Good point. The players are taking quite a risk. They've lost the plot...it's not them we're interested in. It's the arguing we like. And we can argue just as well over old men playing badly as young men playing well.
Have they been belligerent (in ways the owners/league haven't been)? Possibly, though I doubt that. Fans (by which I mean the majority, not every individual) always side against the players. Fans tend to believe the narrative that it's the players versus the fans (making the fans the "little guy") rather than the reality that it's the owners versus the players (making the players the "little guy"). So why would players, this time, believe they have fan sentiment on their side? Ultimately, I don't think it makes any difference who the fans support, as I said. Both the owners and players are aiming for (and should be aiming for) the very best financial deal they can get. Once the fight is over, the fans will eventually start watching again and the only gains to either side will be what they won in the negotiations. Who the fans "supported" during the play stoppage won't matter a whit. IMO, anyway.
The only reason the majority would be for the owners is that the majority sees the players talking on TV far more than the owners. If the owners got interviewed as much, our opinion of them would drop to the same as of the players. Owners would come off as oafs dependent upon their advisors to do anything.
I'm strongly in favor of the players, which I guess puts me in the minority here. My view is the owners don't have to pay the players big salaries, but they can't help themselves and do. Their position is that the CBA has to protect themselves from themselves. I have no sympathy for that argument, especially since the owners are sophisticated men of wealth. The players are what people pay to see, so some revenue split that nets them at least 50% makes sense. If the teams are required to pay at least $45M in salaries, that's 15 players @ $3M each. There's no rule that says they have to pay any player $15M or more. But they do.
Um, why would fans feel better towards the players for this if it's a tax over which each player has no control? And who gets the money when these tickets are "bought" - the owners, right? Yeah, that's fair. No, if you want to improve the stadium atmosphere, rip out every single luxury box and go back to the way it used to be. And cap every seat cost at $10. And then set all salaries so that they're a % of the profits (as determined by a totally incorruptible cyborg accountant) rather than particular dollar amounts. I'd like to see how the owners would respond to THAT. Of course, what we REALLY need is a communist revolution of players so that the players ARE the owners. Then the owners can feel the players' pain and vice versa.
This issue makes strange bedfellows: I'd wager we're about as far apart on the political spectrum as it's possible to be, but I agree with you on this point. Men of wealth I'll give you. Sophisticated? Not so much. My thing is, why don't the owners see this as a fantastic privilege? They get to OWN a team! It's every fan's wet dream! I don't buy a massive Rolls Royce then start complaining that it's not very fuel efficient and spare parts are expensive. If you don't like it any more, sell it to someone else! When there aren't any buyers, then it's time for contraction. In fact, I think we should make it a rule that you can only own a team for a set amount of time (ten years, say) and then it has to go on the auction block. You can bid for it again, but you have to be the highest bidder to get to keep it. That would get rid of idiots like Donald Sterling, and it would mean that grubby slimeballs like Jerry Buss don't luck into a plum franchise and get to pass it on to their loser kids like they were royalty.
The fans would feel better if it was the players themselves who proposed this idea (as I suggested in my original post). Yes, the owners would get the money but would make concessions in other areas, hopefully large concessions. It's also possible that the players could count this as charitable giving and recoup a lot of it in saved government taxes.
I'm not for the owners or the players, I'm for a new CBA that will allow small mrkt teams to compete (Blazers won't have PA forever). As the old CBA played out, I saw a trend developing of big market teams loading up on "big three" with the climax being Miami. The issues are complex and I'm not going to pretend to know the answers to resolve this, but I hope the new CBA makes it less likely that the NBA will really be about 6 teams with the others just playing the Washington Generals role.
I probably should have used the word "combative", and I'm not saying that the owners are not combative; I'm just saying that when one of the combatants realize they have very little public support, they should be more ready to compromise.
My use of "sophisticated" is along these lines: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/definition-of-sophisticated-investor-varies-2010-04-26
This is in part what I mean when I say I'm for the fans, and by extension the owners. This system is F'd up. The CBA, the trade rules, the super teams and big market dominance, the insane salaries to players who either won't or can't play anymore, the handcuffing of teams when that happens.... Fix it, for the game, for the league, and for the fans. From where I'm sitting way out here in the cheap seats, I see the players as the biggest impediment to that.
From a historical perspective, I am a strong supporter of labor issues. You know, things like having the 40 hour work week, weekends, no child labor, and workplace safety. This labor dispute is not about any of these things which is why I don't have any sympathy for the "workers" in this case. Perhaps it should be called something completely different since calling this argument between the very privileged and the absurdly privileged the same thing as the struggle between coal miners and their bosses is nuts.
