eViL wrote:tkf wrote:funny how you felt I insulted you and you come back with this post.. believe me, I completely understand the position of both sides... I am arguing from a different angle.. I am not a labor lawyer so I really try not to get into the legalities especially since I don't know how the court will rule on these things...
sorry. no offense. i read your post that you found the player's side annoying and thought maybe the annoyance was getting in the way of our discussion. i know when i'm annoyed at something, i tend to have a shorter attention span.
i don't find the player's to be a sympathetic group. however, i don't find the owners sympathetic either. on one side, the teams and the league will outlast the players. and of course, my loyalty is with the knicks. that's for sure. on the other side, i have loathed the NBA's restrictive policies with regards to player movement for years now. and i've concluded that the desire to further restrict player moves is driven by small market owners that are being ****blocking pricks.
i feel that by dropping down to 50/50 the players have made the financial concessions the owners asked for. i just want the owners to loosen up on the player movement issues. that's all. i understand that the parties both have competing agendas and are going about getting their goals accomplished in whatever manner they deem fit.
this is where the whole "good faith" thing comes in. whether you and i can even agree on a definition of good faith is irrelevant. what really matters, and what i've been saying the whole time, is that there is uncertainty surrounding the legal outcome of the players lawsuit. my hope is that the uncertainty acts as a catalyst for the owners making concessions on player movement issues. the knicks need this. trust me.
you want to point at double standards about how Melo treated negotiations with Denver. that's fine. i don't find the analogy to be a true parallel to what we're discussing here. however, consider the fact that owners lament overpaid players that don't earn their contracts. while at the same time, you don't see owners making efforts to fairly compensate superstar rookies whose production far exceeds his compensation on the rookie wage scale. no, those owners enjoy that 4 years of paying a superstar way below his value. the players are not alone in the world of hypocrisy.
here i am, a knicks fan who went through a decade of disaster just wishing there were ways we could get out of the mess we were in. when it was all said and done, it took two years just to climb back to zero. not two years to get to the top. two years to get back to a decent starting point. to me, that's ridiculous and it's a product of a system that's too restrictive. yes, i understand that mismanagement got us in the mess in the first place, but having to sit idle for two seasons is unduly burdensome.
i don't find the small markets argument about competitive balance compelling at all. well managed small markets that draft superstars have been very competitive (see: Spurs, OKC). accept 50/50, loosen up the player movement, and let's have a season. that's my stance on this.
I would like to see rookie players who outperform their deals get a shot to re-up earlier( I stated this before)...but there are a lot less derrick rose's and Durants in the league, and a lot more hasheem thabeets.....
you say the players dropped to 50%, some say the owners came up from the low 40's...
I do think owners have no problem paying stars at all.. if they could pay rose and durant more money right away, I am sure they would...
Anyone who sits around and waits for the lottery to better themselves, either in real life or in sports, Is a Loser...............
TKF
11/18/2011 8:40 PM