Quick Thoughts on NBA Mess

I thought I'd post some of my thoughts on the mess the NBA made of the Chris Paul trade and why it's important. The NBA just went through a six month lockout during which the owners fought for and achieved a larger percentage of basketball related income. This in its simplest form allows them to keep more money from television contracts and sponsorships and spend less on player salary. What the owners failed to achieve during the lockout was a hard salary cap like they have in the NFL and NHL. A hard salary cap is a set amount that teams can spend on players. The NBA kept in place a soft cap or set amount that can give over by using a series of exceptions and by paying a tax for going over the cap that gets divided among all the other teams. What league owners fail to release is even in hard salary cap leagues players can use free agency to decide where they want to play and we are long past the point where we are going to turn the clock back sixty years to the days of the reserve clause where professional athletes were forced to stay their entire careers with the team that drafted them unless they were traded.

  Chris Paul is arguably the best point guard in the NBA. He is a free agent after the season and has no interest in returning to the Hornets when his contract expires after the season. Although he has only played for one franchise during his entire career, Paul has played in three cities. He was drafted in 2005 when the Hornets were in Charlotte, then the team was moved to New Orleans forced to spend a year in Oklahoma City after Hurricane Katrina before ultimately returning to New Orleans. It is a horribly unstable franchise that is struggling to find a fan base in a rebuilding city. The owner bailed on the franchise early last year and sold the team back to the league. The NBA still feeling compassion towards impoverished New Orleans agreed to talk over control of the team until a local buyer could be found to keep the franchise in the city.
   These two circumstances served as the back drop to the madness of yesterday. Not wanted to lose his best player in Chris Paul for nothing after the season, Hornets GM Dell Demps pulled off a brilliant trade. Chris Paul would be send to the Lakers for All-Star Pau Gasol and sixth man of the year Lamar Odom. The Hornets would hold on to Odom and trade Gasol to the Houston Rockets for Kevin Martin, Luis Sciola, Goran Dragic and a 2012 first round draft pick. The Hornets instead of losing Paul for nothing after the season had picked up four new starters and a draft pick, putting them in good shape to make the playoffs and better off for years to come. All league owners saw was the Lakers getting another star players and demanded NBA commissioner David Stern veto the trade. Stern who is paid by the owners and serving as proxy owner of the Hornets caved to pressure and called the trade off light last night. In doing so the league was not looking out for the Hornets who will not getting nothing for Paul and will be in far worst shape going forward. Poor Dell Demps is now powerless and no team will want to make trades with him. Having only six players under contract the Hornets will struggle to even field a team. The league needs to sell the team immediately, to prevent this conflict of interest no matter where a new owner would move the team.   The league's action also represents a basic lack of understanding of professional sports and shows that many owners have no idea what they bought into and what they were negotiating for.

  The leader of the group of idiot owners is Cleveland Cavaliers Dan Gilbert. He bought the team when it was at the top of the league with Lebron James was too dumb to see the writing on the wall and lost his best player for nothing. He emailed David Stern to block the trade so "25 teams don't turn into the Washington Generals". (Generals being teams that always loses to Harlem Globetrotters) Funny how Gilbert did not feel this way when he had Lebron and would not be whining if he had resigned him. The Hornets were trading Paul specifically have learned from Gilbert's mistake and to prevent themselves from turning into a whinny bitch like Gilbert and something more then a last place. Gilbert went on to complain something along the lines of "what was the lockout for". NBA owners fail to understand that the only purpose of the lockout was to put a business plan in place that allow owners to have more of a chance to make a profit. It was not done to ensure competitive balance no salary cap can do that. If young stars want to take less money to play together they will and you can't stop them. Free Agency is here to stay and the NBA has always been built on stars. Teams are built by acquiring stars and getting as much as you can for them if you choose to leave. Preventing the Hornets from working within this system shows a basic lack of understanding of professional sports.
 
  If your ultimate goal as a group of owners is to prevent players from changing teams then there is no point of having a league. Even the Washington Generals serve a purpose, fans want to watch stars play and they need teams to play again. Basketball with its small roster sizes can have the fortunes of a team turned around by one or two players. If players want to take less money to create star teams in big markets small market teams have to be creative. That's exactly what the Hornets did they worked the system to the fullest and said themselves up to be in the best position to reach the top of the league and they didn't need an owner to do it. The lockout was pointless and the league is in trouble because teams are owned by people who don't understand the business and think they can take a time machine fifty years into the past. Players are going to change teams and you have to work within that framework. If owners thought a hard salary cap was the best way to do that they should have hold out for that instead of focusing on a money grab. This is not fantasy sports you don't get to ruin a franchise you were put in charge of protecting because you don't like it. The Hornets and the NBA are doomed if David Stern doesn't man up and stop giving in to clueless whiners like Dan Gilbert who just don't get it.