<div class="quote_poster">Quoting King James:</div><div class="quote_post">Because millions and millions of people a year are not paying to see them, come on now, you are smarter than that.</div> Yes there are. Do you know how many people go to law school each year? And even if they weren't you know that there are plenty of other counter-examples of businesses that disprove your point. Don't be so picky. If we are going to discuss this be academically honest and realize they there are plenty of underpaid people more deserving than NBA players.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Trail_Blazer76:</div><div class="quote_post">Yes there are. Do you know how many people go to law school each year? And even if they weren't you know that there are plenty of other counter-examples of businesses that disprove your point. Don't be so picky. If we are going to discuss this be academically honest and realize they there are plenty of underpaid people more deserving than NBA players.</div> What ever floats your boat, money does not grow on trees.
The sole reason NBA player's are paid as high as they are is not soley due to the fact that they are good/great players. Think about how much the money the team generates from marketing the player's image on posters..jerseys..figurines...shirts..the pay isn't just based on a player's potential or abilities.
Both of you guys are right in your own way... Like I said earlier, what it comes down to is simple supply and demand...if there are people willing to buy $80 jerseys and $100 tickets, then the NBA salaries will continue to be high... NBA players don't neccessarily deserve their salaries, but they are entitled to it...
It depends on what you compare an NBA player to. If you compare them to a regular job, or even an executive position, you would come to the conclusion they are obviously overpaid. If you compare them to other entertainment industries such as 1st tier actors or TV stars or NBA owners, then you might consider them underpaid. As far as the teacher debate, here's my 2 cents on it. In most cases I think teachers are underpaid, however I've always questioned the intentions of people who become teachers. In college I found the best teachers were the ones, who came from a successful work history and decided to teach as an after thought to give back to future students, I believe the term is Self Actualization. Then you have the teachers who were not ambitious enough to make it in the real world, yet preach to students on what they need to do to make it. These were the lazy teachers and the ones content on doing the bare minimum in their curriculum and not challenging students. These are the teachers who regurgitate the text books and give you scantron tests from test banks. These lazy teachers deserve to be paid low.
i think king james made a perfect point on that. "99% of you would not last through a morning shoot around without your remote and twinkie, let alone off season working out, preseason games, regular season, playoffs, international play, the flying, the bumps and bruises, and the money, fame, and responsibility (women too) It is not "just basketball" i gotta agree wit king
If you live in a capitalist society, and like it, you have to live with the simple reality of supply and demand. Supply and demand is what dictates what EVERYONE gets paid, including NBA players. It has nothing to do with anyone personally. The demand for big name free agents went up, so guess what, the price goes up. That's capitalism. The NBA tries to buck this system by creating a salary cap. But they haven't capped ticket prices or what they charge to have games on television. If the NBA operated the way the rest of society does, the players would make even more money, because there are enough fans in the U.S. willing to pay more and more for the product. Either quit complaining or move to Cuba.
I would say they are overpaid but since the owners overearn too they have no choice but to overpay their players. If I were an owner, I would pay an Allan Houston contract to a player that: wills my team to win and draws sell-out crowd... and the two players that seem to fit are LBJ and KB8 in my book.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting King James:</div><div class="quote_post">LMAO, how does an owner overearn anything? </div> lol, Believe it or not, that's actually possible...I'm not really gonna try to explain it...it has to do with inflation and overheated economies, stabilizing by rasing taxes, etc...
