You can point to Dampier but don't forget that WITH DAMPIER, but for some stupid plays down the stretch in GM 3 and a phantom foul, the Mavs win the 2006 Finals over Wade and Shaq.
Ok, I have some time now so I can explain my position on partially guaranteed contracts. First off, I really do disagree with affecting pre-existing contracts, making them all-non guaranteed. While it'd make the transition period easier, all players and people should disagree with what would essentially be the owners taking back their agreements. Honestly, I thought we'd never see forced partially-guaranteed contract provisions in the NBA. That shows how desperate the owners are, I suppose. Ideally I'd be in favor of a partly-guaranteed, partly-incentive contract. But the logistics of measuring incentives makes this impractical. Some guy could have tremendous stats, but there could be arguments for days over which stats exactly are the best indicators. So, I'll explain why I am for partially-guaranteed (future) contracts in the NBA. The downside of partially-guaranteed contracts are obvious. But there are benefits for the league, and even some players, too. You have a player not producing? Cut that player, then sign a new player. You actually have the money (and cap room if that's adjusted) to sign a new guy now. Plus, more players get to play in the league, players that actually deserve a shot in the league, not just some player who's sitting on the bench because his expiring contract is valuable to save the owner money in the long term. So, now teams don't hang onto expiring contracts for trade bait. Expiring contracts shouldn't be worth the equivalent of a young talented player as the case is now in the current system. That isn't helping the league. Putting more D-League guys to spots where they can play for more than just two 10-day contracts, signing foreign players, getting more players into the spotlight that want to give it their all, I feel would help the league. At least, this is my vision of the consequences of this decision. Of course, the owners could be asses and not sign guys to replace their cuts, but I guess I'm optimistic that it'd work this way and make the league more entertaining by having more call-ups and discovering more new talent. Could the owners do this on their own individually instead of league-wide? Well, the guaranteed-contract thing is a bit messy right now, and they're talking about going even lower with how much is guaranteed. But they could start forcing this on their own, but certain richer teams would benefit because they could offer the fully-guaranteed contract, while smaller town teams would suffer because they couldn't attract the player who, obviously, takes the guaranteed money. Shortening the maximum contract length further, or having a mandated "team option" after a certain amount of years, could attain the same result without the partial guarantee, because an owner wouldn't be at risk to eat as much money. But how much shorter does it have to get? Three years? Or every year after the third year is a team option? (Owners would probably only take the team option for the best players, so mid-level type players are still screwed this way, the way I see it.) Again, I do want to hear more about the exact details of the owner's offer. But basic reasoning is why I'm (tentatively) in favor of mandated partially-guaranteed contracts right now. In regards to the Warriors, this will stop us trading for Vladimir Radmanovic's, for Speedy Claxton's and Acie Law's. Although not for Devean George's, unfortunately.
Basic law is that you cannot change an existing contract. So forget about changing them. Why would a player ever agree to that? What about the guys who "outperform" their contracts? Did anyone give LeBron more money when he was well worth more than his rookie contract? No way. The first 4 years, the Cavs paid him probably around $10M. I heard on the radio today, before LeBron the Cavs were worth around $200M, now? Guess.......nearly $500M. Does he get any more? Now think about how much each of the 30 franchises have increased over the past 5 years and do the math. Think about that, LeBron's increase to the Cavs himself would cover almost every single "bad" contract you could point to this year. Now, why again are you caring about the owners? You forget the most basic point, its not your money. Why worry about it? If you really care/want to worry about bad contracts, you could have the owners simply volunteer to reopen the "cap" to dispose of bad contracts. Uh, think they're going to do that? No freaking way.
