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.

“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.

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.

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.

Background

Sure, when Ruben Patterson is released by the Clippers and Rockets fans on clutchfans.net wonder whether it’s a good idea to sign him, well, I generally feel compelled to argue against signing violent sex offenders who get involved in police-horse-punching incidents; but guns in the locker room is just eye-roll inducing stupidity and almost as bad as the socially conscious articles from socially conscious writers that follow.  And also, it involves one of my favorite players (Arenas, not Crittenden) and ruins his comeback from serious injuries.

I just find the whole thing mildly depressing—seriously, power through a few Nicholas Kristof articles and try to tell me this incident is more than “mildly” depressing—and one more thing that sullies this NBA season, along with Tracy McGrady’s tenure with the Rockets ending and Yao Ming making babies instead of game-winners—congrats Yao, and may your first child be a masculine child.

As much as anything (a throwaway phrase I’ve always enjoyed) this incident reminds me of Jayson Williams’ foibles.  No, there’s no comparison between displaying a gun and drunkenly shooting and killing your employee.  But yeah there is, in the same way that there is a perfectly valid comparison between my sex life and Wilt Chamberlain’s.  Arenas and Williams are/were favorite players of mine, as much for their off the court hilariousness as their hardwood successes.  Both f#cked up.  Reading Williams’ classic memoir, Loose Balls, you have to conclude that it was only a matter of time until he went completely nuts with a gun in his hand.  He was a gun toting alcoholic before injury forced him to retire.  After he left the game, Williams just more opportunity to booze and play with guns.  Something was bound to go wrong.  And Arenas?  Until now, Arenas has only been silly nutty, (seemingly) not dangerous nutty.

As for the claim that he welched on a bet with Crittenden, that’s hardly surprising, given what we know of his previous gambling behavior (below).  Now, this clip is hysterical, in part because he’s blatantly cheating, in front of a crowd, and being silly about it—and come on, one millionaire ripping $10K off another millionaire in a (basketball) shooting contest is funny in itself.  And accusations Arenas cheating at Halo* prompted him to spend 2,300 words on nba.com, defending himself.  That’s priceless, and nothing says, “I did it!” like mounting that kind of rambling defense.  But breaking out the guns just spoils the joke.

*[after clicking on the link, search for "don't call me"]

The dude is 36 but he still has the motor to go at top speed for 36 minutes a game and competently defend shooting guards.  And though he doesn’t score much, he’s shooting efficiently.  And when he’s on the floor, the ball movement is terrific.  Whatever the Mavs’ options in a given possession, Kidd will make the most of it.  Unfortunately, the rest of the posse doesn’t do a ton with the opportunities.

Jason Terry can’t shoot straight this year.  I don’t know what’s up with that.  Actually, his three-point shooting has been going downhill the last few years—maybe he lost a half step and doesn’t get quite the same space that he used to get?—but whatever the case, he hasn’t been able to hit the side of a barn this year.  And since like 80% of his value is in his shooting, that’s something of an issue.

Marion is still a good player, but he’s not nearly the big rebounding versatile defending combo forward anymore.  Sure, he’s still got some bounce, but at this point here’s just…good.  And Jason Terry can’t shoot straight this year.  His three-point shooting has been going downhill the last few years.  Whether he’s lost a half step and can’t get the same space to shoot that he used to, I don’t know.  But whatever the case,  he can’t hit the side of a barn this year, and since like 90% of his value is in his shooting, that’s something of an issue.  And then there’s Josh Howard.  Yeah, sure, he’s coming off surgery, will get better, yadda yadda, but even healthy he too is merely a good player.  I note this because in the Mavs’ run to the Finals in ‘06 he was terrific and I thought he looked good to stay at that level.  But it didn’t happen.  He shot very well from outside for two years, but he can’t shoot straight anymore either, regardless of his health.

Really, Jose Juan Barea is the only Mavs player other than Dirk who’s having a great year.  He has real value as long as he continues to shoot the lights out and do a decent job of staying in front of point guards.  But it’s not like he’s an up and coming game changer.

I guess I see the Mavericks as contenders by default, merely because neither Denver nor Phoenix are for real.  The Mavs have a decent shot at the Western Conference Finals, I suppose, but that’s their upside.  And the weird thing is, I think of the Mavs as being such a smart franchise, but in a salary cap NBA, flexibility is the truest expression of management smarts (after wins).  But they signed Jason Terry to a butt-ugly that clogs up their cap space for the next few years.  And yeah, Dirk’s a machine, but how long can he do that for another two, three, four years?  Maybe.  Probably not.

Among the 11 players already next year’s roster, 9 are bonafide rotation guys, and 5 or 6 of them are starter-for-playoff-team-level guys.  And excluding Yao’s salary, Daryl Morey and company has the lot signed for $22 million.  This is all to say, if Yao successfully comes back from his injury (and Zydrunas Ilgauskas’ success after the same surgery is very encouraging) the Rockets are very well positioned for the future.  But the T-Mac thing makes everything very foggy.

