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NBA season, you may have to wait.
- Thread starter obeygiant
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Screw 'em. If they're not happy with the deal the owners are offering, let 'em go get jobs like the rest of us. Maybe they'll change their minds then.
I read somewhere the average NBA career lasts 5 years. If that's true the average player just lost 20% of his stock/income
Players have no leverage so they're gonna give in at the end. They'll just be broker
Players have no leverage so they're gonna give in at the end. They'll just be broker
I'm sad there presumably isn't going to be a season. At least my Mavs will be champions for 24 months now instead! 
And tens of thousands will be unemployed. Team and league offices, arena staff, concessions, bars near venues etc. etc. etc.
As said, billionaires vs. millionaires.
Oh, I know, it's extremely unfortunate that they're in a pissing match over this while leaving all of those other people unemployed. It's millionaires vs billionaires with people who have no say in the matter and who are your average joe making an average (or probably below average) salary getting screwed.
The players and owners should come to an agreement for the sake of the thousands of people who are out of work instead of trying to line their already fat wallets even more.
If only this would spread to every single professional and collegiate sport. Then I wouldn't have to watch any sports anymore when at a friends house.
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And tens of thousands will be unemployed. Team and league offices, arena staff, concessions, bars near venues etc. etc. etc.
As said, billionaires vs. millionaires.
I know you are correct here, but I do know for a fact that almost all, if not all Mavericks team office personnel are being kept and paid full salary- season or not.
That's very nice of Mark Cuban. I don't follow basketball but when the NFL had its lockout, some teams retained and paid their staff.
How far do you carry this?
I work as an engineer in building design, and firms in my industry have been laying off by the thousands for the last three years. Why? Because client firms haven't been building new facilities, even though they have the cash.
Should they be required to spend their money for the sake of people like me who have lost their jobs (or live in danger of doing so)?
Stupid. Nobody has any sympathy for them, even those who normally support labor. Don't be surprised if some jump ship. A healthy and profitable league is as important to the players as the owners. The league will contract if nothing is done and fewer players will have jobs.
Or this all may cause the league to expand overseas. This is the chance to pick off US players and expand the international game. Kobe said he has no problem with playing in Italy.
Or this all may cause the league to expand overseas. This is the chance to pick off US players and expand the international game. Kobe said he has no problem with playing in Italy.
The players seem to forget that the owners have the upper hand in all this. Most of them made their money from sources other than their team. In fact, several of the teams lose money. They can go a lot longer than most players.
I don't know why the players are listening to Kessler. They should've took the deal.
Not like there's another league out there willing to pay them this much anyway, even with a 50/50 split. And for all the talk about playing overseas, if they did most of them would be running back here like Josh Childress.
I heard on ESPN that for every month there are no games, the players throw away something like $400 million.
Yeah, a 50/50 split is pretty sweet. I wish I worked somewhere with that kind of deal.
Boom. Experts (according to ESPN) just stated there will not be a season this year.
What a joke (the players and owners).
What a joke (the players and owners).
Whether it's the NHL, NBA, or MLB, I always found it funny that all these billionaires thought it was a wise investment to buy a sports team. The large majority of NBA teams lose money, and same is true for the NHL.
If anything, the players benefit far more financially than the owners. Nobody gets rich by buying a sports team. You buy one because you're rich and bored.
If anything, the players benefit far more financially than the owners. Nobody gets rich by buying a sports team. You buy one because you're rich and bored.
Whether it's the NHL, NBA, or MLB, I always found it funny that all these billionaires thought it was a wise investment to buy a sports team. The large majority of NBA teams lose money, and same is true for the NHL.
If anything, the players benefit far more financially than the owners. Nobody gets rich by buying a sports team. You buy one because you're rich and bored.
There was a saying in NASCAR: If you want to make a small fortune with a NASCAR team, start with a large fortune.
I'm sure it's been said of other sports and endeavors.
You buy one because you're rich and bored.
