Bullet Points: Lockout Edition, Spending Matters In The NBA And Water Is Wet
by Bullet Nation in Exile on Nov 22, 2011 12:01 PM EST
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Now is the winter of our discontent. Bright Side of the Sun's Seth Pollack recently posted on the correlation between spending and winning. (thanks for FanShotting, Dutch!)
The owners insist that they need to level the playing field between all 30 teams so the big markets teams (or those with deep pockets) can't continually outspend the rest of the league. They believe that more equal spending will give more teams the chance to be competitive.
The history is clearly on the owners side.
Read the article. There is a massive difference between correlation and causation, where's the analysis of that crucial difference?
Band of brothers?. Pollack also suggests that once the players agreed to a 50/50 BRI split the battle with the owners was over. After all, with the proposed system changes impacting only a limited demographic of veterans, what in politics we might call a 'special interest', hasn't that special interest hijacked the season? Well...
Just because you figured out the horse doesn't mean the cart stands alone. Does that seem a little obscure? As Henry Abbott pointed out eloquently:
That certainly sounds like it embodies the heart of Pollack's sentiment. But does it support his claim?There may be a certain tolerance out there for an NBA season lost to fixing a broken financial model. Everybody at least understands the idea that the league needs to be on solid financial footing. But with the money issues solved, it's unfathomable that we might lose a season chasing the unicorn of competitive balance.
Repeating your point doesn't make it true. Earlier in the article, Abbott had this to say:
The essential measure of competitive balance in sports leagues is called "Noll-Scully" named in part after Stanford economist Roger Noll. He is unimpressed by the NBA's proposed system changes that he says would have, he says, "little effect" on parity.
He's in lockstep with every other noted expert who has commented publicly, including David Berri, who has studied the subject intensively across all major sports and found that of all historic attempts at harder caps "none of these institutions had any statistically significant impact on balance in any of these leagues."
British economist David Forrest says "the evidence isn't there."
Pollack is at pains to demonstrate the same set of data points in several different graphs, but supplies no additional supporting evidence. Doesn't the argument as presented boil down to one of the league's talking points?
I'll play your game. What if it were true and the league's proposed changes were effective in promoting spending parity? We've increased the Bobcats' ability to sign Mike Miller to a contract in excess of what the Miami Heat were able to offer, or at least limited the Lakers' ability to do so. What happens? Does Mike Miller enter Drew Gooden territory? Going from overpaid on a playoff team to a lot overpaid on a marginal one? Does this mean a bidding war for not-quite-stars teams desperate for relevance have no choice but to embrace with a higher minimum salary requirement? Doesn't this manufacture the class of player teams would sign to meet that higher minimum salary mark? Do Eddy Curry scenarios become more likely in the name of parity?
Gaze into my causation crystal ball. So, big spending has been curtailed, to a limited extent, luxury tax payments may have even gone down and that would mean even less to spread around the league's less fortunate when the time comes to dole out the NBA's version of revenue-sharing. Tack on higher spending requirements and a possibly increasing market for mid-level talent and how hard is it to see Michael Jordan leading a larger hard-line faction into the next negotiating session?
- Am I my brother's keeper? What about player versus player? Well, the players have not asked any fraction of their membership to accept sacrifices the rest of the union does not have to face as well (unless you're counting max contracts for the 'greedy' superstar class). That's a piece of why they rejected the NBA's changes to the exceptions, just like they immediately rejected the reductions of minimum salary contracts. When the union establishes the precedent of applying selective restrictions on specific classes of player, it's the first step (depending on how you look at it) on a very steep and slippery slope.
