sturt

Jury is out on the front office until they get to work for someone who isn't - "Frequently" (his term) talking with them about basketball things (2022 interview w/ Kirschner) - Openly and consciously per his own words sending mixed and/or cloudy signals as to his attitude about paying tax (2022 interview w/ Kirschner) - More "impatient" (his term) than anyone else among team leadership (2022 interview w/ Kirschner) - So impatient that he confesses embarrassment to have only learned what he learned in the 18 months between promoting his former GM to VPoBo and firing him (2023 interview w/ Schultz) - Predisposed to lying as he feels led to tamp down the real story in favor of one that puts things in a light he prefers (2023 interview w/ Schultz) - Predisposed to invite criticism of the front office's leadership (2023 interview with Schultz) and to intervene if the top basketball decision-maker isn't satisfactorily bowing to others' preferences (2023 interview w/ Schultz) - Challenging his front office's ideas (2023 interview w/ Schlutz) - Injecting into the war room the owner's son--how weird to have an eyes-wide-open mole--and, related, who isn't - So self-UNaware as to believe that everyone loves the mole's presence while in the sentences just before (s'helpme) indicating that anyone who said otherwise isn't with the team any longer (2023 interview w/ Schultz) - Fickle (both interviews) - Duplicitous, words that claim one priority, and actions that are consistent with a different priority (interviews combined with reality of the facts of what decisions were made) Landry and Kyle may be great. They may be average. They may be piss poor. Hard to tell... after all, they've been commissioned to sail a ship under that kind of boss. Sad, truly, because the boss really does want to win, I believe... he's not lost at very much in his professional life if his wealth is any indication, and that's clearly a plus for any front office. But bottom line and based on the indisputable evidence of recent years, that highest priority isn't winning on the court, but winning on the spreadsheet.

(I'm guessing you may have read too fast... as I am a chief offender, history will show.) Pretty sure no matter how we would settle on a line of demarcation between high-visibility and everyone else, the Lakers would never come down on that side of everyone else. And so, by "everyone else" having that additional lever to push/pull, the theory is it gives them one more way of persuading a player beyond salary and playing time. (Sorry if I didn't make that clear.)

So, building on this... We need a new way to compensate players that rebalances the free agent market somewhat to compensate for the intrinsic attraction of marquee, high-visibility franchises/markets where potentially more money can be made... and actually, if that's the objective, why wouldn't you also compensate for state tax laws? Last part first, the tax law part is the easy part because it's straightforward. But to the first part, how does one come up with how you draw that line between "marquee, high-visibility" and everyone else? I have ideas, but I'm not yet convincing myself that any one of them works well... interested in others. But once that's defined... what if the "everyone else" teams had the option to carve out some equity in their ownership, and actually convey what amounts to preferred stock options that become valid at retirement, allowing the player to purchase equity in a team at a predetermined advantageous price? I know the first reaction may be, "what ownership is going to do that?" But indulge me. Let's say for the sake of argument that that's a path to advantage in obtaining a highly regarded free agent that they would welcome. Why else wouldn't you take interest in this if you were Adam Silver?

I'm with you. I think that's been a proposal that's been out there for awhile that makes a lot of sense. Apparently, though, there's some reason it's not caught on... dunno. I don't, otoh, consider this newly-come-to-light concept "complicated." Its advantage over the 3-year aggregate is that it's so simple and especially that it's so clearly visible that, if scheduled to be implemented at whatever point X-number of seasons from now, it's almost certainly to my mind going to get immediate results... ie, that teams will begin phasing out of their mentality of total reliance on the draft at a down point in their cycle. I'm open to the thought, once I have a chance to maybe put together, say, a 3 season chart to analyze it better. In theory, the mere threat itself is a driver of behavior toward not relying so very heavily on the draft that you leave yourself open to the possibility--not only because of the actual ramifications to your draft slot, but because of how the natives (fans) will react to playing games in which winning comes with a price. Backing up, having thought about it while driving today... might want to think about something to balance the equation since top tier players routinely will be more attracted to the highest visibility franchises. So, the thought being, if you're going to provide disincentive for teams being content to stock their rosters completely through drafting, wanting them to always attempt at minimum to be mediocre, give all the lesser-visibility franchises some mechanism for competing more aggressively in the market. ( @macdaddy that might be the "complicated" part. I've not given that enough thought to have an opinion.)