athletes are paid what the market will bear...believe me, if the teams could not pay them those contracts they would not do it. i always find the discussions comparing entertainers to regular people with regular jobs misguided. i won't even go into justifying it by saying how hard nba players train, because it has nothing to do with the economics. it's capitalism 101: the money you make has nothing to do with how long or how hard you work, it has to do with how much value you produce. brad pitt, ben affleck, denzel washington, jim carrey, etc, get 20 million per movie, maybe spend 2 months shooting and another month promoting it, but then the movie makes 100 or 200 million at the box office. same with athletes, they get paid because they bring fans in, sell jerseys, shoes, etc. a teacher gets paid according to the tuition a school is able to charge per student - or tax raised, if it's a public school - we all would like to see them getting paid for the hypothetical value of the education they give, but that would not be a reflection of reality - for if school districts raised the taxes threefold so that teachers get paid six figures, taxpayers would revolt. as fans we want lower ticket prices, but as long as there are other fans paying, the prices won't go down. we would also like ferraris to cost less so that we all could buy one, but then they would be hyundais. i once asked someone who works with a certain professional team why won't they lower ticket prices when the arena was undersold, his answer was: "believe it or not, we make more money if we sell x number of seats at those prices than if we sell a small percentage more at a lower price" because lowering the prices did not dramatically increased the number of fans coming to the games. by the way, the president's salary was raised recently to 400,000 a year. on top of that he gets free housing, free transportation, free clothing and free entertainment, all first-quality. for their four or eight years they don't shell a dime of their own money. after they retire they make millions in appearance and speaking fees, serving on corporation's boards, books deals, etc. i for one, won't criticize anyone for taking what their employer willingly gives them. i've never turned down a raise. granted it's ridiculous what some players do with their money, but also think that it gets a lot less ink than their charitable work - and it's less glorified. shaq is on mtv cribs showing off his mansions, cars, jewelry, etc, but i've never seen a show about how manute bol spent all his money supporting hospitals in his native country. instead people made fun of him when he was in celebrity boxing. david robinson build a school with his own money, zo has a huge charity event every year in miami, many other players set up foundations, etc, examples abound, but that doesn't make good copy.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting King James:</div><div class="quote_post">LMAO, how does an owner overearn anything? Sounds to me like a lot of jealousy going on here.</div> yeah it's a ridiculous statement. "overearning" is an oxymoron. no wonder he can't explain it - if he can i would love to hear those "overheated economy" theories
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting cubanballer:</div><div class="quote_post">yeah it's a ridiculous statement. "overearning" is an oxymoron. no wonder he can't explain it - if he can i would love to hear those "overheated economy" theories</div> wtf?? are you referring to me? I said basically the same thing as you...someone else said the NBA was "overearning"...all I said was that there is actually such a thing... if you want me to explain it, I gladly will...it will bore everyone here to death tho
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting notMuchgame:</div><div class="quote_post">wtf?? are you referring to me? I said basically the same thing as you...someone else said the NBA was "overearning"...all I said was that there is actually such a thing... if you want me to explain it, I gladly will...it will bore everyone here to death tho</div> you or whoever said overearning, never heard of such a thing. if can't explain it concisely it's fine, we'll just have different opinions.
Yeah i started the whole "overearn" thing. There should never be this term, because the more you earn the happier you are. But what I mean by this is owners who are not losing money each year (like the Nets are losing $$$ believe it or not despite two straight Finals appearances) and making crazy money like Kings and Lakers should pay their players their money because without them the owners earn nothing...
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting cubanballer:</div><div class="quote_post">you or whoever said overearning, never heard of such a thing. if can't explain it concisely it's fine, we'll just have different opinions.</div> Like I said, our opinions are very similar but I?ll explain an overheating economy An overheating economy is when the economy is growing too fast. It's happening in China right now... When an economy is growing too fast (overheating), inflation tends to skyrocket?In those instances, the gov?t steps in and tries to deliberately slow down the economy by implementing ?Contractionary Fiscal Policies.? What they do is decrease government expenditures and increase taxes with the hope of decreasing aggregate demand and thus controlling inflation. The Feds also have the ability to slow down the economy by implementing ?Contractionary Monetary Policies.? What they do is increase their sales of gov?t securities and raise the interest rate. The sales of gov?t securities will decrease the money supply. Less money = lower prices?Higher interest rates = less borrowing, therefore less business ventures. Right now, we are experiencing the complete opposite?Our economy has been in recession for the last couple of years. That has made Bush cut taxes in order to stimulate growth. The Feds have lowered interest rates like crazy also?so if you gonna borrow money, now is the best time? any of you guys still awake??
how does that apply to basketball economics? there's no "fed" in basketball. other than salary cap regulations which are pretty generous, nobody tells the owners how much they can spend or not, how much they can charge for tickets or concession items or parking. if cuban or allen want to pay the luxury tax they are free to do so. the only legue that has firm control of its economics is the nfl (no guaranteed contracts, parity, profit sharing). there's probably as many teams in the nba that lose money as there are that make money or break even. which owner is "overearning"?
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting notMuchgame:</div><div class="quote_post">any of you guys still awake??</div> I am actually enjoying this talk...backs up everything I was saying :mrgreen: But great work by everyone, I commend you all.
