST ENOUGH so that Miami could sign all 3 guys in the 11th hour. Then the NBA basically let the machine roll and didn't care that the Heat destroyed the Cavs and Raptors in the process of making Miami on par with an LA or Boston in terms of hype, nationally televised games etc.

Then look at what Denver lost in trading Carmelo to the Knicks. Everyone was saying the Knicks were raped in the trade, but Wilson Chandler (and JR Smith) are in China now, Mozgov never played and Felton is a backup PG there. So in essence they traded Carmelo for Gallinari and some flexibility on the bench. As long as we have the Pau Gasol to LA trades or Boston acquiring the Big 3 alongside stuff like this the league will be "broken" and that's exactly how Stern likes it.

[gunnar hendershow]

It's an outdated line of thought. In the times before the internet it made sense to market the franchises in the major media markets ahead of all the others. Now you can build a team in any city into a team the entire country watches, basketball will never be on the footing with the NFL but fans from all over tune in to see teams from Indianapolis, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Green Bay play in prime time and of those Baltimore's the biggest media market at 21st. Am I the only one who remembers when the Magic with Shaq basically replaced the Bulls as the nation's premier team when Jordan retired the first time?

So marketing the players isn't a bad idea, but Stern thinks the best players have to be on the Celtics, Lakers, Knicks, Bulls, and now Heat. I'm sure if either team got competitive he'd do everything he could to make sure Washington and Philadelphia stayed relevant too.

[Quom]

Philly were relevant until Iverson and Brown had a meltdown which made Williams/Sloane look like a lover's tiff.

[SeanDMan]

Stern serves at the pleasure of the owners. If they really wanted to do something Stern was opposed to, Stern would be pushed out the door.

[KJE]

The NBA is the only league in the USA where a player who does not play is worth more than actual members of the team at times. An expiring contract is something that shouldn't facilitate trades to the extent that it is often the biggest chip involved. A bad contract is the fault of the owners, but a guy like Eddy Curry was only kept on the Knicks for the last 3 years so that he could be used as a trade chip. He was then bought out immediately by the team that he was traded to. What other league uses trades to acquire players they DON'T want?

If possible, can you or someone else better explain to me what that means to me? Don't think I understand the premise of it :S

[gunnar hendershow]

Basically you sign a player to a big contract, 4 years for $16 million per year or something. You know you are overspending but you need someone to be a body on your team and the salary cap has a lot of space for you to maneuver under. So you have this player and you use him for the year or two he provides on the court value for you. After drafting or signing a cheaper free agent to fill his role and be better at it, he rides the pine for a year or two. In the final year of his contract he is able to be used as a trade chip because his contract is coming off the books. Basically a team is trading its superstar who has 3 years left on his contract, the team getting him can't take him on without unloading some salary so that is where this player who 4 years ago got an absurd contract comes in. He goes to the team trying to rebuild, and the team trying to get the superstar can free up the cap space to pay him. Then in that offseason the team trying to rebuild gets a massive amount of cap room to work with.

It's absurd, but it's part of the life in the NBA.

[naiwf]

Basically you sign a player to a big contract, 4 years for $16 million per year or something. You know you are overspending but you need someone to be a body on your team and the salary cap has a lot of space for you to maneuver under. So you have this player and you use him for the year or two he provides on the court value for you. After drafting or signing a cheaper free agent to fill his role and be better at it, he rides the pine for a year or two. In the final year of his contract he is able to be used as a trade chip because his contract is coming off the books. Basically a team is trading its superstar who has 3 years left on his contract, the team getting him can't take him on without unloading some salary so that is where this player who 4 years ago got an absurd contract comes in. He goes to the team trying to rebuild, and the team trying to get the superstar can free up the cap space to pay him. Then in that offseason the team trying to rebuild gets a massive amount of cap room to work with.

It's absurd, but it's part of the life in the NBA.

That's pretty much it. Eddy Curry was making something like $11 million a year and Minnesota helped Denver and the Knicks make a trade so they could free up money by getting rid of players that weren't a part of their longterm plan. The Knicks got a legit superstar in Carmelo Anthony and Denver received a bunch of pieces from the Knicks. The biggest problem is that Denver lost Wilson Chandler when he signed on to play in China and the guy who was the starting point guard for the Knicks is a back up in Denver, so they didn't do as well as they thought. Minnesota didn't actually improve in any tangible way and the Knicks traded spare parts and a bloated contract for a guy they desperately wanted and a overpaid but serviceable PG who will potentially provide the cap space for an elite PG in 2012 (or 2013 if this season gets wiped out). That's a poor system and it's the reason why the big market teams can always make moves that the small market teams can't. When a guy like LeBron just leaves Cleveland for Miami through free agency it does more harm to the balance of power in the league than anything else, but the trade system is junk and only a handful of teams can truly benefit from it.

Edited September 19, 2011 by naiwf

[Gazz]

As an Englishman who only vaguely grasps the concept of this lock out business, a couple of questions.

1. Do the players get paid during a lockout?

2. What happens in regards to expiring contracts? Say for example, LeBron's Cav's contract was a year longer and he would be in free agency now, could he sign a new contract?

[JasonM]

As an Englishman who only vaguely grasps the concept of this lock out business, a couple of questions.

1. Do the players get paid during a lockout?

2. What happens in regards to expiring contracts? Say for example, LeBron's Cav's contract was a year longer and he would be in free agency now, could he sign a new contract?

1. No

2. A player is not able to sign new contracts during a lockout. So expiring contracts just expire unless they where ''locked'' before 1 july.

With locked i mean is of course a team and the player having a verbal agreement for when the lockout ends. (Happens most with players who get resigned to a new contract)

Also in fact during a lockout players are unable to have business with any team in the NBA in any way.

So injured players can't work with team physio's.

Players can't use the training facilities of their teams.

And so on.

[Lint]

NBA indefinitely postpones training camp and cancelled 43 preseason games

[gunnar hendershow]

No surprise, the first of many cancellations.

[Lint]

Preseason cancelled, regular season games could be cancelled

[sahyder1]

First two weeks of the season have been cancelled. Stern announced that there is no way we're having a 82 game season (shocking!)

Edited October 11, 2011 by sahyder1

[gunnar hendershow]

Let's just keep whittling it down boys. All that comes out of these talks is that they've made zero progress since day one.

[Trey]

Fuck them. I knew it was coming but it still sucks.