So, players tank, or front offices do? My opinion, I say front offices do. I say players are always doing their best to justify their roster spot, and get to that next bigger contract. So, if any of that is true, then it's not really so much about players deciding to lose early, but rather about front offices stocking their rosters so that will allow them to lose early... then, to your point, how do you take a roster that is stocked in a way to lose early but that, then, you flip a switch and suddenly they win a lot. Now that you bring it up, sure as hell would be interesting to see some bad team look to acquire all the talent they could at the February deadline rather than dumping guys.

I'm not sure if the FO is bad or not... it's hard to gauge to any degree under those circumstances. And it's a little worse since, the reality is, Atlanta is not a small market team. It's not even solidly a mid-market team. The ATL MSA is 8th in the country, and along with DFW, HOU, and PHX is among those in the top 10 that appear to be still growing instead of losing population. It quite plausibly if not almost certainly going to be the #6 in the country shortly, surpassing PHI and WAS. Simply put, Antony Peter Ressler won't be selling this golden goose egg machine anytime soon, it would seem. Why would he? Fans are content.

That makes sense in the scenario Diesel laid out, but while every year has its bad teams, DET is exceptionally bad... so really have to look more into history and test it. Whoa. Thanks for doing that homework, chief, seriously. Was on my radar, but too much of last week has gotten pushed into this week professionally, so wasn't going to bother with it for at least awhile. Here's the thing. You don't adopt something like this all at once, and surprise teams with it. That doesn't happen (or very rarely). Teams get some heads-up that this is something being considered, and more than likely these kinds of things make it into the next CBA, or if not, it/s a 50/50 coin flip whether they fade away or, given more time, gain popularity for the next one after that.

Yes. So, in other words, you really never want to go into a season without having spent some money to be able to put, at least, a mediocre product on the floor. This idea gets teams away from the idea of leaning so heavily on the draft... as tanking teams do... without any serious talent acquired in free agency. You don't want to be anything close to "legitimately bad." From Spotrac... how DET acquired the 15 players currently on the team...

Thinking it might have merit. Troubleshoot and see if you disagree. 1. Draft order is determined by adjusted regular season W/L %. 2. "Adjusted" to mean the W/L % calculated as: (a) W/L record through the date that a non-playoff team was eliminated from the playoffs (as normal) ...combined with... (b) W/L record for games thereafter that date, but counting all wins as, instead, losses and all losses, instead, as wins

... whether on the Squawk or elsewhere? Unsure what it should be. But just feel like there should be an award.

REVISED 3/14/24 Image #1 = NFL goes from incredible to uber-incredible, with an expanded post season and a regular season featuring more games between more teams Image #2 = NFJL, a model for how the NFL makes in-roads as NCAA popularity recedes due to mercenary football age--the combined result of NIL, enlarged transfer portal, and lack of contractual obligation of college players to play in post season games ahead of being drafted. =================================================================

"The," I'm not sure. But "one"... I just gave "one," of course.

