Hope you like college basketball

[NickZepp]

Salaries are obscene and owners greedy. TV has or is ruining all sports. Money has become the goal - not the game.

I get your point but they shouldn't be doing things like this for free. But I don't see how anyone can really empathize with either side when they are both making millions and billions. It's just like in politics today. Neither side is right because they don't realize that the people really don't give a rip about people making millions and billions. The NBA will have a tough time for a long time recovering from this.

 

[SoonerBounce13]

Denver, you do realize you just repeated David Sterns talking points verbatim right?

The players seem a lot more calm to me than the owners. Stern is the one making over the top statements. I smell a little panic on his side. Explan this to me ... if the owners are really losing money why does he threaten the offer will decline if the current offer is not accepted immediately? If that's true missing games would put extra money in the owners pockets. Something does not smell right.

i think that panic you are sensing is the disbelieve and frustration with how idiotic the players are.

 

[WTSooner]

I get your point but they shouldn't be doing things like this for free. But I don't see how anyone can really empathize with either side when they are both making millions and billions. It's just like in politics today. Neither side is right because they don't realize that the people really don't give a rip about people making millions and billions. The NBA will have a tough time for a long time recovering from this.

Nick, we just told you several, or most, frachises are NOT making millions, let alone billions. I doubt any of the NBA franchises are making billions in net income. That is the point. The players? Yes, they are making millions. We see that in the salaries.

 

[bocabull]

i think that panic you are sensing is the disbelieve and frustration with how idiotic the players are.

We shall see but I doubt it. The bottom line is that at it's worst GDP shrank 8% from Q1 2007 to Q1 2009. It's been growing even since the stimulus was passed including a better than expected 2.5% in the most recent qtr.

If the players took a haircut equal to the worst quarter of the recession they would take an 8% drop in revenue sharing. That would equal a drop to 53%. That's the undisputed math.

Why should the players drop from 57% to 50% which is a 12.25% haircut when league revenues are not down nearly that much? Somebody please explain.

 

[bocabull]

Nick, we just told you several, or most, frachises are NOT making millions, let alone billions. I doubt any of the NBA franchises are making billions in net income. That is the point. The players? Yes, they are making millions. We see that in the salaries.

If some teams are not making money maybe they are in markets that can't afford a professional franchise. Why should the players subsidize small markets?

I find it funny how the supposed free market, anti union people are blaming the players for not agreeing to payroll limitations artificially created by a business decision of the NBA to place teams in markets that can't afford it.

And of course who do the owners demand to pay for their facility capital expenditures? Tax payers, that's who. Exactly what are these owners responsible for? What risk do they have that is not under their control? Nobody is forcing them to pay players more than the revenues their market generates.

 

[quick release]

Good.

Haters gonna hate...

 

[WTSooner]

Why should the players drop from 57% to 50% which is a 12.25% haircut when league revenues are not down nearly that much? Somebody please explain.

Short answer.....b/c 57% was never fair, or smart business, in the first place.

 

[bocabull]

Short answer.....b/c 57% was never fair, or smart business, in the first place.

Sorry. Not buying it. Even the crappy Seattle SuperSonics were bought in 2001 for $200 million and sold in 2006 for $350 million. Tidy 75% capital gain in 5 years. Triple the supposed operating losses which were padded with all types of non cash charges.

 

[Sooner04]

Don't call my Sonics crappy just because Schultz didn't like the lease at Key Arena.

 

[bocabull]

Just saying their on court results were poor and the owner cried poverty due to the arena and sold the team ... netting himself a $150 million profit in 5 years. Yeah they may have suffered some short term operating losses but they made a sweet ROI even under the supposed worst circumstances.

The owners are playing the PR game and the players are calmly looking at the numbers. That's the fact.

 

[thebigabd]

If some teams are not making money maybe they are in markets that can't afford a professional franchise. Why should the players subsidize small markets?

I find it funny how the supposed free market, anti union people are blaming the players for not agreeing to payroll limitations artificially created by a business decision of the NBA to place teams in markets that can't afford it.

And of course who do the owners demand to pay for their facility capital expenditures? Tax payers, that's who. Exactly what are these owners responsible for? What risk do they have that is not under their control? Nobody is forcing them to pay players more than the revenues their market generates.

Only certain players bring in enough revenue to justify their salary, and those players make millions with endorsements.

The player salary system is broken. Most of them make way too much money. Hell, some of them dont even play and make tons of money. Eddy Curry hasnt played in years and he makes a ton.

You can't justify it. You just can't. And its not like the league is going to take the wealth away from these guys, they are just trying to control it. They will all still be very wealthy.

Lets say you work long hours, 8:00 to 5:00 monday through friday in the office on a good day. But you work at home, weekends, etc. You make a nice salary, $200,000 a year. Joe Johnson (for example) will make your salary by playing basketball .77 of a basketball game and putting a ball through the hoop 8 times. It would take a person making $200,000 a year 99.17 years to make what Joe Johnson makes in one season, and that doesnt include his endorsements, appearances, interviews, etc.

He doesnt even have to play one game to make that $200,000. Less than 2 hours and he has what you worked about 2,400 hours to make.

