Will there even be an NBA season in 2010/2011?

by Ourdaywillcome on Feb 7, 2010 2:23 PM EST

This is a story that will receive a lot more ink in the off season, but things are getting ugly in the NBA.

The stories are already starting to appear and they are grim. For example, the Lakers, according to the press reports, made upwards of 40 million in profits last year. But they've already told their coach that if he wants a job next season he better be prepared to take a significant pay cut. This to a man who has won more championships than any other active coach and is in the process of leading his team to yet another NBA finals appearance.

David Stern's office reports that they've heard from 28 of the 30 owners and they are saying they are digging in their heels regarding bargaining negotiations...

They want a hard cap. They want guarantees in contracts to last no more than 1/2 of the duration of the contract itself. They want a maximum ceiling of $60 million dollars for ANY player contract and no contracts that last longer than 5 seasons. Period. They also want a max of $50 million on any contract for unestablished veterans - be they rookies or players signing their first post-rookie deals.

It's nice to have wants and everyone knows that demands at this point are just the introduction to the negotiating process. But here's a scary aspect of it.

According to Inside Hoops - which pulled stories from papers around the country - the owners have set a goal of not just diminishing the strength of the player's union, but literally crushing it completely. They think the only way to ensure their future profitiability is to remove the capacity of the players to collectively bargain at all. They've also made it clear that they are willing to resort to player lockouts and even cancelling the entire season in order to get what they want. They also feel that the economics that are driving them to this point are also going to move the owners in the other big 3 leagues to play the same kind of hardball in THEIR respective sports. Union busting - dead for decades - is about to return and the first big showcase for it is going to be in professional sports.

While on the one hand, I can understand the concerns of the owners, it's getting pretty extreme. Most of the NBA teams aren't losing money hand over fist. Even the Bobcats - famous for being a red ink franchise - are showing improvement in their bottom line at present. The owners are worrying that they won't make AS MUCH money as they are used to. The ownership of the Lakers banked $40 million in profit last year. Granted that's the extreme end of the spectrum, but they're freaking out in LaLaLand because their projected profits without a deep drive into the playoffs may ownly be in the $32-34 million range for this year. I find it difficult to weep in empathy for anyone with $32 million left in the pockets AFTER the bills have been paid.

Do I think pro players should be making tens of millions per season? Hell no. Not if it means I have to drop close to a week's salary just to sit in a big room with my family to watch them play for 3 measly hours. But I'm also not stupid enough to believe that if they manage to cut the average player's paycheck in half it means the price of arena seats will drop accordingly. The owners will just keep the prices right where they're at and pocket the extra coin. They'll light their cigars with $100 dollar bills instead of $20s and not lose a wink of sleep over it. Why? Because we've learned nothing from the financial collapses of the past 18 months. Greed may be good, but total greed destroys us all. And the people in pro sports - owners, managers, players, AND agents - have learned nothing from past lockouts and strikes either. I know none of them will read this (it's already far too long for most of the regulars HERE to read) but this is damned important and the battle lines are already being drawn.

Dear big money sports guys:

We are the fans. It takes us a year or more to earn the money some of you make in a single game. Every time you guys start whining about how bad you have it you piss us off. That's not a smart idea. Why? WE PAY YOUR FAT ASS SALARIES BY BEING FANS. You know what? We WILL fire your asses. We'll go back to college and high school games. We'll get our fixes watching our kids play in YMCA leagues and Pop Warner and Babe Ruth ball. Remember this - the NHL and MLBA are STILL trying to woo fans back after their latest round of assinine money grabbing strikes and lockouts. We are the fans. We won't put up with much more of this crap. Pretty soon we're going to tell all of you to watch our asses as they walk out the door. Y'all can bend over and give them a kiss as they go.

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1890 players' league

Though for a variery of reasons it didn’t quite succeed the first time around, one solution to professional sports owners’ bad-faith behavior vis-a-vis labor and the customer/fan may be found in the 1890 Players League experiment:

http://www.ethanlewis.org/pl/ch1.html

The players through their union organize and manage the league themselves, (perhaps with direct municipal support in return for equity stakes in the teams so as to avoid the undercapitalization woes suffered by most fledgeling leagues?)

Cut the owners out of the loop entirely. The traditional argument that the capitalist earns reward by arranging the means of production and taking on the risk falls apart when it comes to professional sports leagues. Through agreements to share in television and merchandising revenues, professional teams subsidize one another and the only way to lose money is through gross mismanagement.

And a lock-out during the term of a running collective bargaining agreement is the very definition of bad faith.

by bugjackblue on Feb 7, 2010 11:43 PM EST reply actions

I'm not

I’m not going to go much into this debate, because I’ll immediately be drawn to talking about social and class conflict and then eventually systems of economies and what not, lol.

I think players, coaches, execs, and owners get paid way too much, that much I will say. What perhaps bothers me the most, and there’s nothing that can be done to fix this at this point in time, is the current structure of American sports.

It really irks me how it’s just a bunch of rich dudes covering each other’s a$$es and essentially controlling the league and watching out for eachother. I wish the American sports system operated like sports do in almost every other country—-on a system of REGULATION and PROMOTION. It would make things so much more interesting, and dare I say, even more competitive? A simple matchup between bottom feeders like the Warriors and Twolves would be completely different if they had to play like nuts to avoid being sent to a ‘Division 2’ next season.

That, and I wish American sports teams weren’t all just run/owned by some dudes. Many of the major sports teams around the world are owned and operated under this system, but a good majority of teams still retain their town/local ownership (or at the very least, partial ownership). Hence, a town/city’s team is their actual OWN team, as opposed to being owned by some rich douche who just packs up shop and moves the team to another town when he pleases. I hate the concept of the ‘sports franchise.’ (you get nonsense like the Thunder “sharing” the Sonics legacy, among other things). Really, the Green Bay Packers is the only example left in the United States where the team is owned by the city, the fans, the people.

blah, anyway, I’m really getting off topic here, and in fact, this is just fodder for a variety of topics that can create some great discussion.

I do agree with most everything you said, Ourday. Good post. It’s sad many of these folks really haven’t been paying attention the world’s economic state these past few years, and perhaps more importantly, they haven’t paid attention to the reasons that caused this mess.

by Roger, Roger on Feb 8, 2010 8:01 PM EST reply actions

Yes!

The European model of the bottom-feeders getting demoted to a lower league is great! Of course they’d never do this but the concept is worthy. I’m aware they do this over there in some leagues but know nothing about its impact on fans. I take it you’re somewhat familiar with this approach just to mention it— do you have some further knowledge on this subject? Do the fans dig it or does it create resentment, or what?

by bugjackblue on Feb 16, 2010 3:49 PM EST up reply actions