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I am going to put a Scoreboard over the courthouse in Minnesota
We are in the first quarter:
Officials timeout (they can take as much time as they want)
Here's the way I see it:
Championships are as much about players 2-8 (the supporting cast) as they are about player 1 (the superstar), in my opinion. The supposition being made here is that those teams who have been able to couple the superstar with the requisite supporting cast have been at the front of the championship line. I don’t have the resources (or desire) to compile the evidence and do an analysis, but my thinking is that by weakening the supporting cast of the aforementioned teams, you level the playing field between them and the non-superstar-bearing teams. That may or may not equate to inflated salaries for the second/third tier players over time…
The general thinking is that the 2004 Detroit Pistons will become more than a once in a generation phenomenon. And that a Mike Miller caliber player could be an important piece on a team of that sort of makeup. At the very least, teams composed in such a fashion would have a fair shot at maintaining competitiveness over a stretch of seasons.
Now I realize that this is a huge oversimplification of the core position, but really, I don’t even see a need to argue the causality between spending more money and winning more games. The cause is the better roster. Inasmuch as you can quantify a human activity, its quite obvious that the teams that have traditionally been atop the league have had better rosters from top to bottom. Its an argument that, in its simplest form, requires a fair level of ‘assuming all other things equal’, of course, but even still, its clear to me from even a brief rundown of the last 20 years worth of teams to make it to the conference championships.
Now, as for the superstar factor, what I believe happens is that the ‘other 22 teams’ have a better shot at keeping them for the long haul; not because they can put better rosters around them, but because the top 8 can’t. As it stands, the superstars have traditionally and will continue to gravitate towards the top 8. As /have/will the best second- and third-tier players.
And yet it often seems
That the MLE players signed by the big spenders (Ron Artest, Mike Miller) tend to offer production below their pay grade, damaging long-term flexibility and sometimes short-term effectiveness (I know, I know…tell it to the 2009/10 Thunder). While I agree that such a player could be a valuable component on a Pistons-esque team, I think the market would bear a higher price than the player’s impact would have on the court, negatively impacting that 2-8 roster quality.
other 22 teams’ have a better shot at keeping them for the long haul; not because they can put better rosters around them, but because the top 8 can’t
How does the league’s plan address that?
by Bullet Nation in Exile on Nov 23, 2011 9:24 AM EST up reply actions
economists...ugggh
Well..any American who has studied our founding fathers, early government, and history would know…
you can not guarantee parity. players skills are different; coaching talents are different; team front offices, free agent and draft prospects are different, owners desire to win is different.
what you can guarantee is equal opportunity. and if the NBA is serious about parity then it will provide the framework to guarantee an equal opportunity…which means a hard cap for player salaries. I really dont care if it is $60mm, $80mm or some other number.
But if the NBA were serious about parity, it would have an absolute hard cap. All active roster players can not exceed a certain amount with a minimum pretty damn close to that amount (10% or less).
The problem is the NBA does not give two shits about parity- which is obvious to anyone that has followed the sport for any length of time.
by les boulez bomber on Nov 22, 2011 2:05 PM EST reply actions
quickest way to parity is two 1st round picks to non-playoff teams.
Parity is generally spoken of as making sure bad teams have a chance to become good, but it’s every bit as much making it difficult for good teams not to decline. However as you say, the league nor the owners have ever cared about parity and they dont now either
the thing about the NBA right now is
do you want it to be more like the NHL, or more like the MLB? I don’t think they can have it both ways.
guess i am in the minority in that I am fine with the way it is (or was)
we got lucky and won the lotto, drafted our franchise player, if we cant win now it’s because ernie sucks, ted is cheap, or we just have bad luck. I dont feel any need to change up the system today so that other sorry teams have a better chance of surpassing us than they do currently. The demographics of our market should be a built-in advantage over the majority of teams in the league….not sure why we should want to change that
There's a side of me that wants no changes to the system
but then again, the system as it was, wasn’t friendly to us. I’m willing to accept the fact that if parity was a reality int he NBA (not just opportunity), then there is a chance that even with a better team on paper, we still may very well lose earlier in the playoffs than we’d like.
I know our large market size is an advantage, but some teams like the Raptors, Clippers, Warriors, and us have a stigma that makes us as undesirable as a Sac-town, Charlotte and a New Orleans. The last system worked better for large market teams, but only if those teams are glamour teams, or have a “player friendly” owner, like Cuban.
