What,no f*** Kobe thread?

buss pays a tax, as do many teams/owners, for going over the tax threshold. the lakers will be over the cap and tax level plus, kobe's extension doesn't kick in until the 2011-12 season, and who knows what the CBA/salary cap will look like then. the league will play for keeps on the next CBA.

not a cap expert, but bryant signed an extension, which essentially prevents him from max money. some think he would have been better off signing a new deal as a free agent after next season, where he could have had max money, instead of an extension this season.

 

Yep -- the NBA owners are going to impose (cx) a new CBA in the next round of "negotiations" that will look like it was written by Attila the Hun.

Two of the most prominent features will be an approximately 50 percent cut in overall salaries, and the imposition of an iron-hard cap.

There will be a bunch of other items too, like a higher age limit (21-22) for entering the league, and greatly expanded disciplinary powers (fines/suspensions/contract termination) in case of criminal behavior, but those two are the biggies.

The players, of course, will go ballistic and threaten to strike. The owners will say "fine," and happily lock them out for a season or more, maybe two. A 65-year-old corporate billionaire can sit around for 2, 3, or 5 years, what the fuck does he care? The productive earning career of a max-contract athlete lasts a handful of years, and every year you don't play against top competition, your skills deteriorate. Sit out for two years, that's a quarter of your career, and you're never getting it back.

So the max-contract superstars better get everything they can in about the next 12-14 months, because after that the golden goose is dead.

 

If the owners are stupid enough to close down the sport for a season or more, they will kill the NBA completely.

 

Yeah, plus it's not like there was any real buzz that Kobe was going to leave L.A.

 

Naw, the average fan is totally on board with the opinion that those "greedy tattooed punks make way way way too much money." The owners will be hailed as "making a stand for sanity" and "fighting for the average fan" (although of course in the end the 'average fan' will benefit nothing; the owners are fighting for nothing but their bottom lines).

This is gonna happen in all 3 major sports (NBA, NFL and MLB) within the next 3 years (it already happened in the NHL). Jockageddon.

 

But ... but the NFL has a perfect financial system. It's what makes the NFL the greatest league in the history of sports. You know, level playing field and everybody has a chance to win. [/OOP]

 

You really think most fans are going to side with the owners? I don't seem to recall that sentiment in previous strikes/lockouts.

 

You must not have been paying any attention then. The fans ALWAYS side with the owners against the greedy greedy overpaid thug players.

 

At least morons like you who constatntly refer to players as thugs.

 

It doesn't matter whose side the fans are on. The simple fact is most NBA players have less money in their bank account than you and I do. It is that way all over sports -- in the NFL I've seen guys on the practice squad, making a very tenuous $70K a year, driving $100,000 cars -- but NBA players seem to have a unique money-wasting talent. The owners know this, as they're the ones who agree to payday advances when their players run into trouble.

If the owners lock the players out, the players will cave inside of three months.

 

Which is why I refer above to the owners "imposing" contract terms, because essentially that's what the "contract negotiations" are going to be, in all three sports. A handful of players have managed their money well and could survive a season or more of a lockout, but most would be ruined within a few months.

Ah sorry, too lazy to continually use the blue font, but that's precisely the predominant public-opinion meme pushed by 80% of the media (99+% of sports talk media except for the tiny handful of players-advocate contrarians).

 

No system is perfect - but in comparing the four sports, football and basketball are by far the two best financial structures and baseball is by far the worst.