pro commentary

SoCalHoops Commentary

What If They Had A Season And Nobody Came?--(Jan. 7, 1999)

The question above almost got answered this year. Guess we'll never really know the answer. Unless the fans are the ones who don't show. And we'd bet pretty heavily against that. No matter how badly we, the fans, all feel we've been treated.

We rarely write about pro basketball at SoCalHoops. And during the labor strike/lockout, we've written about it even less. And certainly thought about it less than in any other year prior to this one. But yesterday's vote by the player's union to accept the "compromise" proposal got us thinking. Just like it probably got a lot of you thinking: What the hell was the strike all about, and does anyone really care now that it's over?

The strike was basically about money. Ok, you already knew that. It really was about revenue splitting and a salaray cap for the biggest and best players. Basically, the owners got what they wanted which was to limit costs or at least to make them a bit more certain, and to achieve that there is now a maximum player salary of $14 million per season for veterans with more than 10 years of experience. Of course this won't apply to Michael Jordan (assuming he comes back at all) because there's a grandfather clause which allows players like him to sign with a team they've played for the previous season for 105% of the prior year's salary. As for revenue sharing, for the first three years, there's no limit on the percentage of revenues players can receive, but during the fourth-sixth year of the deal (basically until the year 2006) the players will get 55% of the revenue from the operation of the league. In the seventh year, the players will get 57% if the league excercises certain options which are really way too technical to go into here.

On the salary level, for players with 1-5 years of experience, the most they can make in a season is $9 million. Ouch. Oooh. I'm crying. In years 5-9 the most a player can earn is $11 million, and with 10 or more years, there's a limit of $14 million. There's a bunch of stuff about ""average" salary exceptions and "median" salary exceptions which will be phased in over the next three years, but the basic salary cap exception will be that a team has the right to sign two additional players each season even if they exceed the salary cap. . . Wow, an exception which doesn't favor the small-market teams. What a novel concept. And really, from the owners' perspective, that's what a lot of this was about, parity among clubs, revenue sharing by all, and predictable expenses. Only one problem with the concept. If you've got players who believe they are "worth" what the market will bear, then how do you limit the market and continue to give them incentive to play?

Well, is that really a realisitc question, given the fact that we're talking about guys who earn more in one year than you or I will make in a lifetime? Probably not. What the strike and the lockout should have been about was raising the league minimum. That's what union's do. They raise minimums. They don't impose maximums. Now if the league or a team can't compete, the answer is that it fails. Goes out of business. Kaput. Maybe not such a bad thing. Really. Maybe parity isn't such a good thing after all. Way too many "superstars" and no one who really is. Ah, but this is getting way too deep in these tepid waters. Again, we ask the question: Does anyone really give a good hoot about the NBA. Haven't we done just fine without them?

Well, we for one miss the action, the great plays, the Laker girls, yeah, even the Clipper Spirit (what a stupid name). We miss seeing Larry Johnson's gap-toothed grin, Kobe's latest do, and please, someone get Shaq out of the recording studio. . . Now.

While the union and the owners may have reached some compromise between themselves, what kind of concessions and incentives will the owners and players try to give the fans to lure them back? Don't count on many. If you're in LA, you'll have to deal with the economics of the Lakers, who are moving to the Staples Arena next year, who, the day before the strike/lockout was announced actually had the nerve to raise ticket prices, by a lot. A season seat will not cost you close to $100 per game. That's a lot of money with 40 home games. Will they continue to try to go with the previously imposed raise now that the season will start up again around Feb. 1? Who knows. Will Donald Sterling ever hire a real coach? Who knows. Will Michael Olowakandi ever come back from Europe (see, we told you two days before it was public that he was signing in Europe. . . we've got our sources)? Who knows. These and many other pressing questions (yawn) need to be answered. Really. They need to be answered. Well, they'll be answered all right, but just not by us, because we haven't really got any better idea than any of you.