The small market team fans would point this out. The NBA is only as good as its weakest link, and eliminating those links wouldn’t solve the problem either. I agree with this to the extent that once teams are contracted, someone else must be the weakest link, and that team may soon be bad on a perennial basis….
Why is the nba only as good as its weakest link?
Does it REALLY matter if Milwaukee sucks or not? Would the league better overall if Pau had been forced to the Bucs instead of going to the Lakers?
I don't agree with it wholly because every league is only going to market its top stars and teams.
but I will say that a team like a Milwuakee or a Memphis cannot afford to suck every year and not be able to sign top free agents, nor be able to keep its homegrown stars for their 2nd and 3rd year deals because the teams are unable to sign better players. Most NBA teams aren’t in large markets either, and when players and owners are talking about “revitalizing” the small town teams, it doesn’t help that much when the small market teams both suck and have paltry attendance.
If the Bucks had some great young talent and were able to get Pau right now, that would be great for the league, given that the Bucks won a championship with young Kareem and he left LA. Definitely some parallels with that case. Even with Minny and Memphis and OKC, they’d be good for the league for different reasons, primarily because of the current talent in those cities.
Because Milwaukee presents itself as a bad game to all the strong links.
Think about it, we’re talking more than half the league (and thus more than half a good team’s schedule) consistently sucking.
Over time, a competitive Milwaukee is better for the league. I don’t think its good for the NBA in the short run, as its currently positioned, but at some point they need to become a 30 team league. I think the general apathy in the overall fanbase is an indicator of that.
by jones-y on Nov 22, 2011 4:56 PM EST up reply actions 1 recs
Parity is impossible.
You still have to draft your superstar, and hope that he sticks around. You touched on this, but here is the problem…
I count 13-16 (this was with pretty generous standards) players that are the cornerstone player that, if you have him, you know that is your guy. You are going to pay him as much as you can. Really only two teams have multiple(I’m not counting Boston). Miami has two(Bosh was not overly successful on his own). OKC has two. So that leaves half the teams in the leauge paying a guy that deserves the money, and that will be directly responsible for a big chunk of your team’s success.
That leaves the other half of the league paying the Rudy Gay’s, Joe Johnson’s, and Igoudala’s the same money to compete with the Lebron’s, Kobe’s and Wade’s. And then the fill in’s like your example Mike Miller… There is no reason whatsoever for Mike Miller to decide to play in Toronto, unless they are gonna pay him more money. This makes it even harder for Igoudala’s team to compete, because they have less cap space to address their holes.
The only solution is for the owners to be more disciplined themselves. If Joe Johnson doesn’t deserve more than he’s asking, let someone else over pay him. But then you have us fans bitching and moaning when the team is not spending every dime to try and get better. The consensus today is that we never should have paid Gil the way we did. But could you imagine if we let him walk? It would have been an outrage and lost this team fans.
The nature of the beast will still be the same. Draft your guy. Once you have him, you MUST make good decisions. You must win games. You must make him feel like he is in a great situation. You’re obligated to if you want to keep him around. There is nothing you can do to change this.
I'm a Wizards fan. We've been trying to tell you about Lebron for years. Hated the man before it was cool.
by returnofswagger on Nov 22, 2011 2:52 PM EST reply actions
well Shaq said by necessity, the system needs to protect owners from themselves, whether the players like it or not
If a player and his agent think that he’s worth max money when most teams don’t think so, then if all the owners were fiscally responsible, we may start to see more situations when higher level players are left unsigned well into training camp and maybe even the regular season because that’s when the players start to “discount” their services. Then again, no player would likely want to get in that type of a situation.
but the system does because there is an absolute hard cap to player salaries
and at any time these owners can sell for huge profits
I think the owners have multiple rock solid protection against themselves!
by les boulez bomber on Nov 23, 2011 4:10 AM EST up reply actions
Parity is certainly possible.
