Interesting Lockout Quote - Discuss!

I’m often wondering if all owners want such a drastic salary cap and reductions in salary, owners like Mark Cuban and Dolan can’t seriously be for such a restrictive cap, can they?

Some owners are born into money, some earn it through hard work and sacrifice. But they don’t necessarity have “careers” as owners. This is a passion for some, but an investment for all. They are in it for a profit, and when they sell, they will sell for a profit. The players have careers. Those careers come as a result of taking a God given gift, and adding to it alot of hard work and sacrifice. Shoveling snow out of the park in the winter time to practice, playing through insane injuries at a young age, focusing on basketball rather than school so you can get your family out of poverty by age 21 rather than age 31. A few are going to play for 18-29 years, but a vast majority are going to be out of the league within three years of the day they show up. For some of this years draft picks, their rookie contract will be the only NBA contract they ever sign.

The difference between the owners and the players is the only thing the players own is themselves. The CBA dictates how they sell their one product to the owners. The owners all own teams… and something else. They will not have their careers as businessment cut short due to a freak injury. They have consultants that make sure they don’t have half their money taken away in taxes like the players do. You never hear stories about down and out former owners living in their cars. Most players have to make their money between four and six years, then used that money to refinance their lives into a post basketball career… which because no player plans to have a short career, they are rarely prepared to do.

So although my mind is on fairness, my heart is with the players. Fairness dictates that the owners need a model that makes them money. Only in sports do the businessmen rewrite the rules of the industry to cover up for their bad business practices. A hard cap is necessary. Its a good business practice. But it should be secondary to better revenue sharing by the owners. They owners have to understand that this is not regular business, and you do not profit by putting the competition out of business. This is like a pyramid business, you profit by making sure everyone else profits.

There are creative ways to get some things that eveyone wants. They can implement a hard cap of $45million but allow them to pay up to another 10 million in signing bunuses annually. So if you have one great player you want to keep happy, give him all 10. Or spread it out between 2 or three players. Keep bird rights in, and keep five year contracts, but allow contracts to be voided if a player misses more than 60% of his games two years in a row due to injury by whatever team owns their rights. So injured player contracts will be added value like expiring contracts, and the player has two years to get healthy or come off the books. Allow players to renegotiate their contracts after the second year if they want to give some up for the cause. These are top of the head things, so I’m sure those great owner/players association minds will come up with better.

The main thing is, though, the owners have to share their revenue more. The players should not get 50% of the profit because they don’t make 50% of the investment. But the owners need to work out the TV revenue, Jersey sales, etc. differently. If you build a new arena for 500 million, and then complain that you lost money the following year, that is not a player issue. Players salaries overall have risen over the past twenty years, but no one is making 30 million for a season like Jordan did. Total salaries have gone up, but tier one salaries have stablized. Arena’s haven’t gotten bigger, but cable contracts have. The owners need a better business model that doesn’t involve the players before they bring the players in… which is what the players asked for in the first place.

not sure where I got this from. If it’s a re-post from something in the post I apologize.

The owners aren’t losing money. That’s why they hold the “books” so close to the vest. Through the use of LEGAL tactics they can turn a 7 mil profit into a 25 mil loss. But I don’t blame them. They intelligently used the laws of this country in place. The real change needs to come from the legislators who allow certain tax laws to exist. And seeing the state of affairs in this country we know that will never happen, so we must change what we can.

I think a hard cap needs to be in place, but no rollbacks. say there will be a 5 year grace period to get under the cap, and have spending now until that 5 year mark be a function of how much space you have. The lakers would be exempt from making new deals that would put them over the cap, unless they make moves to lower their payroll. I liken it to a scenario in investing when you have a margin account. You can’t spend more than X % of the initial capital you have already invested.

This would also serve to keep the old guys in shape. In the NFL youngsters have the advantage of roster spots, but they don’t get the payday because the cycle of new kids coming in moves them out. I’d hate to have to deal with their system.

I feel a hard cap would remove the gun from the owners heads (if we don’t sign drew gooden to an outrageous deal someone else will. we still want him but we have to overpay). If there is a level playing field it makes salaries come down. This is where I say the players should get to keep a larger portion of the revenues to make up for it.

An interesting post clarifies this accounting “magic”
http://deadspin.com/5816870/

but I still think that the players should only get 50% of the revenue. It’s a lovely, even number that neither side can really complain about. That’s my general thought. I may return to this post later to add in some of my opinions on more specific CBA matters. The most interesting part, to me, has nothing to do with the players – revenue sharing.