Do these guys have talent? Yes. Do the generate money? Yes.

BUT

Are 80% of these guys worth the price admission? No...
Do 80% of these guys sell any jerseys or memorabilia? No...
Do 80% of these guys deserve to make that much money? No...

This seems to be an arguement about what Dirk, Kobe, Lebron, Melo, Durant, Griffin, etc deserve. They are the product. They sell the jerseys. They bring in the fans. They bring the wins that get people interested.

So, the players keep saying "we are the product", but the truth of the matter is, only a select few of them are the product. All of them arent the product.

 

[Tony]

It's is absolutely outrageous that the players forced the NBA to give Eddy Curry a huge contract.

 

[NickZepp]

Nick, we just told you several, or most, frachises are NOT making millions, let alone billions. I doubt any of the NBA franchises are making billions in net income. That is the point. The players? Yes, they are making millions. We see that in the salaries.

You think the owners aren't billionaires? Even if they aren't making Billions from basketball alone. It's well beyond the concept of the every day guy which is basically where they have to sell their product. Both sides are losers without games because the fans will end up paying more.

I don' disagree that the salary system is messed up. Everyone knows that but it's not like the owners really deserve that much sympathy. They are the ones making bad contract decisions.

 

[WTSooner]

You think the owners aren't billionaires?

I don't care what they do away from the game, money-wise. They shouldn't have to lose money to own an NBA franchise. Period.

 

[Sooner04]

Just saying their on court results were poor and the owner cried poverty due to the arena and sold the team ... netting himself a $150 million profit in 5 years.

The owner was a douchebag and they won the Division in 2005! It's not like we had a culture of losing. You could make an argument that we were the second or third best franchise in the West for the entire decade of the 90s.

I refuse to step foot in a Starbucks because of what Schultz did to my Sonics.

 

[thebigabd]

I don't care what they do away from the game, money-wise. They shouldn't have to lose money to own an NBA franchise. Period.

Thats exactly right... you shouldnt be forced to lose money, end of story.

 

[Soonercuda]

Best article I have read on why the owners are being unreasonable:

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6874079/psychic-benefits-nba-lockout

 

[bocabull]

Thats exactly right... you shouldnt be forced to lose money, end of story.

Nobody is forced to lose money. Nobody is forced to buy a team. More importantly, nobody is granted the right to limit how much Mark Cuban wants to spend to win a title, or the Lakers or the Knicks, or the Heat, or the Celtics. If Mark Cuban wants to treat his NBA franchise like a trophy wife and spend whatever it takes to win, that's a true market. The cheap owners want to limit how much Mark can spend so they can get a free ride on the backs of their players with no risk. That don't fly. All the players are saying is that if Mark Cuban wants to pay his entire team $20 million/year it's his right to do so and it's the players right to collect that salary.

I love it how the anti union people are so clueless when it really comes to market economics.

 

[bocabull]

Best article I have read on why the owners are being unreasonable:

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6874079/psychic-benefits-nba-lockout

As usual, Gladwell is dead on. Exactly what I was saying.

Pro sports teams are a lot like works of art. Forbes magazine annually estimates the value of every professional franchise, based on standard financial metrics like operating expenses, ticket sales, revenue, and physical assets like stadiums. When sports teams change hands, however, the actual sales price is invariably higher. Forbes valued the Detroit Pistons at $360 million. They just sold for $420 million. Forbes valued the Wizards at $322 million. They just sold for $551 million. Forbes said that the Warriors were worth $363 million. They just sold for $450 million. There are a number of reasons why the Forbes number is consistently too low. The simplest is that Forbes is evaluating franchises strictly as businesses. But they are being bought by people who care passionately about sports — and the $90 million premium that the Warriors' new owners were willing to pay represents the psychic benefit of owning a sports team. If that seems like a lot, it shouldn't. There aren't many NBA franchises out there, and they are very beautiful.

The big difference between art and sports, of course, is that art collectors are honest about psychic benefits. They do not wake up one day, pretend that looking at a Van Gogh leaves them cold, and demand a $27 million refund from their art dealer. But that is exactly what the NBA owners are doing. They are indulging in the fantasy that what they run are ordinary businesses — when they never were. And they are asking us to believe that these "businesses" lose money. But of course an owner is only losing money if he values the psychic benefits of owning an NBA franchise at zero — and if you value psychic benefits at zero, then you shouldn't own an NBA franchise in the first place. You should sell your "business" — at what is sure to be a healthy premium — to someone who actually likes basketball.

 

[sperry]

I agree with basically everything Tony has said in this thread.


1. The owners shouldn't be losing money, but they shouldn't be getting much of the profits either. Unlike many businesses, the regular employees (i.e. the players) are what makes the game lucrative, not management. Therefore, the players are who deserve the profit.

2. It is entirely the owners and management's fault that salaries are out of control. The league minimum salary is very reasonable, i.e. under a million dollars. Salaries are out of control because owners let their general managers offer terrible contracts to players. Nowhere in the collective bargaining agreement does it say that the owners have to offer terrible players like Eddy Curry, Darko, and Juwan Howard ridiculous contracts. The owners essentially want to be protected by their own stupidity.