Free Ballin’

The more I think about it, I don’t think Toronto’s that badly off. I like this Turk trade for them a lot. And it’s not like they’re in a good position now, and they’re not at the great position NJ is in, scrap it with a franchise guy on the roster and start over, but they’re really OK. Because as good as Bosh was, losing him isn’t a decade killer, if they got some decent draft picks. And I don’t think Bosh is overrated either. That’s the line right now. But everything is over-the-top. Bosh, he’s a terrible defender! No he’s not. I don’t think he’s anything special, but he’s certainly not terrible, not bad even, and played guys much too big for him much of the time. On the other hand, what teams and pundits never consider enough is how valuable it to get a guy who goes to the line a ton and knocks them down. Really, nothing is more undervalued in the league – not charges draw, nothing – than guys who do this. And big guys who do this are even more valuable and rare, because they’re less likely to get hurt, like Wade does, and there just aren’t that many bigs who can knock those FTs down.

Shouldn’t it be clear, by the way, that adding points with no time off the clock (not to mention giving your guys a little breather) is a very valuable thing? Time isn’t as precious as outs are, in baseball, but I think you at least approach it from the same angle. Make the other team work as hard as possible and take as much time and effort possible to score; score as efficiently as possible. And nothing is more efficient than scoring without time coming off the clock. And furthermore, it’s the absolute epitome of the single-most overused feature attributed to players’ games: their ability to make other players better. I mean, Nash? OK, but Bosh getting to the line and getting the opposition in foul trouble is all about making your own players more effective. The other team has to sit starters (most often big guys) in foul trouble and put lesser players in. And when those starters are in the game they’re either more tentative, or they have to keep taking a seat. Staying in the game means they don’t throw moving screens and maybe they’re a little more cautious about blocking shots or charges. And if they’re not? They sit the pine and a lesser player takes their spot. Bosh might not be a franchise guy, but offensively, he’s damn close.

So maybe I’ve talked myself into thinking it is crippling that he left. I don’t know. Nah. I think he’s not quite a franchise guy. By franchise guy, I guess I mean those players that you have to luck into who change everything. You don’t skillfully acquire Duncan or Shaq or LeBronl; you luck out in the draft. Those are guys that simply don’t come along and when you lose them, it takes another huge huge huge turn of luck to get another crack at it. There are examples to the contrary, but fewer and fewer. Because after Kobe and TMac, teams knew to take Dwight Howard first – even though Howard isn’t quite a franchise guy, either – though he still has a small shot at becoming one; knock down 3/4ths of his FTs, cut down on his foul rate, and he’s a franchise guy. But I think those things are huge; it’s like “learn how to become a very good shooter”. But sometimes guys do it.

That was a tangent. Anyway, I think Toronto’s team was so ill-conceived if Bosh had been a franchise guy, it almost wouldn’t have mattered. He couldn’t play center, and they stupidly used THE luck that barely ever comes along to draft his replacement, an Italian 7-footer who can’t rebound, with the #1 pick. They drafted a guy with a lower ceiling at the one position they needn’t have worried about for 7-10 years. Having done that, having committed endless millions to him, and screwed up the payroll such that they virtually assured themselves of Bosh’s departure, is to do what they couldn’t have done. They should have traded Bosh at the deadline. I’m not saying they could have. No GM in the league has the balls and authority to do it. But they should have done it. They would have gotten the WORLD for him. At the very least, they’d have gotten 3 first round picks and some young talent. It’s the type of thing that couldn’t have been done, and that just shows that the league should be smarter than it is. It’s asking a lot though, but it should have been done. Can you imagine their position now? They take serious heat for losing Bosh, but…the future has a chance. And what now? Now they pull off a very good trade to partially unf_ck themselves, to undo a catastrophic future and put them, instead, a few years away from building up again. That’s not good enough. But in this league, with the pressures and money and egos and emotions (on an upper-management/owner level) and demanding fans, you just can’t be that smart. But it’d be nice to see someone try.

If LeBron had just a normal press conference and said “Cleveland is my home; but it’s time for me to leave home,” I don’t think they would be burning his effigy all over Ohio.