That's exactly why the players can't win in this situation - they're negotiating against people that, for the most part, don't particularly give a crap if the season tanks.
There goes my dream of a New York Knicks championship in 2012.
I'm not sure their chances of a title in 2012 have gone down all that much!
It's understandable that people with real jobs would be annoyed with this. And it's disgusting that our society has decided that this skill set deserves six- to eight-figure salaries while the working class beg for work.
Having said that, professional athletes are an unusual group. On a per-employee basis, the teams make far more money off of them than a normal worker provides to their employer. And they don't have options about where to work because there are a set number of franchises who get to choose how many jobs are available. The owners have decided that if they can't cut salaries as much as they want, then the players don't get to work. In any other industry, the NBA would be considered a cartel and doing this would be illegal.
The owners are trying to force the players to agree in advance to not get as much money as the owners are actually willing to pay them. The owners want to be saved from themselves. Not a single one of them has ever been forced to give a huge contract to a player. There is no minimum payroll requirement, so a team can trot out a dozen rookies making the minimum salary if they want to. But no team does this. They can afford to pay the contracts they agree to, but they want a guarantee that they won't have to pay market value. How would you like it if engineers had a maximum salary that was less than some engineers were worth? And your skills will probably decline so fast that you won't be able to do the work ten years from now and you'll need to find a new career?
Whether it's the NHL, NBA, or MLB, I always found it funny that all these billionaires thought it was a wise investment to buy a sports team. The large majority of NBA teams lose money, and same is true for the NHL.
If anything, the players benefit far more financially than the owners. Nobody gets rich by buying a sports team. You buy one because you're rich and bored.
The claim that most of the teams lose money is a lie. It's an accounting trick. Teams claim depreciation from the cost of purchasing a team, even though most of the franchises' values go up over time. So on paper they can claim to lose money, but most teams do not have an operating loss. Even the ones that do are usually playing a shell game by using separate companies that own the arenas, TV rights, etc. The team loses money but the owners' other subsidiaries make big profits. Every corporation does these things and professional sports teams are no different.
There may be a few teams that really are losing money. But if that's the case then why not pay off those owners and eliminate those teams completely? Then the remaining teams would be splitting the pie fewer ways. The answer is that they don't feel they have to. Better to claim you're losing money and it's the players' fault. It's just a money grab.
I would rather athletes not be paid like superstar entertainers, but since that's the world we live in, I would rather the players get paid their market value instead of owners being able to buy a few extra private jets.
Yours is an apples-to-oranges comparison.
As you pointed out, the number of jobs available to players in the NBA is finite - a player in free agency can choose to go to another team, provided that team is willing to pay his asking price, but there's a limit to the number of teams with which he can even negotiate.
In addition, while these teams are in direct competition with each other, the league as a whole has to take steps to ensure some level of parity. This is to keep richer teams like the Knicks, Lakers, Celtics, and Mavericks from simply buying up all the best players and leaving the smaller market teams with the "scraps" - having a handful of strong teams based on their payroll size has been deemed bad for the league.
In my world, engineering firms are in competition with each other both for projects (clients) and labor (employees), but there are far more firms and positions available than the NBA has. As such, market conditions will be able to better ensure that salaries don't grow out of hand. Also, there's nothing in place to keep one firm from growing much larger (and richer) than any other firm, since it generally isn't seen as harmful to have both large and small firms in the industry.
So you're saying that the league needs more revenue sharing? Because that isn't the same thing as saying that players need to be paid less.
And what makes you think the players' salaries are "out of hand"? Their employers sign contracts to pay them those salaries. Professional sports is part of a highly-profitable, multibillion-dollar industry with relatively few employees compared to other industries. And to a much greater degree than in other businesses, the players are the elite in their field. The salaries are "out of hand" in the sense that it's hard to understand why throwing a basketball through a hoop is worth so much money. But they aren't unreasonable considering how much people spend to see them do it.