You have to have a fair shot of building a competitive team regardless of location. Its really that simple. What people tend to forget when pointing out that Michael has X amount of rings and Kobe has Y amount, etc., is how awesomely great their supporting casts were. Take away the cast, no rings. Quite frankly, parity requires you to take away the cast..
That’s the real aim of competitive balance. To equalize the supporting casts; players 2-8. People keep thinking in terms of the superstars, but most of the system issues the NBPA is fighting over concern the movement of the supporting-cast level players. There’s sign-and-trade, but the rest of the contested system issues have to do with those mid-level players, and the ability of the better teams to acquire them.
The problem for the NBA is that superstars aren’t all that super without those supporting casts. What, exactly would we think of Kobe if his teams had averaged 45 wins a season and first/second round playoff exits, and he had only one ring?
There is no reason whatsoever for Mike Miller to decide to play in Toronto, unless they are gonna pay him more money.
The current situation is that there is no motivating factor for Mike Miller to sign with any team outside of about 8 of them unless one of the other 22 are going to pay him a boatload more money. There’s no way to write that into a CBA, you’re right about that. But in a competitive league, time changes that.
Draft your guy. Once you have him, you MUST make good decisions. You must win games. You must make him feel like he is in a great situation. You’re obligated to if you want to keep him around. There is nothing you can do to change this.
That’s where I disagree. You can level the ‘situation’. The current status is that there are only about 6-8 great situations in the league. The goal is to make about 20 or so great situations.
The goal, in short, is to create an environment where Aaron Rodgers doesn’t NECESSARILY feel a need to leave Green Bay for a real shot at success.
by jones-y on Nov 22, 2011 4:44 PM EST up reply actions 2 recs
exactly the point I was making
the “league’s” responsibility lies in providing a level playing field- an equal opportunity for all teams. Even with a level playing field, you won’t have parity, but you will have a lot of teams with a realistic chance to win it all, which is better for the sport and its fans. I dont think the NBA does a good job at this. the opposite is what we have, a handful of cities that consistently have the only shot.
Its not just that the super teams can sign the superstars for more than anyone else. There is a cap on that. The problem is for a fine, they can continue to sign all the supporting players to fill out the team. And because there is no hard cap, it allows a willing and deep pocket owner to sign multiple superstars.
Of course, a hard cap brings about its own set of dynamics. But from a FAN’s perspective, the more teams in contention to win it maximizes the fan interest for the sport. And by definition, it maximizes revenues for the league since it all comes from the wallets of fans either directly or indirectly. The owners can settle amongst themselves how to divvy up the revenues.
But the league does not do this. They have their biased system which results in bouncing around the country playing 2-3 games a week for six months and fans show up in masses when the playoffs are down to the six or so teams that we all knew were the ones that could even hint at winning it all. And we get a month of great basketball.
by les boulez bomber on Nov 23, 2011 4:25 AM EST up reply actions 2 recs
Parity in terms of 30 teams being competitive to win a championship in one year isn't possible, and I don't expect that in any league.
Parity in the system to allow teams to win a championship and not have to overpay everyone is possible
Parity in the system that allows bad teams to become competitive in a relatively quick fashion also is possible.
Sure some cities have bigger advantages than others, but the rules should be the same and give everyone the same amount of dollars in order to compete.
by thewiz06 on Nov 22, 2011 6:20 PM EST up reply actions 2 recs
Just look at Orlando
Orlando has the best big man in the game, they have an owner that is willing to spend ($19 million in luxury taxes this past season) and they still couldn’t get past the Hawks in the first round. That failure has nothing to do with the CBA.
Formerly know as iNFamous SWaGG
Correct, but how is that an argument against parity?
Money is a conditional factor. Good teams can suck with bad management now, yes, but low budget teams that have good management need to be extremely lucky in addition to that to be successful.