All this talk through the years that LeBron should develop a low-post game is utter hogwash.  And the idea that he needs a secondary scorer in the post is nonsense as well. The singular common trait of championship teams is high volume scoring at the rim.  Really, that’s it; that’s the only thread.  And among all those post-merger championship teams, only Isiah’s Detroit teams and Jordan’s Bulls accomplished this without having a dominant low-post scoring big man.  Instead, Jordan was the best ever at attacking the rim from the perimeter, and Isiah one of the best.  And LeBron is right up there too.  The dude converted 70% of his close-range shots this year and took a million of them.  Do you really think he can possibly do better from the post?  nba.com’s hotshots is down right now, but when it’s up again, I suggest you check out the numbers.  Dwight Howard’s offensive repertoire consists entirely of dunks and shots within five feet of the hoop and his shooting percentage on those shots is about the same as LeBron’s on his drives to the rim.  And sure, LeBron does well enough backing down and spinning off guys who are too small for him already, but any other time spent developing that part of his game is wasted time he could be using to learn to shoot straight from 20 feet away.

A fun thing to do, by the way, it to take a look at the history of Finals losers.  Common trait amongst almost all of them?  Lack of high volume scoring at the rim.  Reggie’s Pacers?  Kidd’s Nets?  Not so much with the dunking, those teams.

That’s assuming continuity of current health conditions.  It’s a fun personnel match-up, with each team holding a huge match-up advantage on the other team:

1. For Celtics – Rondo will eat Fisher alive on both ends of the floor

2. For Lakers – Allen can’t guard Artest, so Pierce has to do it., leaving Kobe to dominate Allen.

What’s fun is that switching the guard combo is best for both teams—Kobe and Rondo, Fisher and Allen.  But while those match-ups create advantages and disadvantages for both teams, I think it works out better for the Celtics.  Kobe’s advantage is the huge size disparity, but he won’t get around Rondo much.  So that match-up is likely to keep Kobe shooting % down and keep him off the FT line.  And that’s pretty much the best strategy to beating the Lakers.  Of course Kobe just might make 60% of his jumpers on any given night, but that’s less likely than the near certainty of him going to the line 10-15 times if Allen is guarding him.

And the other way the Lakers kill you, front-court size/talent, is largely negated by the talents of Celtics’ front-court personnel.

But those are reasons to pick the Celtics, not to pick them in 5.  The thing is, there are only two things that can make this Finals match-up appealing to me: the possibility that it’s an all-out 7-game overtime-fest classic; or the Celtics make it hysterical by wiping the floor with the Lakers.  Generally I’ll hope for the classic match-up, but since I’m not going to be able to see some of the games this year, and I hate the Lakers, I’d get more pleasure from the laugher.  So I’m crossing my fingers for that (plausible) scenario.

And anyway, as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t predict sporting event outcomes entirely with my head.  Where’s the fun in that?  If you’ve money on the game/series or you want to prove you’re a good predictor, there’s value in being right.  But neither of those reasons are applicable to me, so being right has no special appeal.  Neither do pipe dreams, though, unless it’s my team in the trenches.  So why not just find a plausible scenario that you’d like to see, and enjoy the very process of hoping for that outcome?  Anyway, that’s what I do.

I just wrote an email that I’m sending to Henry Abbott and Bill Simmons.  In the email, I provide them (and now you) with the definitive solution to the sucky NBA officiating.  I’m posting it here in epistolary form, not because I’m too lazy to re-format; it’s just how I roll.

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SOLUTION TO NBA OFFICIATING: I’m serious, this is a game-changer, literally

The solution to the godawful NBA officiating starts with the creation of a complete and completely objective NBA officiating website—details below .  I floated the idea to…a senior-level executive of an NBA team, and he said “great!” but said they couldn’t fund it because it needs to be independent to have validity.  I don’t have the money, time, or the expertise to make this happen, but perhaps some of your readers do—it’s definitely a group project.

The officiating website I envision would be a resource for data without subjective content.  It would therefore *only* include:

Referee calls: video of every call—and every type of call—made by refs of every NBA game, in real speed, and slow motion, from every angle available from broadcasts. (Without audio.)
Statistics: raw data, counting stats—no percentages, ratios, graphs, etc.  Even choosing which metrics to post is subjective.  The site would only provide raw data to give users the means to conduct their own studies.

