I don't think he can be extended after the trade deadline, and there is no CBA whenever the current one expires (June?). So he risks any guaranteed money if he gets injured between the trade deadline and the new CBA is done (after a strike/lockout, likely). Who knows? Maybe the next CBA doesn't have guaranteed contracts at all.
How many players have gotten injured as FAs and lost money? Melo is good enough and marketable enough that Nets would probably give him a max deal even if he tore his ACL tripping over his dog and had to sit on the bench for a year.
Thank you. It's pretty obvious that top-end players are already underpaid. For example, Lebron would get paid a hellva a lot more if there was no max salary. I think the MLE is in a lot more danger than the max salary for teams under the cap.
I know exact dollar amounts are an impossibility, but is there any indication that player salaries are not going to go down? The other extreme (hard cap, no guaranteed salary) seems a lot more likely. Max players are a small minority of the players union, and a cap on large contracts would be an easy way to concede a lot of money to owners without burdening too many players. Per the 60M dollar comment.....I concede, I just pulled the number off the top of my head. But if you take a few of the dour-but-still-realistic scenarios for player salaries, and compare the max contracts now and then, in some cases the number is probably accurate. In any case, it's a difference of tens of millions of dollars, at least in guaranteed money. Everything I've read about behavioral finance suggests that when people are faced with apples to apples scenarios, they're risk-averse. Carmelo's best case scenario is that he can trade a dollar for a dollar, a more likely scenario is that he'll trade a dollar for $.70 (or something like that). If that makes him nervous, then I'd think we're doomed. In terms of preferred destinations, I don't think second place (us) has much of an advantage over 5th or 6th. If he becomes willing to trade money for location, it opens the barn door to a slew of teams that have more to offer than we can.
Just to add another thought....it's the maximum paid players that have a lot more leverage than a middle of the road player. If Lebron and Rose and Melo and Howard got pissed off and talked to investors and started their own league, that's a threat. Aaron Affalo and Ronnie Brewer and CJ Watson aren't.
If Melo's "probably burned through all the money he's made so far" as you suggest above, how risk-adverse would he be? Isn't his crew whispering in his ear that he could be the KING of NEW YORK?
On the other side...It is interesting that Melo's agent is quite likely to really be selling him on signing now. Guaranteed x % of at least $60M.
You've got a point. I'm far from an expert on labor negotiation stuff, but in the past I believe max salaries were an easy target to whittle away at. Star players definitely have more influence than run of the mill guys, but within the union, I have no idea if they have more, less, or equal influence than other players. I claim complete ignorance. As for your second comment, I've heard the idea of star players forming their own league before, but I find it unlikely. TV deals, stadium leasing, new labor deals, team jets, training facilities, finding other players to actually make it a league is a tall order to fill in such a short amount of time. Plus, I imagine such an arrangement would have a more pluralistic management dynamic than the David Stern led NBA, which would make it more difficult to get things done quickly. I would bet that that course of action would mean a pay cut greater than if they had accepted a new collective bargaining agreement. But I won't say how much, because last time I used a dollar amount for that type of conjecture it got me in trouble
As you mentioned above, I think one indication of the relative strength of the individual members of the union the current salary structure. The strongest players, perhaps by sheer number, are mediocre but productive veterans, stars are underpaid, and no one really cares about the setup of rookie scale contracts, except to the extent that when they're too underpaid, they displace veterans on rosters.
I've heard the $60M amount floated a lot, and I think the genesis is the same as the sort of "Chris Bosh stands to lose $30M if he doesn't re-sign with the Raptors". The biggest chunk of that amount was simply comparing a 5yr vs. a 6yr deal, and arbitrarily assuming that Bosh (or whomever) would, I guess, be forced to play for free in that sixth year if he didn't re-sign. Really, it's a guarantee of money vs. a high likelihood of money. Rosenthall is exactly right, of course that a 100% chance of something is better than a 90% chance of something. I haven't turned the crank on it though, and my guess is the expected value isn't going to be all that much different between the extending and opting out. It does sound like the NBA is going to make a real push to re-write existing contracts, so what I really think is that today's 100% chance at $60M isn't really a 100% chance. It's still Melo's best option as far as what he can secure today, but if I were him, I wouldn't sweat it too much. Because I'd think to myself that my options are something like: * Sign contract for $X today. There's a 55% chance the new CBA will cram down my contract to Y% of X and only a 45% chance I get to keep the full amount X * Sign as a FA under the new CBA, and am limited to a shorter deal (which increases my risk of injury or loss of value), and smaller contract amounts. That amount will likely be something along the lines of Y% of $X. Because I'm young and very good, the injury risk, I%, is still quite small.
I also wonder who's going to be driving the owners' side of the discussions. The current system seems very geared toward the big market teams, and the small market teams mainly profit from their excess (eg, when the Lakers pay the tax, it's distributed to the Clippers). I'd like to see a less incestuous revenue structure there as well. For that matter, does anyone really dispute that we could probably eliminate 4-6 teams and probably come out ahead? At the margin, those teams have to be losers, at least under the current structure of things. Many, if not most teams, just don't make compelling entertainment that people want to spend money on, and it's not just a matter of the players being too damn expensive. It's a matter of, for example, people here in Indianapolis being years away from anything exciting and worth paying for.
So if we can drub Orlando, with our backup C's handling the best C in the league (Dwight Howard), it seems like we'd do fine if we draw them in the playoffs. Consider that Bogans actually gave us a little bit of offense and we're going to score close to 100. If we had Melo, we'd probably beat them 110-90 or so. 20 point wins are blowouts, guys.
Am I misreading this box score? It says Dwight scored 40 pts and grabbed 15 boards. You guys won but only because Orlando's next best scorer for the night was Gilbert Arenas with 11. If Noah is down there perhaps Dwight is held to a measly 25-30 as well as fewer of those rebounds (5 offensive) and you'll also get a 20 pt blowout. And I think you're thinking far too much in terms of regular season play. The post season is a different animal.
Handling is a relative term. They did enough that the rest of the guys could stay home on the Magic shooters, who, as Sam Smith said, were having trouble with itchy fingers.
How many championships for Wilt? You win games and championships by letting those guys get theirs and outplaying the rest of their players at the other positions. Anyhow, Orlando is one of the teams people point to as one we can't beat without Noah. The box score says different, as does the big lead we had until late in the game, but we still won big. If Noah is out there, he probably draws 2 fouls and is on the bench like he did in this game: http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/201012010CHI.html.
By the way, I'm not claiming that this is real or anything, but I did see someone over at realgm claiming "source" which tells him the Bulls are looking to get Melo without losing Deng, through some multiple trades to pick up pieces that Denver wants, just as NY has been trying. Still hard for me to see what they can do without moving Deng. And this seems to imply not moving Noah, as well, because of the Poison pill provision. Anyway, just a rumor.
