smackeddog wrote:Obviously, bball is the least of our problems, but if all the above is true, I just don't get how the NBA is going to function for the next few seasons. What is the way forward for it? Do they just play with no crowds at all- what does that mean for team's revenue? Will teams go bust? Can it survive just on TV revenue for a couple of years?
The only viable solution is to remove the traditional schedule format and create "mixed" rosters and Tiers of competition level. Four teams dividing the best 60 players in the league. The rest of the league uses the same breakdown. The next group of guys, 61-120 form the next set of teams and on and on.
No one is paying to see Alex Caruso get a layup on a fast break. They want to see stars. Mixed rosters is the only way to prevent an entire team from a specific city to go under and then disbalance the schedule. An All Star team can lose a star or two and still push forward and be marketable. The Bucks lose Greek Freak in a traditional format? How bad is that going to be
It would mean killing normal seasons/playoffs and essentially run All Star games/exhibitions. Lower Tiers have skills competitions to entice fans.
Teams will stop giving long term contracts except to the rare Top 10 kind of player.
The cap taking hits over a period of years will necessitate the NFL marketplace system. Widespread use of non guaranteed contracts and shifting guaranteed money to signing/roster bonuses along with a hard cap. The league can't afford to let teams use continual amnesties for COVID19 cases and teams can't be anchored in a situation they are capped out while losing 2-3-4-5-6 guys for how knows long and are stuck with that dead money. COVID19 becomes a surrogate form of mass injury attrition.
The big problem though is the WNBA. It loses money. When you need to trim the fat, you start with cash sinkholes. The WNBA is a horrible product. People don't want to go to games, people don't want to watch it, it has literally no value to the league except as a form of social marketing. Once the suits, actuaries, lawyers and network guys get together, they will all say the same thing. Even though the WNBA costs are a smaller portion of cost compared to the entire NBA, it's still fat that can be immediately trimmed. Howeer killing the WNBA could spark backlash that could spiral unpredictably.
You have some genuinely dumbass people in the WNBA administration. And they were herded for years by the last administration who were also a bunch of idiots. Except you'd be called all kinds of things and dragged in public for calling them idiots.
Couple of danger points
1) If an individual team is completely decimated very quickly, or a few teams, the league might hold an emergency dispersal draft.This provision was only meant for a situation like one team all perishing in a plane crash or something of that nature. Not something like this ( i.e. having multiple teams at once go down) This could hurt the Knicks roster in a bad way depending on the attrition.
2) The current TV contract does not expire until 2025. With enough attrition and lose of seasons, the next TV deal could be a total nosedive. This would cause a mass devaluation of all NBA franchises. You would have owners trying to sell their teams before that hard date. If this happens, the end result might be actual contraction. Also if the NBA is gutted, so will the NCAA Tournament, thus the networks might all decide to drop the NBA altogether once the current contract ends. Long shot, but if it gets ugly enough.....
Guys. This is really bad. I've posted here for years and how often do I say things like that?
But I'm saying it now. This is the kind of potential **** sandwich where you don't get that cheap ass balloon bread. No, you get the really quality stuff made with care, love and attention. This kind of **** sandwich has that expensive imported cheese in it. The kind that entitled white soccer moms who down three bottles of Traders Joe wine every morning splurge on before they complain about how no one loves the WNBA but they don't watch it themselves because they need to get to pilates.
This one is the asteroid the size of Texas coming at us. I don't know if there is a Bruce Willis with a bunch of bad actors available to fly up, drill deep and drop a nuke in it. Speaking of bad actors who've worked with Captain Moonlighting - Liv Tyler looks like her father now. She's somewhere between winning a Mark Messier look a like contest and some random juiced out Cross Fit athletes jawline.
The point being the NBAs future only looks good standing next to Liv Tyler.