I keep reading comments after articles elsewhere, complaining players are overpaid. If you cut the portion going to players, you increase the portion going to owners. Both sides are overpaid now, and both will be after this is settled. It's not a matter of, one side is currently overpaid, so the situation needs to be rectified. What really needs to be done with all this excess money is to have a Federal law requiring teams to fully pay for their own stadii and arenas. No public funding.
I just saw an article in the Charlotte newspaper that said that the NBA needed a "real adult salary cap" and that this would benefit small market teams (like Charlotte). Really? Seems to me that if salaries are capped, then things like state tax rates (like in Florida) or endorsement deals (any large market) will become a lot more important, and players are more likely to be drawn to a certain small minority of favored teams. I guess the idea is that only so many players can fit on the payrolls of those teams and the others have to go elsewhere, so it's a way to limit free agent options. I dunno. He pointed to the NFL as an example of this working, and parity in place, but I have a feeling that that's more to do with the game of football having more variables than the structure of the cap.
I think a hard cap would level out the playing feild in that it would be much more difficult to do the big 3 and stop the trend that I see evetually going to a big 4. But it is complicated. With a hard cap, the big stars will still get thiers, but it could wipe out the "middle class" of the NBA. Teams would consist of a max out player, a few big salary players and a boat load of minimum salary players. I wouldn't want to be the one to have to write up the new CBA, but I'm all with BBert in this system is f-ed up. Many players are overpaid and out of touch with the fans, small market teams are having harder time competing, ticket prices are high while community attachment is low. Lots to grumble about, but here is a good oportunity to try and fix it.
I could not disagree more with this.... Owners have to overpay if they want to remain competitive, or if they actually want to compete for an NBA title. Under your assumption, if it is a bad financial decision to sign or re-sign a star player then the team should just let that player go because they cannot afford him.....so in essence, the rich markets get richer, either that or a team MUST absorb millions in losses just to remain competitive.... I don't feel sorry for owners, I don't think you should be an owner of an NBA team if you are trying to run it to make money, but you shouldn't have to lose money either...But under the current system, if you want a top tier free agent or to resign your top players, in all likelyhood you are going to have to pay a LOT of money to do so...and the NBA is unlike a lot of other sports, where a few REALLY good players can make all the difference.... So, you know, if an owner WANTS to remain competitive, eventually they will have to pay market prices, and those teams in big markets with big revenue or with billionaire owners (hello Paul Allen) are certainly dictating that demand. Under your opinion, you would tell those small market (non billionaire) owners either to accept 2nd class NBA citizenship or quit ownership and both are flat out unacceptable.... So I agree with owners that some sort of protection, against themselves as silly as it sounds (it really is reigning in\stabilizing market forces) is necessary for the league. and quite frankly, I don't have sympathy for players who have long term guaranteed contracts that they get paid on whether or not they actually perform up to them. I don't have a problem with the salaries they make, but I think NBA players have it pretty damm good. I'd rather see something like the NFL, contracts that are non-guaranteed with signing bonuses, that must be EARNED every year via performance. So players have to earn thier salary every year, just like the majority of Americans, and teams have the leeway to waive away players who are not performing to thier contract. Seems to work well for the NFL and league competitiveness is very good. and I would rather see some of the extra money for players given to to strenghten players pension programs, as one major problem I see is players struggling with money after thier playing days are over....
Completely agree and repped! The owners of NBA teams (just like the owner of any other business) take all the financial risk. The players get guaranteed contracts whether they play, produce, or not. For the owners there is no guarantee. They invested in the business, I'm assuming, to make a profit. I don't think the players have a "right" to a certain percentage of that profit. They're just like the rest of us... they're pay should be based on fair market value regardless of how much profit (or loss) the owner takes. These players are well compensated for their work and get a ton of additional perks outside of the paycheck. They are not, in any way, being mistreated or put in danger like a coal miner (or policemen, firemen, military personnel, etc.) . And they are not required to have any higher education like a teacher, doctor, or lawyer is. I understand they work hard to become elite players but so do most of the successful people out in the real world too. If they can make more money in another league so be it... but if they want to play in the NBA they're only going to get paid what the market will bear. If this gets too out of control the fans won't be able to afford tickets anymore and everyone will lose. This isn't a moral issue, it's Capitalism. These players need a reality check... the only way a person can hope to make "unlimited" money is if he is an entrepreneur, not an employee which is basically all the players are - just like the rest of us working fools.
So, out of curiosity, why do you side the with the "absurdly privileged?" I'd agree that the players aren't trying to escape exploitative conditions, ala 19th century coal miners. So what's the wonderful principle the billionaire owners are fighting for that has captured your imagination? The ability not to pay people money that they can't help giving out in the absence of salay caps? If you were neutral, that would be one thing. Your post doesn't do anything to explain why you've decided to support the owners. If the players have "enough wealth" that they shouldn't be whining, that goes even more so for the owners.
