alex deherrera

True Hoop: Essentially I agree with everything Henry Abbot says. However, I think he is downplaying the potential ramifications of this deal. He is operating under the assumption that the leaders of the NBA office will realize the errors of their ways and fix the league to compete on a global scale. I can understand his optimism but I just don’t share it. This is the same league that mandated an age limit so it could protect the team owners from drafting players on just their potential. This is the same league that enacted the Allan Houston rule only for the Knicks to not use it on Allan Houston (although that is more Isiah’s fault). This is the same league that allowed a team to move from one of the largest markets in the United States, and one of our most important cities with regards to the Asian market, to Oklahoma City, which hasn’t been relevant on a global scale since, well, ever.

Competition can inspire change and improve the market for all parties involved. The problem is that when you’re the dominant force in the market you lose the will to innovate. Microsoft is a great example of this: once they conquered the browser market by killing Netscape, they slowly allowed their browser to become worse and worse. Now that Firefox is taking their market shares they have tried to adjust their attitude but they are essentially just copying ideas from Firefox. The DNA of Microsoft is corrupt. They become complacent and it poisoned their creativity. That doesn’t imply a death sentence but as Dr. Horrible said, “the fish rots from the head”. The problems with Microsoft begin at the top and that remains true as well for the NBA front office.

How the NBA chooses to respond to this will have long term ramifications across many different sports league. Could the MLS one day begin to poach European talent? Will baseball players in Latin America eventually stop coming over to play in their own leagues? Right now both of those ideas seem highly improbably to the point of impossibility ,but then again, so was the idea of a player of Childress’ caliber departing the NBA at the peak of his career.

But what the NBA does not have, anymore, is a free pass to supremacy. And if you’re a fan of good basketball, that’s a good thing.

This quote sums up his thoughts (and my more pessimistic ones) in a clear and concise way. While he expects the league to learn from its mistake and I expect them to be arrogant and ignore the potential issues that lay ahead, it is agreeable that a change is coming.

Wages of Wins: He takes a look at the piece by True Hoop as well, but adds additional commentary with regards to the collective bargaining agreement. His points on why the NBA forced themselves into the situation are excellent. The previous CBA was negotiated as if the NBA was an insular business with no competition. They handicapped themselves in certain ways to protect themselves from overspending. Because of these protections, the players became limited into getting their true free market value. Childress, for example, was a restricted free agent. That meant that any Hawks maintained the right to match any contract offer presented to him by another team. Because the Hawks were adamant about not doing a sign-and-trade, Childress’ options were limited. Only one team had the cap space to offer him anything greater than the mid-level exception but no one wants to play for Memphis so its a moot point. That meant that he could resign for below his market value with the Hawks or sign a one-year qualifying offer that would have allowed him to be an unrestricted free agent next summer. Like any trail blazer, he ignored convention and signed with a European team instead, negating all the good that the CBA had done to allow teams to keep their own players. The article does a much better job than me in explaining the potential impact that this will have on future negotiations for the CBA.

Chris Sheridan: Two very interesting points in this article. The first is the belief that there are not enough teams that can afford to spend top dollar to lure over NBA free agents. The problem is that many players are restricted to taking the mid-level exception which averages about five million a year or so. Those same players can go to Europe, get paid in a more valuable currency, avoid taxes and receive free housing. It seems that teams in Europe who want to compete don’t have to have pockets as deep as the Knicks or Lakers because global economics have already given them an advantage.

More importantly, and the reason for my complete lack of optimism for the NBA front office, is the following quote:

NBA commissioner David Stern has consistently said he is comfortable with the notion that there are some players who can make more money in Europe and would prefer to play there, saying the majority of the world’s best basketball players still seek the allure of playing in the world’s most prestigious league.

But what was once a trickle of players choosing Europe over America has started to become a flow, and in the years ahead it’ll become a question of whether the NBA will decide to loosen some of its salary-cap rules that have hindered player movement, especially among restricted free agents.

“The level of concern is low,” NBA president of basketball operations Joel Litvin told ESPN.com in a phone interview. “This is what happens when you have a global sport and a global marketplace for elite players, and we’re confident that the NBA remains the gold standard for professional basketball. Businesswise, it’s good for us, because it means more basketball fans will be watching basketball, and those fans will find the NBA because that’s where the best of the world plays.”

A low level of concern? The prestige will negate their open-market advantages of Europe? I am confident that if this is the attitude towards Childress’ deal that prevails in the minds of the leaders of the league, that this will be the beginning of the end. Not in the sense that the league will collapse, far from it, but that the talent will start to equalize. Like I said in my previous post, this will begin to mirror the system that governs European soccer. The NBA will have competition with other leagues that have just as much talent. The NBA must drop their idea of isolationism and realize that they no longer will be able to use prestige to acquire talent. The idea that players would turn down millions of dollars so that their jersey would say New York Knicks instead of Real Madrid is absurd. This is the wrong attitude and this is why I cannot help but to look towards David Stern and his cronies with dismay.

Globeandmail.com: This article does a good job of explaining why playing in Europe might soon become more appealing for players. Economics reasons, of course, remain the heart of the issue. Maurizio Gherardini believes that it is too early to judge if this is going to be a trend which is a valid assumption. I don’t know if trend is the word I would choose though, as I think that more agents are going to start using European teams as leverage. In most cases, an agent’s job is to get their client as much money as possible. If that becomes European leagues and not the NBA, then it is off to Europe.