There would be no commentary, no chat boards, no links, etc.  There would also be no non-calls content.  It won’t be necessary.

If the raw data is available and made easily accessible to site users, fans, students, academic institutions, bloggers, et. al. they will provide the secondary content—the commentary and analysis.  If the site gives them something to work with, they’ll embed the video on their blogs and cite the statistics, and provide the commentary that will spur debate.

Furthermore, non-calls are as important an issue as whistled action, but eventually (and swiftly, I believe) non-call sites will pop up.  Tons will be partisan, but I think you’ll see objective-as-possible Sloan-academic-type sites emerge.  Objective-as-possible non-calls means trying to show all plays of all NBA games that 1) violate rules from the official NBA rulebook (which I believe is also available in video on nba.com) and 2) non-calls can be compared with whistled action from ‘my’ objective officiating site.  The non-calls issue is much more complicated and much more subjective—a longterm project, but the inherent subjectivity is why it must be left to the public, and not appear on the objective officiating site I envision.

I think this site is necessary regardless of the way the NBA league offices handle officiating review, and it’s understandable that the NBA league offices could never produce a site like this, for various reasons, but their infuriating behind-closed-doors policies of dealing with officiating just begs for public response—a cogent, progressive response.  NBA officiating simply *must* be subjected to independent analysis.  And I truly believe the site I propose is the beginning of the solution.  As Justice Brandeis noted: sunlight is the best disinfectant.

So consider just a few aspects of the site’s utility.  Besides all the conspiracy theories and beliefs that refs intentionally favor or seek to harm certain teams, unconscious bias is simply an inherent aspect of the human condition.  However well intentioned these guys are, refs aren’t robots.  But being forced to discover and confront those biases, I like to think refs will likely feel impelled to improve.  And either way, they’ll definitely feel the heat when the whole world can point to objective measurements of their biases.  And who knows, maybe the data will vindicate refs of certain accusations.  And of course, the data won’t just be used to confirm or invalidate popular beliefs about officiating; surely it will elucidate other matters.  For example, I suspect the data will assist in extricating the ‘noise’ from analytical studies of the NBA game.  But yeah, it will also help address accusations of malintent, “Everyone knows that this or that Ref X totally screws this or that team”—fighting, urge, to, use, Spurs, as, completely, randomly, chosen, example.  And my hope beyond hope is that someday, studies of the data and non-calls data will show *definitively* which refs just suck.  Early retirement!

And there are as many other possibilities as there are NBA fans who have the curiosity and creativity to ask questions and the dedication to pursue answers.

Best,

Michael

**********
That was long enough, but if you want an idea or two of how to get the ball rolling…

Obviously the builders of the site would need to watch every single NBA game each season as the season progresses, record them all, and post and categorize every, every charge, every moving screen, every travel, every palm, even every out-of-bounds.  And yes, they’d even have to watch Pistons games.

Also, it’s quite plausible to start with the ’09-’10 season, though it might take a bit of organizing and persuasion…  I’d contact every team in the league by email and phone, requesting one copy of DVDs of all of that team’s games from the ’09-’10 season.  Consider this idea:

First a polite email is written that 500 fans (or 5,000 fans) electronically sign.  Then a PR rep for each team is contacted at the same time (approximately, no watch synchronizing necessary I think) by phone just to let them know the email is coming, so it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.  It’s easy to get teams’ PR reps on the phone—I did it with almost every team last season for a project—and their email contact info is available, too.

Then the email is sent with every team carbon copied—and it can be made known, tactfully, that their response will be public: “our 5,000 petitioners eagerly await your reply!”  I don’t even know how much cajoling would be necessary.  I suspect fan-interactive teams like the Mavericks would be happy to send the DVDs (especially considering the umbrage they’ve taken with the quality of officiating), and maybe other metric-centric teams will too.  But if a few teams send the DVDs (maybe even just one team) others might feel compelled to comply with the request.

That may not work, but once the site is established, if it gets serious traffic…well, traffic is everything.  If the site gets big traffic and publicity of any sort, grassroots or otherwise, I imagine it could build the clout to get teams to send DVDs of all games going back 20 years.  How cool would it be to use officiating data to analyze (umm, for someone else to analyze) how the game has changed through the years–that is, as the rules, trends, and basketball culture have changed?