Our favorite article of the day on the subject of the NBA "agreement" and the union appeared in the LA Times this morning, and it concerned Marvin Miller, who was the architect of the first strike in professional sports, who served as the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players' Association in 1972. His words about the strike by the NBA players, and the resulting lockout, made perhaps the most sense, when he said that the NBA players' union cheated its members by caving in to the demands of the owners to further limit salaries. "A union exists to establish an acceptable minimum on wages, not to set a maximum," he said. "It is clearly not the function of a union to say, 'Even though the employer would like to pay my members more, I'm going to agree as a union that it can't,' " Miller said. "The union in that case, instead of an instrument to improve wages, hours and working conditions, becomes an instrument for saying, 'You can only get something less than the employer, or the clubs, would pay you if no union existed at all.' "To limit the salaries that are paid to a level below what management would pay if there were no union is ridiculous." Miller was perhaps speaking of players who are of the caliber of Michael Jordan, and for such superstars, the response to a union would be free-enterprise, i.e., let the player earn as much as the market will bear. But that's not how the players union responded. In fact, by agreeing in concept with the revenue sharing and the cap, the union really became virtually a clone of the owners. Sure they wanted more than the owners wanted to pay collectively, but by agreeing to the cap, and then having to deal with the reality of the arbitrator's decision that the owners didn't have to pay guaranteed contracts during the lockout, the union was doomed from the start.

But Miller has another good point, one echoed by Bill Plaschke today in the Times: He said the fans who undoubtedly will swear off the NBA and call for a boycott of games are not being realistic. "To say you are not going to go to a game because there was a labor dispute," said Miller, who retired from the baseball union in 1982, "makes about as much sense as saying, 'I'm never going to take another subway or bus because there have been local transportation strikes,' or, 'I'm never going to allow my garbage to be picked up because the sanitation people in my city have been on
strike.' "It's just absurd."

Plaschke didn't put it quite so bluntly, but he did describe the situation in similar fashion by saying, just because the curtain goes up late, doesn't mean we still can't enjoy the show. Of course he said a lot more, and if you want to read it go to the Times' website.

The really tough part for the league is now just starting. Soon after this lockout began, six months ago and a half-billion dollars later in lost wages, fans overwhelmingly told anyone who cared to ask them that they didn't give a rats rear-end about whether there was pro basketball or not. Everybody said "Great." They'd watch college games. They'd go to high school games. They'd even watch one of the most hard to watch sports in the world, hockey (at least in our opinion) Nobody really believed either side would walk away from what was roughly a half-share of a $2 billion pie. And everyone who believed that was correct.

The funniest bit about the strike: The NBA The TV networks that paid millions of dollars and missed out on NBA games during the lockout will be fully compensated. Really. And, of course, they'll still have the playoffs. NBC and Turner Sports will each be reimbursed by the league -- either financially or with replacement games, and NBC already has canceled nine telecasts, plus the February 14 All-Star game, so they won't have to incur any expenses. The network, which signed a 4-year, $1.75 billion deal prior to this season, is expected to receive its money back for the missed games during the next three years. Turner paid $178 million a year for four seasons and will miss about 50 games. But it will try to insert about 20 games into the remainder of this season's schedule. Fox Sports Net took the biggest hit during the lockout. With rights to 26 of the 29 NBA teams, it has replaced pro basketball games with regional classics and other low-rated programs. But all in all, from what we hear, the Ziffren, Brittenham, Branca & Fischer guys (good job Sam) did one hell of a piece of contractual representation when they cut that deal, protecting the networks against just such an event.

So what's going to happen next? Will anyone go out and watch Shaq play with Kobe, Derek and will Elden get traded finally? Will Del get fired? Will the Clippers ever make it down the street to a real arena? And will anyone really care about whether the NBA survives? Sure. It will be business as usual. Because, setting aside the money, the contracts, the endorsements, the trading cards, the merchandise, arenas and luxury box sales, it's still, at it's purest and simplest, about a game.

Now if they would only allow zone defense, things would get interesting.

See you at the game.