The lockout is stupid: plain and simple. The NBA just had a great season and it stands to ruin everything because the Milwaukee Bucks' and Sacramento Kings' owners want a bit more money. As fans, we should not demonize the players. We watch for the players, the coaches, even the GMs.
No one watches for the owners. No one cares who the owners are. As fans all we want are free-spending, non-interventionist owners. And that's why we should be against the lockout: the owners want to spend less and intervene more.
Is the NBA system "broken"? Look, it's not the NFL. But it's a global sport that's growing. Last season was wonderful. There has never been parity not because of disparate incomes but because a few good players can tip the scales dramatically in a game that's 5-on-5. That's why NBA teams thrive on "big threes."
Is it our fault that Larry Hughes, Michael Redd, Rashard Lewis, and Gilbert Arenas were given huge contracts? But it is the owners' fault. They signed off on these contracts. Analysts and fans have called numerous NBA contracts stupid from day one. But we became inured to a league that paid big bucks for Adonal Foyle and Hedo Turkoglu. These are players that the lay fan has certainly not even heard of.
I'm with Bill Simmons on this one: the paying of middling players is what has NBA franchises stuck. It's fine to pay LeBron and Wade, but paying Eddy Curry and Jared Jeffries huge salaries is just dumb.
There are, then, two ways to look at this:
1) The owners are forced to pay these huge salaries to maintain a competitive edge.
2) The owners are not forced to do anything. They pay these salaries willingly and are responsible for them.
I lean 2 here.
As a fan the biggest problems with the current system are:
1) Length of contracts
2) Contract guarantees
How fun is it watching Erick Dampier play hard once every 7 years? Or waiting 5 years for your team to clear off bad contracts like Eric Snow's, Aaron Mckie's and Theo Ratliff's and then blow all their money on Samuel Dalembert and Elton Brand so that you can wait another 5 years for your team to sign someone?
It's absolutely the worst.
The Knicks took a good decade to become competitive due to bad contracts. Yes, the owners/GMs are to blame for these but the fans are the ones that suffer most. We're not immortals. We can't wait 10 years for our teams to become half-decent.
Essentially owners end up swapping these crap contracts between the 15 or so middling-to-crappy teams. So Stephon Marbury and friends get swapped around while the few good teams hold on tight to the 10 or so players that really matter.
Look, I'm under no illusion that the Sixers would be world beaters in a different system. But at least there'd be reason for hope and no need to whittle away my entire life waiting on stupid shit.
As for the hope for parity, keep this in mind. The following 5 players account for 17 of the past 20 championships:
1) Michael Jordan (6)
2) Kobe Bryant (4)
3) Shaq (3 with Bryant, 1 without)
4) Tim Duncan (4)
5) Hakeem Olajuwon (2)
Think about that: 5 players account for almost all the championships in the last TWO DECADES. And, if you wanted to be slightly clever, you could take out Shaq or Kobe, and say 4 players have accounted for 16 of the past 20 championships. Now they didn't do it on their own, but if you didn't have these players over the past 19 seasons you probably didn't have much of a chance.
And previous decades bear this out as Magic and Kareem, Isiah, Bird and McHale, and Bill Russell dominated previously.
This is not a sport where the Tampa Bay Buccaneers come out of nowhere and win the championship then disappear into nothingness. Or where a hot goalie can take the Bruins all the way. This is a sport where The Dominant Guy will consistently win over and over.
The interesting part is seeing the dominant guys go at each other. Like Kobe v. Shaq or Shaq v. Duncan or Lakers v. Celtics. Yes, the Pistons took the Lakers a few years back. That was awesome. Yes, the Mavs displaced the Heat. So fun to watch. But the salary system doesn't change the nature of the game.
If you have Dwight, Dwade, LeBron, Kobe, KG, or Durant and you put some decent parts and a great coach with them. You're gonna be in the mix every year. Not so necessarily with football where strength of schedule, injuries, and huge rosters make things highly variable.
So back to the lockout.
I don't care if middling guys get $5 million or $500,000. It's not my money. I don't get to even look at it. What matters as a fan is that player movement is easy, teams can rectify mistakes quickly (because there will always be mistakes and rosters are small), and that competition is strong.
Here is what I would do:
1) Shorten contracts to 3 or 4 years and/or make it so teams can drop one bad contract a year.
2) Shorten the season to 64 games or so. Making the games a bit more competitive instead of the slow wade in the tub that we have now.
3) Make trading a bit easier.
4) Hard cap, soft cap, no cap, I don't care. As long as my team has a chance to compete every year and isn't hamstrung by bad contracts. And the ability to sign new players every year would be nice. So a cap with some signing exceptions would probably be ideal.
That's it.
How much money the owner of Memphis makes doesn't mean crap to me. No one in the history of time made their billions owning an NBA team. People make money elsewhere THEN buy NBA teams like they buy yachts or golf clubs. No one asks their yacht to guarantee a profit.
The owners presently look like a bunch of assholes in both the NBA and NFL. The players are who we watch and want to see. Let's get something together that will please the fans for once. Or would you rather we stop watching altogether?
