NBA Offseason 2014 - Page 26

On July 09 2014 01:46 MassHysteria wrote:
Once again, you guys are ALL privileged to hear stuff like this from me months before it hits the mainstream media.
http://grantland.com/features/nba-miami-heat-double-standard-contract-sacrifice-lebron-james-chris-bosh-houston-rockets-free-agency/

Let's all take a moment to recognize how many of my thoughts are always so ahead of the game. Your all welcome.

On July 09 2014 00:02 jdsowa wrote:


The only problem with this is that LeBron said after the Finals that the Heat need to upgrade their personnel if they want to get over the hump and compete with the Spurs. Signing Lowrey or Gortat would've qualified as the type of game changer LeBron was talking about. But obviously, Wade and Bosh weren't going to take the kind of paycuts necessary to free up that kind of room. So now, all the Heat can do is sign marginal guys like McRoberts and Granger. Those signings don't move the needle. And it's impossible to see how The Heat can really improve upon last year's team at this point. The forecast for the next 4 years is more of the same, but with declining age and ability. If LeBron goes to Cleveland, they'll almost certainly still finish #1/#2 in the East, and the young team has room to grow and develop.

On July 08 2014 23:30 ZenithM wrote:
Hey guys, how would I go about watching the NBA in a pretty intensive way from Europe? Can I grab a paid subscription somewhere to a decent quality stream?
I've read about the NBA League Pass, is that what I should look into? Here I guess it's last year's pass. Is it really 20$ per year because that's pretty cheap. From what I recall it was much more expensive than that.

On July 09 2014 03:40 MassHysteria wrote:
And I think I have some disagreements with Lowe too actually Jerubaal, so I don't think you're being unreasonable. I'll try to read/respond to your post carefully in a bit right now if I am able to.

:take a pay cut to stay in Miami, or earn your full maximum salary over a four-year deal in Houston.:

Yes, that is their choice, and a conclusion that they came to on their own without any need for hysterics from GMs or fans.

The new CBA attempted to do that by installing a super-harsh luxury tax.

So we're complaining that teams are following the rules? Why don't you complain about the many more teams being under the cap instead. Oh, that wouldn't fit your narrative of teams rolling in money but selfishly hoarding it.

If the NBA really wanted to blow apart superteams, it would pitch extreme solutions — a hard salary cap and the elimination of the ceiling on individual player salaries.

Ah, the old "I really hate this system, but if you were really sincere about it you would install this other system that I would never allow to happen, so you're just a hypocrite" maneuver.

Profitable juggernauts like the Lakers and Heat have made painful cost-cutting moves since the lockout.

So you're complaining that like 4 teams are massively overspending, a large portion of which doesn't even go to the players? And if you really think that stars are worth overpaying while everyone else is worth less, then allowing teams to hoard multiple superstars would just leave other teams with no options.

Meanwhile, minimum-salary players and young guys on rookie contracts literally cannot take pay cuts, and the glut of cap room that comes with shorter contracts has created bidding wars for mid-tier veterans.

Wait, a second. This is just the "we should pay stars more and everyone else less" argument. First, that's more for the Union to decide and second the differences in skill between the highest and lowest are exaggerated by the nature of the game and the media.

As long as there is a salary cap limiting what teams can spend, there will be a real tension between players grabbing as much money as they can and their teams’ ability to sign as many quality players as possible.

You're like some kind of rational choice theory god.

When stars take pay cuts to stay together, fans rail against their collusion and call the NBA product a rigged game. When stars chase the money, fans rip them as pigs.


You mean like how you call owners cheapskates when they don't overpay and morons when they do overpay?

The stars can’t win, in part because the NBA has created a system in which a player maximizing his individual income makes it harder for his team to build a competitive roster around him. But are people — media, fans, GMs — overstating the difficulty of that challenge?


Uh...let me ask you a question. How many teams won the NBA Championship this year?

Maybe the onus should be on teams to spend wisely enough so they can accommodate multiple star players without prodding those stars to “sacrifice” in pointed public comments.