Hey, if you’ve gone all the way through this email, thanks, that’s awesome.  I truly believe that the site I envision could be the beginning of a better League.  If you agree with me, well Mr. Huge Audience Blogger…

Best, again,

Michael

Henry Abbott’s assessment of David Stern’s comments is clear and thoughtful.  Abbott and I also have the same problem with David Stern’s statements: Stern says the league is great shape in all respects and yet somehow the teams will lose around $400 million this year.  One comment Abbott made caught my attention:

“What’s a fair amount of money to pay the best basketball players in the world? That’s something that would take a team of experts to determine, and even then it would be one part guesswork. Maybe they are paid too much. Maybe they are paid too little. Maybe the owners who lose money are victims of the economy and the cost of international expansion. Maybe they are victims of failing to control their own spending. Maybe the owners have been bleeding cash, and some of the hurt must be passed on to the players. On the other hand maybe it was just a couple of bad years, and this is all a negotiating tactic.”

Abbott wants answers for meaningless questions.  How much should a player make?  What’s fair?  Without a free market a player’s true value cannot be determined.  While there is a salary cap in place, binds on bidding for international players (gee, where does Ricky Rubio play again?), and all those trade restrictions, the value of players is guesswork at best.  (Especially considering that player value is relative to team need—Antwan Jamison represents a huge waste of money for DC but might be of value to Cleveland.)  Trades can also help to correct stupid mistakes by general managers.  Without trade restrictions, players simply move to where they are most valued.  For example, this summer Rudy Gay will be given a maximum salary (mark my words) to be the cornerstone of a franchise.  By the time the current Collective Bargaining Agreement expires in summer ’11 it will have become apparent that Gay can’t do the job and is just costing a team a bunch of money for limited returns.  But to a contender that’s looking for that last piece to put them over the top—the role Richard Jefferson was supposed to play for San Antonio this year—the price might be worth it.

Of course a player’s value isn’t limited to his ability to help his team win games.  It’s not unreasonable for a player’s marketability, among other things, to come into play.  And yeah, that thinking led Memphis to sign Allen Iverson, but that doesn’t mean the idea is invalid.  It just means Memphis Grizzlies management is stupid.  Also, I suspect that since there are merely thirty potential bidders (teams), with disparate spending capabilities and revenue streams, even dissolving restrictions would only give us a good, not great, sense of a player’s value.  If there were a thousand potential bidders, we’d have a more accurate valuation.  (This and the prospect of French cheerleaders are the only points for European expansion.)  But since expansion of any sort isn’t immanent, the best way I can think of to deal with this small v. big market value and ownership means disparity is to impose a powerful revenue sharing system and luxury tax.  How and how much?  I don’t know; I can’t; we can’t.  Abbott says owners are very secretive of their balance sheets.

But whether it’s a two dollars-for-dollar luxury tax or whether taxes and league revenue are distributed on a sliding scale correlating to market size, there’s a way to balance the playing field.  They don’t even need to make these details public; figure out amongst themselves how they want to split up the pot—no one other than team owners care.  Instead, the salary cap, owners/players revenue sharing plan, and other stupid aspects of the CBA makes it seem like there are moral questions to consider, like what percentage of total league revenue is it fair for the players to get.  It’s an utterly meaningless question: players should make whatever the market will bear; the balance sheets of owners are between them and the IRS.  It’s not like this thinking is so radical; Art Modell once said NFL franchise owners were Republicans who vote Socialist.

Why have owners never come up with this step?  Off the top of my head I can think of three quick possibilities:

1) they feel it’s just too complicated (and requires too much effort and annual tinkering) to come up with a tax/revenue sharing system that enables owners with a net worth of $80 million (Peter Holt – San Antonio) to compete with billionaire owners.

2) their claims of losses and hardship are complete bullsh*t and the system currently in place is very beneficial for them.  Or at the very least, the current system isn’t hurting them.  In this case, their labor negotiations are just about making more money—I don’t have a problem with this.

3) they are (as a group) far less intelligent than one might expect from some of the richest people on Earth.  This would indicate that a good number of these owners owe their fortunes to fortune—that they’re just a bunch of lucky bastards.

