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Excellent Peter May Article On The Lockout & More
[The Boston Globe Online][Boston.com]
[Boston Globe Online / Sports]
PRO BASKETBALL
Watching baseball, playing hardball
By Peter May, Globe Staff, 10/18/98
The World Series is under way, the final event in what baseballologists
contend has been a dream season, maybe the best ever.
But when the final pitch is thrown, reality again will set in. The sport is in
serious financial trouble in part because there is no way to control player
salaries or profligate owners. That is exactly why the NBA is where it is
today.
You hear and read a lot about the NBA ``learning'' from baseball's mistakes in
1994, when a player strike wiped out the postseason. Yes, the NBA is trying to
learn from baseball's mistakes. But the decade is wrong. They're trying to
stop what happened to baseball in the 1970s, when Marvin Miller drove a pipe
through the owners that still hasn't been dislodged.
Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa et al did a lot for baseball this year. But when the
season ends, you're still seeing an industry losing tens of millions. This
past year, the American League had two-thirds of its teams play under .500 for
two-thirds of the season. You had Triple A-level teams masquerading as big
leaguers in small-market cities.
That is what the NBA wants to avoid, and it feels the only way that can be
done is to establish some correlation between salaries and growth. The former
can't outpace the latter, which is now the case. We're not talking about the
reinstitution of indentured servitude here. Neither side is starving or going
to starve when this is settled.
In fact, it's impossible to feel sympathy for either side. But what's
unmistakable, at least for now, is the owners' determination to regain control
of the game. Baseball didn't do it in the '70s and failed again in the '90s,
when it lost its showcase event and then had to return under the same system
it was trying to change.
The NBA players are not as strong as their baseball brethren and the NBA
owners, with David ``Easy Dave'' Stern riding herd, appear to be more cohesive
than the baseball owners. The NBA owners feel, as Dave Checketts noted this
past week, that baseball blew it by caving in too soon. That won't happen
here; the owners feel this is their last, best, maybe only chance to stop the
runaway train, even if it means missing a season.
The owners aren't making things easy. Checketts's remarks had to be approved
in advance by the NBA. Stern notes that the owners are not publicly trashing
the players, but then submits a proposal to the union that can only be
described as punitive.
The elements from that proposal, the one union chief Billy Hunter called ``an
enormous step back in the process,'' are still on the table. Among them is a
requirement that players with less than six years service who clear waivers
must play in the CBA to keep their guaranteed money. Meanwhile, the team that
waived the player still keeps his rights.
The theory among some player agents was that the proposal was so overloaded
with horrible things that, once they were removed, then maybe the proposed
economic concessions wouldn't be seen as so bad.
But here's another theory. We're still waiting for Dean ``Mr. October''
Feerick to deliver his arbitration decision on whether players with guaranteed
contracts should get paid during the lockout. Any labor lawyer will tell you
that is a slam-dunk: They are not entitled to be paid. Why Feerick has taken a
month to decide this is mind-boggling, unless he either enjoys seeing his name
in the paper or is angry at the NBA for blasting him for the Latrell Sprewell
decision and is making people sweat.
The problem with Feerick, as seen in a couple of his rulings (Sprewell, Dino
Radja) is that he wants to please everyone instead of just making a ruling
based on law and principle. It's hard to see how he can split the baby this
time. But it's harder to see how he could have dragged this out so long, so
who knows?
If he rules for the players, the league will appeal (good luck) and
re-challenge Feerick's authority to hear the case. It could then take a new
approach and end the lockout by declaring an impasse in negotiations (another
theory as to why the last NBA proposal was so wretched) and imposing its own
economic system. Then the teams will open camps and invite the players in,
knowing full well they won't come in and thus will have to strike. End of
paychecks, guys. The union might then vote to decertify and then, well, you'd
have a real mess.
Meanwhile, neither side is helping itself with the public, which, so far, has
shown it cares not a whit. Patrick Ewing may have uttered the single most
ridiculous statement of this entire affair when he said that the players could
not survive with a hard salary cap. The idea of an NBA middle class is almost
oxymoronic or, rather, moronic, especially when the entry-level salary for
guys who can't even play is almost $300,000.
But the owners aren't helping matters with proposals they have to know have no
chance and can only serve to inflame the union. They can't be serious about
good-faith bargaining with such a ludicrous list of demands. Hunter is right.
Those proposals look more like an attempt to break the union than to resolve
the dispute.
The owners do need a mechanism to keep salaries in line with revenue growth.
The players' response has been that of Paul Gaston: Just say no. That's fine
and admirable, but in this league, if you do that, you're Denver. Former
Nuggets general manager Allan Bristow got plenty of encouraging calls after he
said no to Antonio McDyess and traded him to Phoenix for three worthless draft
picks. No one was calling him a few months later to say ``good job'' when he
was fired as his team was en route to an 11-win season.
For every owner who says no, there are plenty willing and able to say yes. The
only way that stops is with a level playing field. That's what the owners
want. If they took out all of the garbage from their last proposal, they might
actually get to something that works.
The bottom line
The Celtics released their annual 10-K report to the Securities and Exchange
Commission at the end of last month. It doesn't have the intriguing gems from
last year, such as M.L. Carr's $1 million golden parachute or Rick Pitino's
$49 million ransom, er, salary. But the economic news was very, very good. The
team made a profit of more than $12 million, due primarily to a huge increase
in ticket revenue (more sellouts, more expensive seats) and a big jump in
broadcast revenue. Revenue from ticket sales went up 25 percent to more than
$39 million while another $28 million came in from NBC, TNT, WEEI,
SportsChannel (now Fox Sports New England), and Channel 38. Gaston, meanwhile,
received a bonus of more than $324,000 on top of his $1 million salary because
profits exceeded a certain point. The report does offer this caveat: ``If the
lockout extends into the 1998-99 season'' - which it already has - ``it would
materially and adversely affect [the team's] financial condition and results
of operations.'' Even worse, the report said, would be having to cough up
guaranteed money to players ... Chris Ford is flying to Los Angeles tomorrow
to interview for the vacant Clippers' opening. It's the last opening and,
well, it's a job. Clipper coaches tend to have a shorter life span than a
fruit fly. ``I've done my homework,'' said Ford, who has become a volleyball
dad, watching daughter Katie play for Division 3 powerhouse Williams. He's
also getting hints from the house that he might be better off employed. ``I've
just painted the den,'' he reported. ``There are a lot of projects.'' And he
didn't even mention Keith Closs.
This story ran on page D02 of the Boston Globe on 10/18/98.
© Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.
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