If there is one NBA trend that I’ve grown sick of this offseason, obviously it was the incessant speculation on where Lebron would play next season. ESPN felt the need to update me every 8 seconds on who he was hanging out with last week, his thoughts on the Chicago nightlife scene, and just how big was his post-Qdoba shit (“BREAKING NEWS: Chris Broussard reports Lebron clogs bowl with massive, 3 couric log”). The worst part is that Lebron just loved all the attention. Why wouldn’t he? I love to have smoke blown up my ass, but normally that sort of thing will cost you double. Lebron was getting it for free for a week straight. Now that he’s part of the Miami BFF’s, I think the media should totally reverse the script and hound him Princess Diana-style until he is transformed into a dickish and reclusive hermit (a la Barry Bonds). That’ll teach him!
But if there were two trends that I’m now sick of, it would have to be any mention of the NBA salary cap. Analysis of this threshold goes hand in hand with free agency, so I can’t necessarily blame ESPN this time. It is definitely worthy of mention in any free agency speculation, and is probably the biggest influence in how teams shape their squads. But therein lies the problem: teams seem more interested in staying below the cap than fielding competitive teams.
The reason they are so scared of going over the salary cap ($58 mil next year) is because of the dreaded luxury tax. For every dollar spent over the cap, the team must pay one dollar in “taxes “ to the league. Thus, if you are five million over the cap, you must give David Stern five million which he will quickly hide under his mattress. Because our economy has been so shitty lately, NBA teams are more cognizant of the luxury tax than ever and avoid it like sorority girls do a drunken Roethlisberger.
You know who paid the most in luxury tax last season with over $20 million? The Lakers. You know what the Lakers just happened to do last season (besides lead the league in rap singles released)? THEY WON THE FUCKING CHAMPIONSHIP. The Lakers do reside in one of the NBA’s biggest markets, helping them always stay near the top of the revenue earning ladder but you’d have to think always shelling out the big bucks for the best players help them capitalize on such a big market. I suppose they could be resigned to sucking ass and still collect their modest revenue (see: Clippers), but instead they realize huge gains from actually trying to field the best possible team, often throwing concern over the salary cap out the window.
Having stars on your team not only makes the team better, it increases the value of the franchise drastically and makes the owners huge profits. If the Cleveland Cavaliers were a stock right now, I would guess they would be down about 90% from when they still had Lebron. Similarly, if the New Orleans Hornets were to trade Chris Paul this summer (or anytime soon, as rumors have hinted at), their already shitty franchise’s value would plummet. Obviously, losing a player as good as CP3 is never a good basketball move, but even the immense financial relief ($15-17 million/year, plus the money would have paid in luxury taxes) the Hornets might realize from such a transaction would be counteracted by the decrease in attendance and in the league’s revenue-sharing.
Because of this salary crunch, I’ve grown accustomed to the term “expiring contract.” Whereas casual basketball fans would think that teams trade actual players for one another, the majority of trades now are done for the financial relief of one side. These trades essentially ignore any and all value a player actually has on the basketball court. The other day the Timberwolves traded Al Jefferson, one of the best post scorers in the league, to the Jazz for FUCKING NO ONE. No offense to Kousta Koufos and two shitty future first round picks (who were shipped to Minny), but how can this trade happen? The Jazz were able to do this because they had a big trade exception from losing Carlos Boozer to the Bulls in a similar deal. “What is a trade exception?” you ask. Well, fuck if I know. This trade, as well as most I see come across the bottom line, smells of bullshit to me. Pretty soon, we will see Erick Dampier traded to some cash strapped team for a pretty good player. Is this because Erick Dampier is also a pretty good player? Shit no. Dampier is about as bad at basketball as you can be for being 6’11’’ and 260 lbs. His real value lies in that he has the rare “team option” contract. Thus, the cash strapped team will trade for him, then release him and wipe his $13 million salary off the books. It’s going to happen, and the fans of the team that trades for him are going to be pissed. But this is the way the NBA works nowadays. See…
The course of a decent NBA player’s career in this day and age often goes something like this (spliced with several criminal charges of course): Get drafted, sign reasonable rookie contract, outperform contract, get overpaid in free agency, don’t live up to new contract, team and fans hate you for being overpaid, your value is inflated because you only have one year left on contract (or have nonguaranteed deal like Dampier), get traded for better young player to team that needs cap relief and can’t pay young player over several years, sign cheaper deal as “cagey veteran,” retire.
Smaller market teams are the ones that are always pussyfooting around the cap because they have lower attendance and ownership might actually be losing money. You know why you have such low attendance Mr. Billionaire Owner? Because your team is fucking terrible. I don’t know how many season tickets the Indiana Pacers sold last year, but I’m going to guess it was roughly nine. The problem is that for the most part, these owners are businessmen first and basketball fans second. They will never share the fans’ interest in winning as long as this is the case. Fans know this, and aren’t going to show up to watch a team whose management is more concerned about the bottom line than making the playoffs.
As a Suns fan, I have suffered from luxury-cap conscious ownership. They were probably the favorites to win the championship in 2004 had Joe Johnson not broken his face right before the playoffs. They had an awesome nucleus of Nash, Stoudemire, Shawn Marion, and Johnson in place that looked like it would be near the top of the league for a long time. But because of a penny-pinching owner, they don’t match the Hawks offer for Johnson, trade what would have been a top ten pick in the 2004 draft (Iguodala? Luol Deng? Al Jefferson? Who knows), then sell the draft rights to Rudy Fernandez, Nate Robinson, Marcin Gortat, and (wait for it…) Rajon Fucking Rondo in subsequent years! The Suns still came close in a couple years with overachieving teams, but they basically let a championship get away because they were so scared of paying the luxury tax. Honestly, Suns owner Robert Sarver, don’t you think the fans would pay a little more to see a highly entertaining, competitive team led by the two-time MVP? “Maybe,” Sarver thought, “ But if we failed I might lose a couple million off the trust fund Dad left me. I guess I’ll just continue to field undermanned teams over the next 6 years that can’t beat the Western Conference powers. Eventually I’ll break up the best pick and roll combo of all time by letting Amare Stoudemire walk in his prime. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go fuck a model on a pile of money.”
Not all NBA teams under the cap are such big pussies. The Thunder, for example, had the third lowest payroll in the league last year and still managed to keep their fans happy with a competitive team. However, nearly all their good players were still on their low-paying, rookie contracts. The real answer to whether or not their ownership is trying to win or watch the bottom line will come when they decide whether or not to keep this promising team together. They have already signed Kevin Durant to max extension which is a good sign, but the bulk of their talented young core (Westbrook, Green, Harden, Ibaka) still need to be locked up. For the OKC fans’ sake, I hope the team is willing to spend money to make money.
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