A few quick points: Now that more details on the owner's proposal has come out, I think that it's ludicrous. But I'll talk about that later. I just wanted to respond to the immediate issue. I doubt anyone else remembers my friendly chats with wtwalker who was a lawyer, but I'm also a lawyer. I think that's why I type so friggin' much, yap yap yap, that's me. Now, I don't or haven't ever specialized in labor, but I do work a lot with entertainment contracts (not sports, mostly film industry or tax-related, anyway, enough about me). And I can see where you're coming from in protecting the players, but I'm not arguing against protecting the players with certain other provisions or guarantees. (I mean, I can laugh at that whole Sprewell "Feed my family" line now.) Plus, anything regarding saving the owners money is going to of course favor the owners, but my desire is actually league parity, although I would also prefer to keep every team in the league running as well, not only the obviously good teams, but the currently-not-so-hot teams that maybe can become good in the future. Everyone deserves at least a chance to win. It's not my money, but I care at all about this agreement because my desire to see parity (or an attempt at parity). I would like to see the underdog get a chance (c'mon, I'm a Warriors fan. We have been underdogs since I was born). So I'm in favor of the draft system, for example, as a method of getting players in. I'm generally in favor of the current rookie scale, with the result that players don't refuse to sign a contract to try to get more money or force themselves to get traded to a team they prefer to play for (generally, a big name city) before they've even played a game. Getting rid of the cap, or even having waived contracts not count against the cap, would essentially destroy the purpose of the cap to have league parity at all. Have a rich team or rich owner? Cut some players for cap room, trade a bunch of bad contracts plus some draft pick or good player, for example. The crap teams become even more crap and fold or get sold. For some of these teams/owners, that's a good thing... I mean I would love to get rid of owners like Donald Sterling or George Shinn or Cohan whose decisions would probably more greatly impact their teams' values, but there are other smaller teams that will disappear. Why do I care about teams disappearing? Less players get a chance to play, people working for those teams are out of jobs, the NBA image takes a hit, and there's no more stories like a San Antonio, or even a Cleveland competing anymore, possibly, because these teams would have been moved when they were virtually broke, before they landed their big star. Thus, I also want the business part of the NBA to be smooth and flourish, for every team in the league, from rich to semi-rich. So I write long, rambling paragraphs about it. I love baseball, a league with no caps anywhere, but baseball players are more volatile and unpredictable than basketball. Teams in baseball can dominate largely based on their farm system. A guy can be amazing for one year, then not amazing the next. With basketball, the legendary player stands out and is pegged from friggin' High School. Yeah, some merely good players become great ones, but relatively few super-hyped players totally fail. (It seems like a lot of players do fail to live up to the hype, but on the whole it's much more rare than other sports, and the predicted-to-be-great players rarely don't become at least solid, 5-10 year players, while failures still make earn low-seven-figures in the foreign leagues). As for owners making money, how many Lebron James's are there? Some teams rocket up in value from how the owners invest in them and from how lucky they are in the draft. But the income of half the league teams make less money than a single player with the mid-level exception. Yeah, the economy tanked so that may not be fully representative of the long term, but you hear about how badly several teams are doing every few years if you pay attention to the business side, so it's not a totally false representation either. And of course there's alot of loopholes and perks in that math of what counts as revenue vs. income, not always taking into full account tax-savings, employee benefits, long term growth, etc., so no, the owners are not suffering. I think the overall system is working right now, but it could stand a few tweaks with the results being what I argued in my last post: stop making a player's contract worth trade value, and turn actual player effort/talent into value, getting more players into the league. You can check out reported loss/gains/estimated worth of teams at http://www.forbes.com/nba if you're ever bored/curious about estimated numbers.
Zhone, I agree that ideally I'd like to get the Sterlings and Shinns out of the league, they clearly are in it just to make more $$ and get the adulation without really trying to win. But I look at the owners collectively, because that's how they are bargaining, as one. Collectively, they are making huge $$. I'm the owner of a small business, in a capitalistic system you make $$ by paying your employees less than they are generating. The NBA is no different. The reason that I very, very little empathy for the "plight" of the owners is that in the past 20 years there has yet to be one NBA team to ever go bankrupt or have an owner lose money on the sale of the franchise. And for the foreseeable future it remains that rosy. I do not need to look carefully at Forbes' rankings to see that. Look at the Thunder, they are getting huge returns on the rookie contracts of Durant, Westbrook, and Green. Why? Because they have a publicly subsidized arena deal. I just heard that 60% of the Rams, the worst team in the NFL is about to be sold for $700M. And the owners there want a roll back on players' salaries. I wish the public would get a bit more educated before they line up behind the owners. Why are they making so much $$? Because taxpayer money is used to pay for the stadiums that the owners pay little rent for. That's money that could be going elsewhere. Why pay $1B for 10 football games a year? 50 basketball games a year? Civic pride? If you need a team to feel good about yourself, you need to work on that. Sorry for the long rant. Back to Curry v. Monta.
I know phil. This thing has turned my head 180. It's hard to fathom. Riley is his own man, but it's sort of an inside joke. Because of Mullin going over Cohan's head, Cohan made the decision to jettison Speedy's $5.2 M contract so Riley could not make the big deal before the 18th. No Chris Bosh? No big deal before the 18th. Riley tried to get Chris Bosh, but Toronto took him off the table (probably because they were getting too many calls for Bosh). Riley is left to work with what he has left. He can make a smaller deal, but won't be able to make a big deal until after the summer. The trouble is he has no cap space either. The expiring deals as expiring were worthless to the Warriors (as you know*). If one wants to look at the positive side to this, it's that the Warriors probably won't make another Maggette type deal before the 18th unless its a smaller contract. They can still get Chris Bosh (I think that would raise Riley into the greatest modern GM in Warriors history status) if he doesn't give up Curry, Monta, both AB/AR or the Warriors # 1 pick (lottery pick). * unless Riley deals Mags for expiring and a pick or something like that
All of the stuff that you mentioned Zhone is interesting and I probably agree with most of what you said. I'm not going to comment here until I hear what the NBA comes up with. We're headed for another lockout because it's tough to see what the players will accept the things the owners are talking about. My basic stance is that unions have a place in our society, but it's not good if they get too powerful either. Of course, it's not good if the owners (corporations or politicians) get too powerful, too. We need to keep the system in checks and balances. EDIT: To change the subject a bit, would the threat of a lockout make Cohan want to sell or not?