My guess?  A combo of all three, but more the latter two.  Yes, balancing the playing field might be tricky, but it’s doable.  But more than that, I think some owners are probably doing quite well in this system and have no interest in changing it to benefit their competition.  And there’s no question about the third, at least in some cases.  Some owners are fortunate sons—Charles Dolan’s bills are mostly inherited—and perhaps some are just incredibly lucky, and their wealth isn’t indicative of their business acumen.

Really, I wouldn’t care a wit about this stuff, if it didn’t have a direct impact on the quality of the NBA game.  But it does, and I do.

Stern spent the first few minutes of the press conference talking about how well the league had been doing – which he always does – especially internationally – which he always always always does.  The whole world is embracing the NBA, yadda yadda.  He even said that the Association’s revenue hadn’t been hit as hard as initially predicted – after the market crash.  Then he turned to Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations with the Player’s Union and said that the league expects to lose around $400 million this year.  Henry Abbott astutely asked Stern, “huh?”  Well, essentially: he asked how it was the league was doing so well and also doing so poorly.  Stern said that revenue had not changed, that wasn’t the problem, but the cost structure, the expenditures…  Basically, the league’s income isn’t changing but their costs are rising.  Part of this, Stern said, was due to the cost of investment abroad – I think he said investment in securing the new revenue, opening up new offices abroad, hiring new employees, shipping employees over there, etc.  So really this means that the league has chosen to invest more money abroad and because of that investment, players need to make less money.  Right?  Am I missing something?

For one thing, showing losses on your books doesn’t mean your company/business model is failing.  The NBA offices and owners are spending capital to make long-term improvements in the league, and that costs money.  Why is that the concern of the Player’s Association?  It is, sort of, but only because of past blunders.

I don’t know much about common business practices, deals with unions, and such, and I don’t know the details of the NBA’s CBA; but it seems to me that the salary cap is the biggest problem here.  As I see it, it’s not the responsibility of labor to worry about the overall income of the company.  That’s management’s problem.  But in submitting to the owners in previous agreements, accepting a salary cap, they also agreed that that cap would be based on league revenue; the players get 57%.  That doesn’t and never did make any sense to me.  They’re agreeing to receive a percentage of the overall revenue, but they don’t have a say in how the league’s business is conducted, how the owners choose to invest revenue.  Basically, the players allowed themselves to be subject to the ups and downs of the league without getting a seat at the table.  I don’t think having a seat at that table is really anything the players ever wanted, or should want.  Leave the direction of the league to ownership, sure, but players allowing their salaries to be directly tied to the owners decisions about expenditures is just silly.

Now of course employee payroll is always based on the state of the companies for which they work, but not directly, not as a collectively agreed percentage of revenue.  Rather, without a salary cap, the free market would determine the value of a player.  Why not just let supply and demand determine value?  Of course, that an old issue, fifteen years old, to be exact.  Ever since Kevin Garnett signed that immense contract (it was what, $126 million over 7 years?) back in ’95 (I believe) ownership has been loudly freaking out about player salaries.  The real problem there is that owners couldn’t keep other owners from breaking ranks and offering huge salaries without colluding.  But small market teams and owners who are only $100 millionaires, not $800 millionaires or billionaires, didn’t want to compete with Mark Cuban or big market teams.  The answer to this was never to institute a salary cap and unnecessarily entangle league income with player salaries.  The league should have just instituted smarter revenue sharing practices with huge luxury tax penalties.  The luxury taxes are currently dollar for dollar.  Well, go ahead and get rid of the salary cap and require owners to pay $2 for every $1 they go over the luxury tax line.  So when the Knicks spend $100 million and the cap is $50 million, instead of the other owners crying foul, they can just divvy up the $100 million in luxury tax the Knicks will be paying them.

This is way too long already, so I’ll just stop here.  In the end, the labor discussions for the next CBA will probably look like they always do: owners being dishonest about their financial burdens, players being stupid enough to put themselves in a position to be smacked around by ownership.  That Billy Hunter is still the head of the Union ten years after he f#cked up the last CBA indicates how things will turn out this time.

And I wouldn’t give a damn about any of this, except that it directly impacts the quality of play, the quality of talent the teams can put on the floor.

