The Knicks and Lakers and Celtics are trying to sell the brand of their team to the players.
Players know they can build their own brand and that's far more important to them. Lebron can be the biggest player in the world in Cleveland. Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook have played their whole career in Oklahoma City.
We just lost the #1 realistic free agent we were chasing... to Milwaukee.
These guys don't *NEED* to come to NY or LA to become famous, they go to twitter.com and youtube.com to get famous. League Pass and the new TV deal means all the good players are on TV all the time, regardless of what media market it is.
But going by the Knicks campaign in 2010 to sign LeBron which was all about branding and marketing... and not winning. And then the Lakers presentations to LaMarcus and DeAndre which focused more on branding than winning... it turns these players off.
Players are their own brand now. They want to win basketball games. Players care about analytics, the roster, the facilities, the organization. Not the "Mecca" or "Garden of Dreams" stuff. I think you have seen the end of the era of any time NY or LA has money the big stars run there.
Dwight, Amar'e, Melo... you could argue these guys had their individual brand HURT by going to a high profile team that was a mess. I think players are leary of coming to NY and the Lakers at this point. They know it's a bad situation in both spots. And they can't be convinced that they need the "branding" power of Lakers or Knicks or whatever on the front of their jerseys.
Most of these guys are in their early 20s and probably never even saw Patrick Ewing play. For most of these guys when they were 15 years old playing AAU ball, the Knicks were a joke with Isiah and Marbs and Eddy Curry. The "Mecca" brand thing... I don't think it's gonna sway too many players anymore.
I hope the Knicks are awake to this. They have a lot of work to do before NBA players consider this place a legit destination.
Sorry, just thinking out loud.
