Stern: NBA wants to drop player costs by ONE-THIRD

Good luck with that. For all on this board who love to rip on Stern and the NBA, they cover up a lot of the warts these players have.

Zero chance these guys could put on a barnstorming league without a Daddy in charge to keep the asylum shenanigans to a minimum. I'd love to see them try.

 

Mary Pickford, Charles Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks walked out of their studio and formed their own production company, United Artists, and got even richer. They had a few warts, too. The point is, people pay to watch NBA stars, not necessarily to watch the NBA, which is not how it is in the NFL or even baseball, and somebody might use a lockout to exploit that fact.

 

Exactly.

 

Basketball players are just like any other group of people in a creative field. Some of 'em can't deal with life outside what they do, and some are most capable of handling anything. Magic seems to be doing OK for himself in the business world. Maybe he'd be interested.

 

Charles Chaplin didn't have a World Wide Wes advising him.

 

Of all the sports, basketball has the best chance of barnstorming because the equipment is minimal, the venues are not that complicated, and the play is less intricate than football or baseball. However, could the players realistically set up "teams" that would approximate the intensity of an NBA game? That's the key. Plus, we're talking about putting on a production that costs at times thousands per seat per game. Can the players entice that consumer? Not so sure.

 

If David Stern can pull this off, it'll be the greatest accomplishment in sports history.

 

The NHL got the players to agree to 24% pay cut and a hard cap. If the owners are willing, it will happen. These are billionaires fighting millionaires with poor spending habits. Who do you think can hold out the longest?

 

there ya go.

 

But the demand for the NHL product was in the crapper in about two-thirds of the markets. The players had no leverage. The NBA players cohort contain some of the megabiggest names in American sports. There may be enough people out there who would be outraged at being denied Kobe and Lebron that the NBA owners may be playing with fire by trying a lockout. But if the economy doesn't turn around in a year, megapaid athletes conspicuously spending may be hard for people to sympathize with

 

Forget the one-third cut. Eliminate guaranteed contracts and put in a hard cap, no exceptions. Then, you can cut some slacker who is poison in the locker room. Also, the NBA could start trading again with the intent being to improve teams instead of trading one bad salary for another.

 

Fans always side against the players in contract disputes, even when the economy is going well.