I'm confused. Maybe Zach Lowe went on a Carnival Cruise with the Miami Heat and they discussed how delivering a championship every year was the duty of every GM and if you couldn't do that you were incompetent. If everyone in the league gets collectively better at team construction, the net effect on competition would be...zero. That wouldn't change anything.

A two-man pay cut of that scale just didn’t compute, and if Miami thought it was possible, it hadn’t done enough digging with the players and their agents.

Wait, I thought this article was about players taking paycuts? Now we're talking about them not taking paycuts? And I don't hear anyone calling Bosh or Wade pigs. I've never heard a genuine superstar called a pig for wanting a max contract. I've heard fading players or 'second level' stars called idiots for wanting max contracts, but mostly I hear players being applauded for getting every dollar they can and GMs called idiots for giving it to them.

In other words, the Heat asked for the opt-outs so Pat Riley could deliver this message to his stars: “You have to take pay cuts, otherwise we’re not going to be able to bring in Josh freaking McRoberts with the full midlevel.”

That's right. It worked before because the Big 3 were worth an approximation of max contract and they had 3 good role players on discount. It stopped working when 2 of them stopped being worth max contracts (at least in this system) and their role players declined. I'm sorry Ray Allen and Shane Battier 2.0 weren't available for the beer tickets you think they should be paid, but you know how greedy those players are.

Teams like the Heat have the ability to bring back all their players, and give them raises, but they are choosing to go in another direction.”

Yes, they can bring back the same team (I mean besides Shane Battier), but they would pay a heavy tax and would do well but might not be the favorites to come out of the East. And that would be fine for any other team, but if Lebron James doesn't go to the Finals every year the universe will implode.

On July 09 2014 04:26 XaI)CyRiC wrote:
It's pretty hard to understand your post the way it's written. The quotes you're taking from the article are too fragmented, and it's sometimes not clear what it is exactly that you're responding to or what your point is. I'll take a shot though...



I'm not sure what your point is here.

I'm not sure how the quote pertains to what you said in response. The quoted portion discussed the rationale behind a provision of the CBA, and your response goes to teams following rules (which?) and how some are under the cap. Maybe explain this one more?

I'm not sure who is the person saying what's in quotation marks in your response. Are you saying that Lowe (and other critics of the current system like him) have repeatedly argued against the current system and asked for another system to be implemented that they (Lowe/critics) would never "allow"? If so, I'm not sure how Lowe/critics would allow or disallow anything when it comes to the NBA and how it's run.

If you're saying that Lowe/critics are saying the league should do something that they themselves don't agree with, then I'm still a bit confused because I believe that quite a few critics (including Lowe) have proposed the idea of a dramatic change like a hard salary cap and removing max salaries as an alternative to the current system. Lowe pointed out that people shouldn't be so quick to suggest it and that the league may have legitimate concerns about the ripple effects of such a change, but I don't remember him ever saying that it was definitely a bad idea or not an improvement.

Who's complaining? Lowe? From my reading, the part you quoted was him arguing the perspective of people in support of the current system as curtailing the big market teams' overspending. I'm not sure how your second sentence pertains to the quoted line.

I think it's more pointing out the incongruity of the current system where the best players are "forced" to take less to build good teams (not saying it's correct, but that's the argument proposed), while rookies can't take pay cuts and mid-tier veterans appear to be benefiting more. I don't really see that as arguing "stars deserve more and everyone else should make less."

It seems more to me that the article is suggesting that the team owners have created a system where the top players are the ones seen as needing to "sacrifice" money to win, when the owners themselves are not getting the same pressure to "sacrifice" by paying more to win. The owners put in rules that allow them to say "we'd love to give star player A better role players, but doing so will cost us too much in tax penalties and cripple our ability to improve the roster further," and putting the onus on star player A to take less than his actual value instead.

A witty joke that I just happen to not get I'm guessing this boils down to you saying that the quoted line is stating the obvious?