Now, most of the time you try to figure out what an NBA team is going to do, you have to figure in the intelligence gap.  That is, you have to dumb yourself down to think on an NBA management level.  A good technique is to look at a list of the 30 highest paid players in the NBA and try to justify the contracts of each of them.  Sometimes it’s pretty easy, “Who knew Jermaine O’Neal was going to break in half?”  Sometimes it’s not so easy, “Sure, we overpaid Rashard Lewis by at least $8 million, but he’s a really good player and a perfect fit with Dwight Howard.”  Sometimes it’s just impossible.  The Rockets, however, are mad smart, and you really can say, “What would a really smart team do in this situation?”

As much as it pains me that T-Mac will be leaving the Rockets, it’s kind of exciting to see what Morey is going to do, because the Rockets aren’t just mad smart; they’re mad smart and have access to a crack research team and metrics that I don’t.  But in this case…  Thing is, unless McGrady does something to demonstrate that he can be a serious contributor, he’s just a giant expiring contract.  Who want one of those?  Well, lots of teams, like the Rockets.  A $23 million expiring contract is extremely valuable chip and something a smart team would only trade for something really, really valuable.  Like what?  Well, pipe dream trades that will not happen and…nothing.  There’s nothing else out there.  If the Knicks had their 2010 draft pick, the Rockets could deal with them… if Portland had a healthy roster…  If the Wizards had top notch young talent…  If Toronto hadn’t gone all-in to keep Chris Bosh…  If Amare Stoudemire publicly declared he absolutely would not re-sign with the Suns…  Nah, I really don’t see anything, at least nothing straight up.  Sure, I could conceive of stuff with Sacramento or Golden State that NBA 2K GMs would go for, but in the real world the Rockets just have to find a sucker, or someone on the verge of bankruptcy.  Otherwise, T-Mac is more valuable to them than anything they can get.  But yeah, the Rockets are mad smart, and they have 6 weeks to find a sucker.

As an up-and-comer in the early 90s coaching the Phoenix Suns, Westphal’s teams won 62 games, 56 games, and 59 games (including one loss in the Finals and two losses in the Western Semi-Finals).  In his fourth season with the Suns, the team got off to a slow start and Westphal got the ax before the all star break.  Why did they start slowly?  Well, it didn’t help that Charles Barkley came into the season fat and took a while to get going.  Other than His Plumpness, the team consisted of Kevin Johnson, rookie Michael Finley, and a bunch of guys who couldn’t score.  They had never played defense (A.C. Green and Dan Marjele were the only consistent defenders on the roster during Westpal’s tenure) so when they stopped scoring, they stopped winning.  Also, I don’t know if it’s true, but I read at the time that Westphal was (is?) a gentle, easy going guy who never ever cussed, and that after three successful seasons, suddenly that was a problem.

Two years later (‘98–’99, the strike year) Westphal got another shot with the Supersonics—but not really.  Westphal was hired as a placeholder for the just-retired Sonic Nate McMillan, who also started that season as assistant coach.  The Sonics started the ‘00–’01 season 6–9, and that was it for Westphal; he was canned and McMillan took over.

Look, I’m not saying Westphal is some beautiful genius; he seems like a good coach—nothing special, but a good coach.  But like nearly all coaches, his win-loss is almost entirely dependent on his roster.  Sure, a new coach sometimes gets the troops moving faster, and a coach can also lose his team.  But if you look at multi-year samples; the rosters tell you almost everything.  (I’ll write about Sacramento’s roster tomorrow).  Understand, I’m not saying Westphal is going to get canned anytime soon; he won’t.  Coaches aren’t fired when their team is exceeding expectations.  But that success just raises expectations, and makes the ice all the thinner.

This makes me feel weirdly guilty, like I’m copping out.  And I hear this guilt-inducing voice in my head—specifically the voice of Han, the badguy from Enter the Dragon.  After Bruce Lee is captured by Han’s minions  and brought out to the courtyard, Han wants Roper (the obligatory white good guy) to fight him.  But Roper refuses (in a way that doesn’t make him look wussy, a sort of “I won’t be your puppet” thing) and Han says to him, “So!  There is a point you will not go beyond.”  That’s what I hear each time I don’t want to go what feels like the extra mile.  And the thing is, I don’t know if I can answer that in a way that doesn’t make me sound wussy.  I mean, right after Roper refuses to fight Lee, he whups like twenty guys, fighting with Lee.  There’s nobody for me to whup.

I was thinking of these things because I was just writing about the Mavericks and why they aren’t contenders.  Some of it is observation, but I think some of the raw numbers support these observations, and I’d like to take a slightly (slightly) deeper look into it.  But each step you take begs more questions, and more and more, and the whole thing makes me sleepy.  But maybe I’ll take a nap, and when I wake up (like, tomorrow) I’ll try to find the patience to address some of the questions.  We’ll see.