Just curious, JV -- how do you know this? Wouldn't Cohan just say to Riley "No, you can't make a big deal." He's the one who signs the checks...?
Sorry about the super long paragraphs but they actually were intended to argue about "Warriors looking for a star" because they'd impact how trades would get made and expiring contracts's worth. But onto the questions posed more recently: Cohan's decision basically says that the Warriors are NOT looking for a star this season. Benefit of the doubt would say that he's looking ahead, trying to free up cap room for the future, but we all know Cohan doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt. So what's his real reason? Keep in mind I have 0 proof, but here's my take: He cut Speedy to make sure he got the insurance money from Speedy's contract. Rowell/Cohan have the last say in all basketball operations, like Alleyoop said, they could have just said "no deal." So why else make the move? On the surface, the Speedy thing still makes no business sense unless there was a buyout in terms of saving money, which wasn't reported to be, it was a straight waiver (which could have been incorrectly reported, but still). So you pay a guy the full amount if you waive him, minus insurance costs. Maybe Cohan had some kind of agreement under the table with Speedy? He wouldn't get the insurance if Speedy could play, even a little. Pay Speedy under the table a little extra, tell him not to play, and waive him knowing that he wouldn't have to go through a physical and try to play again when he got to the other team? I know that sounds underhanded, but like I said, there's no other reason. Plus, it's Cohan. Again, it can't be because he didn't want to agree to any trades, because even if press got word of him declining some big deal and more people get mad at him/denouncing him for it, but people are mad at him already because they can put 2+2 together with Claxton being cut in the first place, so that can't be it. So he saves money out of his own pocket (by getting money from the insurance).
I met someone who knows LR (I'll just use his initials here). No, a president or owner would not do that because then he would be interfering with LR doing his job. Usually, the GM would get an agreement in principle and then take the deal to his boss for sign off. Usually, it would be a formality unless it was a huge deal. The way Cohan did it in this situation was he treated the contracts as expiring and just expired them sooner than later. Something he could do because it regarded finances. Yeah, they were about trades, too, but Cohan wanted to tie LR's hands after his big deal fell through (Chris Bosh?). It also made LR look dumb and a bad guy, but I don't think Cohan meant to do that. Cohan should have know better. LOL. Basically, the guy told me that the way the Warriors operate now is different from the way they operated with Mullin as VP. Mullin as VP had more autonomy and secrecy in his operations. One thing I should mention here. The Warriors have always been a more secretive organization than other organizations, such as the Sacramento Kings, where the VP, GM or owner goes on radio or TV and talks about the team. If you remember Mullin, he didn't discuss the details of what he was going to do. He did talk about it in generalities like we fill a position or we still believe in somebody like MDJ. One of the "problems" with Mullin was that he took a long time to evaluate the personnel he had. Sometimes too long. He also gave them too long a leash. The other "problem" with Mullin was he was too close to the players and too loose in his contract negotiations. The things he told me was that Cohan did not think Mullin was a good GM because of the above. Of course, he did not say it to Mullin, but it led to tensions between them. Rowell talked for Cohan, so one can just assume that when talking with Rowell, he was talking with Cohan. Mullin did not pal around with Rowell or Cohan. I sort of got the impression that Mullin was more cavalier, I'm not sure what the word I'm looking for here, but he did not treat Rowell or Cohan as someone who knew the "ins and outs" of NBA basketball. He respected them as his bosses, but they just did not know about the NBA as he did. One thing I want to interject here is one has to take a more critical look at how Mullin did things. He was a very popular player and VP, so he got away with a lot of things that LR is not able to. For example, some people are already calling for LR's head over losing Speedy's expiring contract while no such thing happened after the huge contracts Mullin handed out his first year. Fans thought Mullin was dumb in regards to the contracts he negotiated, but they weren't calling for his job. So in that regard, this guy blasted Mullin as one of the worst executives the Warriors ever had. He said it was hard for fans to look at it that way because of Mullin being Mullin. The other big thing between Mullin and Rowell (Cohan) was the Baron Davis deal. For whatever reason, Cohan did not want to extend Baron. He liked Stephen Jackson more, but Jackson ended up stabbing him in the back. It's all water under the bridge now, but Mullin went over Cohan's head to negotiate a deal with Baron. That's why he was ousted. It had nothing to do with Nelson, but Mullin being a bad VP/GM. It was all Mullin's doing. As for Baron, Mullin was wrong about him. He never became the all-star type player that he was capable of becoming (in hindsight). I'll say one thing for Cohan. He was not right about a lot of things, but he was right about Mullin and right about Baron just like a broken clock is right twice a day. EDIT: Here's an article on VP Mullin's transactions: http://www.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/sports/kings/archives/016852.html