In a league with competitive balance there will still be bad management, there will still be injuries and there will still be game 7 buzzer beaters missed. There will still be dynasties and there will still be teams trading away their veterans, initiating a rebuild.
by Dutch Hoopfan on Nov 23, 2011 4:29 AM EST up reply actions
low budget teams with good mgmt and get lucky
will soon have to pay more to their guys if the rosters are young, like it is with Oklahoma City. In a hard cap environment, or a harder cap, some of the rotation players will leave elsewhere so they can get paid on another team, but at the same time in a harder cap environment, teams are probably going to pay less in most circumstances, unless the guy has potential to be better.
Off Topic
I love the new NBA open court series on NBA TV. legends like steve kerr, charles barkley, shaq and reggie miller just coming down to earth and talking about their heydays- its hilarious and extremely entertaining. perhaps the only positive that’s come out of this shitstorm
Correlation spending-winning and the real problem that needs to be fixed
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The most logical reason for a correlation between spending and winning to me is that winning teams have good players in their prime. Meaning, not on rookie deals anymore.
Every team, from Charlotte to LA can sign superstars since their salaries are capped off. Every team, from Sacramento to NY can sign or trade for good complementary players. And Chicago will always be a more favorable destination for good FA’s than Minnesota. No cap system is gonna change that.
The problem is that teams with an virtually unlimited budget can spend more on the supporting cast and/or work around setbacks or potential setbacks more easily than teams on smaller budgets.
For example, Memphis paid Gay and Randolph, now has to pay Marc Gasol and soon needs to pay Mayo and Mike Conley (or pay replacement players). Now what if Gasol suffers a major injury? Is Hadaddi going to hold down the C position? There will be no starter-type money for bench players, whereas Dallas just pays Haywood a starter-type salary to sit behind Chandler (who also gets a starter-type salary) and Stevenson, Barea and Terry are the depth at SG and so on.
The difference between Charlotte and LA is not the superstar they have (CP3 and Kobey resp.) Its West, Okafor and Landry versus Odom, Bynum and Artest in addition to Jack, Gray and Bellineli versus Barnes, Shannon Brown and Fisher.
If the Hornets made a mistake like LA did with Luke Walton, the Hornets would be F-ed in the A for as long as Walton’s contract runs. That’s bad management regardless of the system, yes. But LA can go deep into the luxury tax to work around that. And that ís a system induced competitive advantage the Lakers have over a New Orleans
by Dutch Hoopfan on Nov 23, 2011 5:20 AM EST reply actions 1 recs
A solution that both the players ánd the league should agree with
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However, even with keeping the system exactly like it was, there is a very helpful solution that both the players ánd the league should agree with:
Production should reflect the salary. Meaning, contracts should only be partially guaranteed. Our own rookie Chris Singleton is on record saying this:
I feel like a couple years should be guaranteed, but not all the money should be guaranteed.
The money should go to the players that deserve it. Nobody can or should disagree with that imho.
It would allow every team (rich or not) to rebuild more quickly and thát in itself will make for more parity.
by Dutch Hoopfan on Nov 23, 2011 5:28 AM EST up reply actions 1 recs
He'll get hung for saying that publicly.
Not that I don’t wholeheartedly agree…
It's been said that guaranteed contracts are the only thing worth going to the mattresses for.
If that comes up in negotiations…hell, would ‘double-nuclear’ mean anything at this point?
by Bullet Nation in Exile on Nov 23, 2011 9:25 AM EST up reply actions
The NHL kept guaranteed deals in the 2005 CBA
but until this year, there was more of a performance based pay system since there was the bonus cushion of 8.5% or so above the cap until this year.
three year contracts seems about right to me.
thats two years more than other sports and three years more than most everyone else
by les boulez bomber on Nov 23, 2011 12:18 PM EST up reply actions
There is a massive difference between correlation and causation
This. And in many cases, the causation actually runs in the opposite direction- instead of spending causing winning, winning causes spending while losing causes cost-cutting.
Teams that are good, but maybe not quite championship caliber are eager to add steady, veteran pieces, even if the price is high. Bad teams, on the other hand, need to rebuild. Cellar dwellers look to cut payroll to create cap space and try to swap their expensive vets for draft picks and cheap young players.
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