The owners are far wealthier than any of the wealthiest players, and it's clear from the recent team sales that they're not struggling financially the way they claimed they were during the last lockout. If the owners really feel like that they can't afford to pay tax penalties (that they themselves implemented) to try to win, then it's hard to feel bad for them when there are clearly people lined up to pay huge sums of money to take over ownership of the team. It's hard to reconcile difficulties in paying $10M in taxes to keep important/key players to compete with bad teams in small markets being sold for $500+M amidst bidding wars. That's not even considering how they managed to get larger cuts of league revenue from the players during the last lockout, and the rising income from TV deals for the league and individual teams.

The only overpaying that teams get ripped for are paying a player more than their perceived value, which is again tied to the cap system that they came up with themselves. Fans criticized the Lakers for giving Kobe so much in his latest contract because it would make it harder for the Lakers to improve their roster going forward due to the cap system put in place by the owners. You'd be hard-pressed to find any fan who didn't think Kobe was actually that valuable to the franchise otherwise.

This article also focuses on star players, who few fans ever argue are overpaid. The criticism for overpaying players is almost exclusively restricted to mid-tier players or situations in which a team appeared to bid against itself. But, again, the overpayment is only really a complaint because of how it affects the team's ability to improve going forward, which is tied to cap restrictions the owners put in.

Not sure how your statement/question pertains to the quote.

It seems to me that Lowe was discussing a perspective by some who are in support of the current system and simply think teams need to be smarter about working under it. I didn't see any argument from him that GMs need to deliver championships or be deemed incompetent, or any discussion of the effect on competitive balance.

I'm not sure how your comment applies to the quote, as the quote was simply stating that MIA appears to not have done its homework in figuring out what Wade and Bosh were willing to do in terms of pay cuts.

While I've never heard the term "pig" ever used, there have been circumstances where superstars got criticized for taking as much as possible. Kobe is a very recent example. You can argue that he's a "fading player", but it's hard to argue that he isn't deserving of that money when considering how much value he has brought and continues to bring to the franchise. Plus, it's not like he wasn't effective when he was on the court last season right before he re-injured himself, and he's clearly done everything he can to make sure he can perform as well as possible since.

I'm not sure what your point is here.

The point is that the team owners appear to be very capable of affording to pay the money that the superstar players are currently being asked to "sacrifice" in order to maintain and provide raises to rosters that deserve them, but they're choosing not to do so and have designed a system where they have built-in excuses not to do so that they can feed to fans and the public. I don't see anywhere where there's argument that Lebron not making it to the Finals would be a tragedy or failure of the league as a whole.

On July 09 2014 07:38 cLutZ wrote:
One thing I would say Xal, is that even if Miami's ownership was willing to spend gobs of money (give the big 3 20+ mil per), what exactly else could they do to improve the team?

On July 09 2014 08:35 Jerubaal wrote:
@Ace- No, they aren't the Little Sisters of the Poor, but they didn't make 2-3x the amount of BRI as their players' salary. Almost all made less than half of it. Counting the team value is like me complaining I can't pay rent and go out every night and someone saying "but your car is worth a lot".

The last thing I'll say is that I think the argument about "owners spending more" is silly. They should be paying 51% of the BRI. (I wrote the old figure of 57%, my b). If every owner suddenly decided to spend 150 million a year, what would that accomplish? I guess they'd way exceed that 51% number. The competitive balance would not change though.

On July 09 2014 09:04 cLutZ wrote:
Oh I know that, I mean this summer.

On July 09 2014 08:35 Jerubaal wrote:
@Ace- No, they aren't the Little Sisters of the Poor, but they didn't make 2-3x the amount of BRI as their players' salary. Almost all made less than half of it. Counting the team value is like me complaining I can't pay rent and go out every night and someone saying "but your car is worth a lot".

The last thing I'll say is that I think the argument about "owners spending more" is silly. They should be paying 51% of the BRI. (I wrote the old figure of 57%, my b). If every owner suddenly decided to spend 150 million a year, what would that accomplish? I guess they'd way exceed that 51% number. The competitive balance would not change though.

@Oneofthem- I guess we are all morons who deserve each other then. It would help the Union if they didn't hire complete imbeciles as council.