If Amar’e Stoudemire goes to Cleveland, it would seemingly increase the chances that LeBron will stay in Cleveland.  And who wants that?  I mean, I know a guy from Columbus Ohio, but other than him, who wants that?  If Amar’e sticks in Phoenix, he’ll be pissed, LeBron will be pissed, Wade will be pissed, and that’s how I want it, because I want one of them in NYC, preferably LeBron.  I’m not a Knicks fan, mind you, but he sure as hell isn’t going to end up in Houston, so my druthers call for him in Mike D’Antoni’s 7 Seconds or Less offense on a team that will spend tons of money to win.  And I would be able to see him on my local television station.  Also, though I’m not a Knicks fan, I’m a New Yorker and I root for New Yorkers’ happiness.  The only bad thing about LeBron coming here is that Knicks games would become one of the biggest tourist attractions in the biggest tourist city in the world (at least until the dollar rebounds).  Can you imagine how hard it would be to get tickets?  And you’d have to make choices like “My kids’ college tuition or season tickets in the upper decks?”  And there’s really no question there.  So basically, LeBron coming to New York will make me a bad father—someday.  Basically, I’ll have to hold off on kids until I’m 40 if LeBron comes to NYC.

The only thing that would be better than LeBron in New York (other than him being in Houston) would be for him to be in Brooklyn on the Nets, a team with even more money (via Russia w. love) and Beyonce on the sidelines.  Of course, there is no team in Brooklyn, so this would take an incredible leap of faith on LeBron’s part, and wouldn’t really be worth the risk that he end up in NJ for years and years.  No one should have to endure that.

Reading Chad Ford is loads of fun.  When he isn’t bubbling over with absurd suggestions, he’s getting other people to do it.  It’s too bad I read Ford’s post in TrueHoop yesterday after I wrote about NBA teams’ salary cap incontinence, because I could have just quoted from the article, in which Ford writes:

A source close to the Nets’ thinking told me that they are concerned that if they don’t land LeBron or Bosh, they may be stuck in the same situation the Pistons were in last summer — with no elite free agents on the market, the Pistons were forced to overpay role players to fill out their roster.

“Because of our record we are going to be forced to overspend on guys like David Lee and Rudy Gay and perhaps Boozer if you can’t land LBJ,” the source told ESPN. “I don’t want to be like Detroit and spend just to spend.”’…

…The thinking is that if the Nets can land two good players now, that might be better than having to overpay to good players this summer out of desperation.

Now, I don’t know if this source is Rod Thorn’s housekeeper, but if he/she has anything remotely to do with decision making on the Nets then…wow.  What is this awesome power that forced the Pistons to stupidly sign Charlie Villanueva and Ben Gordon?  Sometimes I wonder if Joe Dumars sent them both offers expecting only one to accept.  Is that possible?  And regarding the Nets, to what terrible force could this source possibly be referring?  Certainly not to Nets fans; there are none.

Most people who go to the Izod Center do so thinking it’s a huge mall.  When they find out it isn’t one, they leave.  That’s why there are so few people in the stands.  And most of the handfuls of people you see in them aren’t fans; they’re extras, hired from the masses of unemployed actors in NYC.  If you look closely behind the Nets bench, you’ll probably see some familiar faces, as most of them have probably asked you at one time or another whether you would prefer soup or salad with your sandwich.

Seriously, how am I supposed to take the whining of financial hardship from teams seriously when I read stuff like this.  The only desperate move that’s appropriate for an owner to take is his last one.  I really am caught between laughing and growling, because teams doing stupid things is almost always at least a little amusing, unless it’s my team.  On the other hand, I love this sport, and the freakin’ league too.  And stupid teams dilute the quality of the competition even worse than the salary cap and trade restrictions do.

Most Rockets fans I chat with these days take it as a given that the Rockets will make every effort to re-sign Luis Scola this summer.  Now, as much as I like Scola, I don’t see why the Rockets would commit significant money or years to Scola when Carl Landry is going into the last year of his contract.  But regardless of their interest, I think it highly unlikely Scola will be in Houston next year, because provided NBA teams come up with the necessary salary cap space, he is going to get a Larry Hughes contract.  In fact, I think you’re going to see a ton of Hughes contracts this summer, and a few key Michael Redd contracts, too.

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