1. The 2011 Lockout That Hasn't Happened Yet
Oh, but it's coming. Fading power broker David Falk was the first to play it up publicly; hoping to stir interest in his new book, he happily played the doomsday card
in a New York Times feature Sunday. (Sadly, none of the chapters in Falk's book is called, "How I Convinced
Elton Brand To Stab The Clippers In The Back And Sign With Philly So People Would Think That I'm Not Washed Up As A Super-Agent, Even Though I Am.") But you know what? That conniving has-been nailed it when he called the NBA's current system "broken." The revenue-sharing system dictates specific thresholds for the cap and tax, which is fine as long as revenue doesn't drop dramatically with teams already tied into unsavory player contracts through 2010, 2011 or, in Philly's case with Brand, 2075 (or maybe it just feels that way to Sixers fans).
Think of the arrangement like this: Let's say my deal with ESPN.com were tied directly to revenue pulled in by the Web site. Let's say ESPN paid me $5 million a year for each of the past four years, and I felt pretty good about staying there with that number. Let's say I hired 10 interns and locked them into deals for $100,000 apiece through 2012 (thinking I could easily make those payments because the total each year was only one-fifth of my salary). Then, let's say ESPN told me this coming December, "We got crushed by the economy and our revenue is way down, so your 2010 salary will be $950,000."
Well, what do I do? I already owe more money than I'm making just in 2010. Because I mistakenly projected what salary numbers I THOUGHT I COULD PAY and never anticipated my revenue would drop that dramatically, basically, I'm screwed. (Hold on, three exclamation points coming.) Welcome to the NBA's world!!! Teams are locked into swollen contracts that suddenly make no sense, whether it's non-franchise players making franchise money (
Vince,
T-Mac,
Shaq,
Brand,
Baron,
Jermaine O'Neal,
Dalembert,
Okafor, etc.) or overpaid role players making six to 600 times what they
should be making (
Marko Jaric,
Nazr Mohammed,
Larry Hughes, Radmanovic, Mo Peterson, etc.). In the irony of ironies, the league finally learned something that fans knew all along -- nobody was buying a ticket to see the likes of
Luol Deng,
Gerald Wallace or
Corey Maggette, much less
Tim Thomas or
Andres Nocioni. With the cap/tax thresholds slipping, teams can't dodge them by dumping overpaid mistakes like when Phoenix bribed Seattle to take
Kurt Thomas' contract and two No. 1 picks last year. Someone In The Know told me that 20 of the 30 NBA teams will lose money this season … and we haven't even come close to hitting rock bottom yet. Just wait until next season.
Which brings us to the Lockout That Hasn't Happened Yet. Unless the players' association agrees to major concessions by the summer of 2011 -- highly doubtful because that would involve applying common sense -- the owners will happily lock out players as soon as the current CBA expires, then play the same devious waiting game from the summer of 1998. David Stern will grow another scruffy beard. The owners will plant their feet in the sand, grab the tug-of-war rope and dig in. Only this time, they KNOW they will win. See, we learned a dirty little secret in the last lockout: An inordinate number of NBA players live paycheck to paycheck. Yes, even the guys making eight figures a year. You can play high-stakes poker with them … and you will win.
