Re: Good!

[Kim Malo <kmalo19@idt.net>]

At 07:05 AM 11/5/98 PST, "Jim Meninno" <jim_meninno@hotmail.com> wrote:
>The players may not have been disgruntled, but then they were not living 
>under the old agreement either (neither side was).  Remember, the old 
>agreement called for salaries to stay under 53% of revenues.  

Well, not quite. It allowed for a renegotiation if they rose above that. Not
an outright ban on their doing so. So yes, the players were living under the
old agreement. The individual players don't care about the league net
anyways, just their piece of it.

>>the owners -not the players or agents- initiated a lockout to try to 
>>force the league into protecting them from the consequences of their 
>>own stupidity. Players and agents can demand until they're blue in 
>>the face, but unless someone gives in to their demands all it gets 
>>them is, well, blue in the face. I'm not saying the owners should 
>>'just say no' to all such demands, because it isn't that simple. 
>>Look at all the vilification of Gaston here for daring to object to 
>>AW's idea of fair compensation or the Timberwolves situation where 
>>the owner overrode McHale's refusal to give in to Garnett because he 
>>needed to draw fans to keep his newborn franchise afloat.
>
>If you're not saying the owners should 'just say no', then what is your 
>solution.  I don't think you can leave salaries to market forces and 
>retain competitive integrity.  Rich owners will spend more.  That has 
>always been the case, but virtually unrestrained free agency now means 
>that only rich teams ever win anything.  Games need rules to make 
>competition fair, and that is true off the court as well as on it. Isn't 
>it ironic that the players are willing to sacrifice some of their free 
>agency rights, eg. longer rookie contracts, to avoid a hard cap.  The 
>players union and the agents are trying to sell us that there can be an 
>unrestrained free market for players without the game and competition 
>suffering.  It's not true.  It's not about saving the owners from 
>themselves, but setting rules so they can fairly compete against each 
>other.  

I stated my thoughts badly, creating confusion here. What I meant was I'm
not one of those people saying the answer is simple and all in the owners'
hands -they just have to refuse to pay these guys. Sounds good, but life
isn't that simple.

Of course I think that owners should not let themselves be held hostage to
outrageous demands. And by outrageous, I don't necessarily mean pure dollars
so much as how it relates to the player's true worth (don't give me market
value, as it's usually raised comparing players not at all similar or saying
one contract has set the market for everyone) and what the consequences
would be of paying it. I refuse to knock MJs last couple megadeals because
he directly brings the money in himself and they didn't hurt his team's
chances of competing. If lesser players or those who only have that will o'
the wisp -potential- to offer think they deserve the same simply because
someone else got it, then we're moving into outrageousness. Don't find the
players 'giving in' on the rookie contract thing all that ironic because of
course the players leading things aren't remotely affected by that and more
money paid to near rookies means less for them.

It occurs to me that you're taking what I'm saying as being on the players'
side in this, which is far from true. But the owners aren't as blameless as
you make it. They ARE making profits. They HAVE been dishonest about hiding
revenue so it doesn't get included in the BRI. Their concern is mostly over
reductions in the amount of profits they make, *not* over trying to turn a
profit at all. They want a rule change that will limit salaries so that when
they refuse to pay they can blame that rule, rather than incurring public
blame for being cheap (see Gaston again) and losing fans who take it as a
sign they aren't interested in winning. That's how the 3 year rookie
contracts happened in the first place -owners wanted to be saved from paying
out 10 year deals to busts, or at least guys who weren't worth the deal.
That created new fiscal pressure, so now they need another rule change
rather than just using some business sense. Long history of the owners
looking for rule changes like that to save them from their own stupidity.
That's collective stupidity, BTW, because the problem is that if one
refuses, he knows that 3 others will happily step up.

The real problem to the fiscal situation isn't free market, hard cap or any
other issue usually brought up. It's the guaranteed contracts. Exceptional
players don't lose their fire to prove themselves when they get the money,
but too many do. And the guaranteed contracts are the real handcuffs
restricting player transactions  and limiting owners' profits. Think they'd
be whining so much about needing a hard cap if they could cut players when
money got tight or the player didn't look worth it, without still having to
pay them every dollar?
Players have a right to ask for all they can get. Right to ask, not
necessarily to receive. And owners have a right to make a reasonable profit.
Problem is that both sides are so greedy that those have become mutually
exclusive and both sides add insult to injury by expecting us to feel sorry
for them as they do their best to screw each other and us the fans (if they
even think of us except as mugs to manipulate, which is open to doubt).
Sorry, I've little sympathy for either side.

-Kim
Kim Malo
kmalo19@idt.net