ItalianStallion wrote:

Nalod wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

Nalod wrote:

AnubisADL wrote:Some of these comments defending the owners are hilarious.

The owners are not forced to sign guys like Arenas and Eddy Curry to insane deals.

If your boss decided to pay you more than your worth than who is too blame?

It does not have to be any ones fault. The owners made mistakes. Its their fault. They are stupid. No one disputes this.

But, its their theirs to ruin. If my boss over pays me and others eventually they go out of business.

Then what?

Someone even dumber takes his place and will continue to over pay?

The notion that players are "giving back" is not even applicable. The notion that the owners should have thrown them a bone as if these guys self esteem is eroded because they are some kind of victim!

There is no CBA. When it expires its gone.

The owners were dumb last time. They over paid.

Players are offended? Please!

Does this make me anti player? Hell know, it makes me real! I respect the players and the unique talent they have.

But make no bones about it, there is so much Im gonna spend on this. Nobody is denying the ability to earn a living. I don' t really blame the players but their agents who are always in the middle of this crap.

Voiding contracts? Max years, max salaries for players? I think the thing you're not appreciating is that these owners are getting all sorts of gifts or entitlements already that business owners in the real world don't get and just looking for even more entitlements.

I'll name 3 knicks: Marbles, Eddy, Jerome. All different, all guaranteed. Thats just 3 knicks in the last 5 years.

$200 million?

Owners are stupid. Players are not.

I have not read about voiding contracts, but you know if there are stipulations then it should be allowed. Eddy, Marbles and Jerome......Winken, Blinken and Nodd.

Some owners/GMs are stupid and do make stupid deals. In a fair deal with the players those teams would be the ones to lose money.

However, not every deal that seems stupid is actually stupid. Here's an example:

The Atlanta Hawks overpaid for Joe Johnson by a significant amount.

Was that stupid or the least of two possible bad decisions?

If they gave him the money they knew would have a bloated contract on the books that would lower their chances of profitability and hamstring the team for years as Johnson aged because no one else would want him.

On the flip side, if they offered a "fair" contract, some other team with excess profits would certainly have given him a max contract to try to win a championship. A team in a big market could afford to take a shot and still be very profitable.

Even worse, the Hawks were about a 50 win team and a minor contender the year before. If they let Johnson walk, the team would become more of a marginal playoff team, the fans would be furious with the owner for being cheap, the other star players on the team would start rumbling they also want out because they want a chance to win a championship and don't want to rebuild etc... Attendance would fall, TV rating would fall and the Hawks would be screwed financially anyway.

So they were screwed either way.

The same can be said of Rudy Gay and dozens of other bad deals that are given out every year. It's a lose lose situation for some teams. Lose if you pay and lose if you don't.

That's why the owners want mome controls even though they already have the 50-50 split.

Without those controls the super rich teams like NY, LA, Dallas etc.. will always be able to afford to wildly overpay players in the pursuit of a championship because they will still be very profitable. That forces the smaller markets into a no win situation and almost guaranteed losses.

Good point, also to maintain the revenue you need a good team and the Hawks looked like a top 10 team the year before. Its obvious they were being put up for sale and needed a good cash flow to justify the price.

Yes, positive cash flow biz are more valuable than those that are not. Thats why the notion of owners not caring about losing money because they will cash out when sold is foolish. The premise of a new CBA Im going to guess is baked into the valuations.

If not a good deal, franchise values will drop.

Bonn, what business model contracts a % of revenue to its employees? CBA is not a bad deal for the players! Team can lose money the owners have to abide by REVENUE and they are trying to adjust in the face of inflationary pressure.

With our current economic situation its very easy to see an inflationary environment going forward. OWners have to build in more expense calculations to protect.

Without new arenas and other perks the revenue does not grow.

Bonn1997 wrote:In the real world too, if you give someone a guaranteed contract and they don't breach the contract, you owe them the money no matter how much they underperformed. Here the owners just feel they're entitled to special treatment.
RE voiding contracts: The owners proposal was to be able to reduce salaries to $75K, which is pretty close to voiding them.

From the NYTimes aticle:

The D-League is not mentioned anywhere in the seven-page proposal that was delivered to the union on Friday — a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/sports/basketball/rumors-abound-regarding-final-nba-proposal.html

smackeddog wrote:

Andrew wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:In the real world too, if you give someone a guaranteed contract and they don't breach the contract, you owe them the money no matter how much they underperformed. Here the owners just feel they're entitled to special treatment.
RE voiding contracts: The owners proposal was to be able to reduce salaries to $75K, which is pretty close to voiding them.

I here stern keep quoting that they were close to a deal, yet your last proposal was a take it or feel the raft..

From the NYTimes aticle:

The D-League is not mentioned anywhere in the seven-page proposal that was delivered to the union on Friday — a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/sports/basketball/rumors-abound-regarding-final-nba-proposal.html

Yep, officially it was proposed and then 'parked' a few weeks ago, to be negotiated after the other stuff was agreed upon. I still find it weird that the players were being asked to approve the proposal, when the proposal wasn't even finished- it doesn't even make sense. Remember a few weeks ago when Stern was hinting that an agreement would be reached the next day? How the heck could that have been true when they still hadn't negotiated a tonne of stuff- it was all posturing.

And if you look at the strategy the owners were pushing, it was all about letting the union believe a deal was just around the corner, so they conceded more only to find there was even more the owners wanted- the problem was once they conceded, they couldn't get it back. Basically the union painted itself into a corner. I believe that if the union had agreed to these unfinished proposals, next step would be for the nba to refuse to budge much on the 'b' list issues, which is why I think the d league thing was still relevant and important.

Andrew wrote:The unofficial agreement was to be on the bigger issues and the overall framework of the deal. It would be non binding, and the other issues negotiated. The players rejected the framework. How are the other items not included at all relevant?

I think, because once the players agreed to anything, that was locked in and they lost that as leverage for anything still to be negotiated, if that makes sense. I think they players kept negotiating thinking if they gave up one issue (the BRI), the owners would relent on the next. Meanwhile the owners were negotiating on the basis that once the players gave up one issue, (The BRI), the next issue would be treated as completely seperate and that they would then push to win that too. So it follows that once the players agreed to the framework, the owners would then say "these are our b list issues and we want them all". What could the union do then? They'd agreed to everything else, the pressure would be on them to relent as people would be saying "why would you let b list issues stop a season?". If the league were willing to conceed b list issues then why didn't they prior to giving the proposal to the players (it would have given the union something they said they had 'won')? Because they had no intention to, in my opinion.

I could be wrong of course, it's all speculation, but I do think the b list issues were important- by taking each of the issues seperately (BRI, system, b list issues), the players kept losing the ability to horse trade, and kept losing in each of those areas.