The Summer of Silliness...

So we’re right in the thick of it folks.  Sports as culture again.  Silly culture.  

Welcome back to the Underdogs.

It’s been the summer of labor strife in sports, with two of the three most popular leagues in this country having extended work-stoppages.  It hasn’t been for games or scores that people have been tuning into ESPN, it's been for updates on meetings and deliberation; it’s lawyers and their technical jargon.   The NFL famously took 5 months to figure out how to fairly split about 9 Billion Dollars.  But in spite of their "lockout," no one really thought for a second that any of the 2011-12 season would be missed in the NFL.  The NBA however, is a different story.

For those of you that don't know about the NBA labor situation right now, I'll sum it up here… the roof is about to cave in.  No one is sure exactly how this happened, but somehow, over the last 20 years in the NBA, money started getting thrown around like it was Mardi Gras… like every day!  The owners did a pretty good job of reigning things in a little bit, in the late 90’s when they successfully implemented a rookie-salary scale and maximum salaries for veterans, which worked very well when it came to dealing with the great players.  But where the league has failed (and astronomically so) in the last decade has been in dealing with the middle class.  For the past 12 years, middle tier players in the NBA have been extremely over-paid.  The players have been winning big!

The last time Stan Van Gundy smiled this close to Lewis

Now this blog in particular has been admittedly guilty of raking the likes of say, Brian Scalabrine - (what's up Big Red?) over the proverbial coals during the last couple years.  And while he was an Awesome example of the NBA’s ridiculous propensity to overpay players, he was really only the tip of the ice-berg.  Basically, the agents have the ruled the league for the last twenty years.  They are soooo good at negotiating.  They’ve had teams bidding against each-other, and sometimes inexplicably, bidding against themselves.  Yes, I’m talking to you Orlando Magic GM, Otis Smith.  Remember when you signed Rashard Lewis for 6 years, ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN MILLION DOLLARS?  Which some reporters said was something like 20 Million Dollars more than any other team in the league could have offered him.  What?  Who was Otis Smith bidding against?  Not to mention the fact that he wasn’t worth even HALF of that.  Where is the accountability for these guys?  Why didn’t the Magic owner fire Otis Smith for gross incompetence?  Although it shouldn’t really be surprising.  (Isiah made even worse deals and still managed to stay with the Knicks about three horrendous seasons too long.)  At least Smith’s Magic have been contending during his time in office, something Isiah could never say.  (Well actually, he's so clueless he probably would say it!)    

Anyway, fast-forward five years and the league hasn’t seen any drop off in these Rashard Lewis types of deals, even while the owners have been lamenting huge financial losses.  Comically overpaid role players become albatrosses on team’s salary caps on day one, and basically become immediately untradeable.  But the league has pretty much been treating these signings as a regrettable, but ultimately inevitable phenomenon.  It's just been business as usual.  The agents have been in charge, and the NBA owners have been their own respective worst enemies, willingly driving up player prices. 

So the whole reason for this lockout is so the owners can try for wholesale changes in the amounts of money they can pay players in the new Collective Bargaining Agreement.  They basically need to be protected from themselves; really from their own collective stupidity.  But oddly, given the way the rules are now, it’s understandable.  Well, unless you are a player, I guess.  They don’t seem to understand it at all.  They don’t want to give up their sweet deal.  (57% of overall Basketball Related Income, off the top.  Before expenses are taken out.)  Or at least, they’d like to keep more of it (they offered 54.7%.  Owners want 50%.)

Curry ATE himself out of the league

It seems to me that 57% is way too much for the players, because the owners have to spend money to make that money, and the players don’t.  So for them to get a percentage of Gross revenue (as opposed to net revenue) doesn’t make any sense.  But even if they sort that out, the other major sticking point is that the owners want shorter contract lengths.  Y’know, to protect themselves from paying players that don’t perform up to snuff; (like our friend Rashard Lewis… or Eddie Curry, or Gilbert Arenas, or Hedo Turkoglu, or Elton Brand.)  Those guys all made about 10 million dollars too much last year… each!  And those guys just came off of the top of my head.  There are dozens more just like em.  So, the owners are saying to the players, “look, we want to guarantee you guys 50% of revenue; probably around $2 Billion a year.  We will have to pay you guys this!  The individual contracts just determine which players get what piece of the pie.  We want to pay the players that deserve it, instead of having all this this dead (and expensive) weight at the end of the bench.”  I have to admit that this makes sense to me.    

But it seems that the players don’t want to hear it.  At all.  Because they want that chance to sign a huge “career” contract.  Y’know the old saying right?  "You too can be Kevin Garnett.”  I guess I understand that too.  They have to get what they can, while they can.  

So sadly, it seems like this is where the two sides will sit for a while.  Maybe a couple more months, maybe six more.  Maybe a year.  With each side just sitting back waiting for the other side to budge.  And of course, that means that there might not be NBA basketball this season.  Ugh, it’s a horrible prospect to be sure.  I don't even want to think about it... well, anymore, that is.

I feel like all we can do now is hope that somehow these guys can work it out (because it would be nice to have Hoops this year) but we have to just leave it at that.  The fans don't factor in at all when it comes to this stuff.  It's up to them, and there's the rub.  Hopefully they'll get a deal done though because there's too much at stake!  The NBA wouldn't squander one of their best years ever by actually missing games the following season would they?  (Well... this has been the Summer of Silliness.  Let's just hope that's where it stays.)

And in the meantime, whataya say we move on from this gloominess... let's do some football!
NCAA this weekend, NFL next.  Life is good!

Thanks for reading.

Underdogs OUT