Agreed on all that (though I choke on the implicit omniscience of calling it "late stage"). Not sure how this reconciles with the very next thing you said... Neither do I. It's not necessarily a degradation of culture/value. Indeed, we don't chide young people who find their way into music or acting or other entertainment careers, and who don't find it important to attend college at the typical college age... for good reason. Again, I'm with you, but I don't think it's going away that easily. There's too much money at stake. If I had to take a stab at how they may eventually decide to address it, we may see the legal separation of top tier college football programs from the public or private universities, so that there is essentially an x-number for-profit minor league begun with each of the teams in the league explicitly affiliated with, making significant scholarship contributions, and paying licensing fees to, say, the University of Alabama for the right to use all of the wordmarks, trademarks, and copyrights owned by the Crimson Tide. So, what you'll have is kids getting contracts of specific length and at salaries appropriate to the business plan to play in that minor league. What we know as "college football" then ends up being the minor league that gets virtually all of the TV revenue at that point, and the rest of the landscape, non-scholarship programs, with those non-scholarship programs occasionally losing a junior or senior star player to the minor league, or gaining someone who got let go by a minor league team with no interest from any of the others. But because non-scholarship players are making their decisions out of high school primarily based on where they genuinely want to attend school to get a degree in the first place, it makes some sense to think you wouldn't see a whole lot of movement horizontally between non-scholarship programs. How does that change anything? It allows the minor league teams to actually enter into contractual relationships that obligate players to play for them for a certain period of time at a certain rate of pay, and yet, just like any employer, would have the freedom to let employees go as deemed necessary. It also better funnels those players with the top talent and whose primary interest is having a career in the NFL (vis-a-vis, less interested in going to classes and performing well academically) into full-time employment. And, mind you, there's still nothing that would keep the top-tier schools from fielding their own non-scholarship teams anyhow, and quite plausibly, players who tend to end up at lower-tier scholarship programs today could be attracted to those programs with regularity, since they would gain the potential benefit of being more visible to the for-pay team that wears the same name. How many minor league teams would make up such a league? Hard to say with certainty. It would be how ever many the business model would project as making the league optimally profitable... and connected to that local market size (implications to ticket sales) and historical TV audience numbers... are going to figure prominently in that. Quite possibly, you'd have a situation where some number of teams have no specific university affiliation but that would wear the name of a city where it is based... taking the spot on the national stage, then, that otherwise might be currently occupied by a school that has a less lucrative following. Boise State, for instance, may be on the losing end, and instead, the league would have one more team in, say, Denver, out of an expectation that a Denver-based team would easily outperform a Boise-based one.

The romance of college football played by players who play for the pride of their alma mater has been a constant for 100+ years. The game's economic well-being grew and thrived. This new age of mercenary, loyalty-less college football represents a crack in the economic well-being of that consumer entertainment option that, over time, could do severe damage. And if we see the NFL make a G-League-like move, perceiving economic opportunity there, don't be surprised if the "over time" part of the previous sentence to be significantly compacted. Only thing holding NFL back even now is the tradition and romance that top tier college football has enjoyed. If college football doesn't come up with some solution, they give NFL every reason to launch their own new... lucrative... business opportunity.

I read one page of this thread, and just take such satisfaction that the old sturt would have spent much of his Saturday testing all kinds of options. And that this newer version just had a really nice, satisfying day. Ahhhhh. Serenity now. Indeed.

My friend. My good, good friend. Pardon the observation, but didn't you just make my point? How much suffering have you endured knowing you supported a team owned by a family that, in the words of one Bill Cunningham as I recall, used the Bengals as a personal ATM machine, funded in part by draining Hamilton County of every possible friggin tax dollar, while the team essentially twiddled its thumbs every free agency period and relied on Mikey for waaaaaay too long as its GM, as-if somehow his dad's genius was encoded in his kid's genes. Indeed, yours is a prime example of a person who would have been so much better served to have severed ties. To have had any fewer playoff wins in that time (6), looks like you'd have had to have had the greater misfortune of migrating to the Bears (5), Texas (4), Browns (2) or Lions (1). And now, how Fate toys with you... a big-time franchise QB who hails from, of all places, just down the road a couple of hours, Athens. Teasing you with how good things might be, then yanking you back into jaws of doom. What misfortune could have been avoided if, once Mikey's true nature became vividly apparent, you would have made the jump to a horse that seemed to have better reasons for faith. Right? Like the good book says... and reaffirmed by The Byrds...

1. Ressler is competitive. I do not doubt he wants his team to win. 2. Ressler's actions have demonstrated his highest priority. Winning a championship isn't it. Black ink is. And among the best ways to ensure you're generating black ink? Win... enough... and don't spend too much. 3. Ressler clearly understood from the git-go the importance of convincing Atlanta fans that he's not just a California-based carpetbagging owner, but he's "true to Atlanta," and in turn, he wants all Atlantans who, like him, aren't natives to the region, to follow his lead.... which... yeah... is Marketing 101... black ink. 4. Why would an owner feel so immersed in a team if winning a championship isn't his/her highest priority, though? Well... there's this... maybe this helps solve that riddle (?)... Link: https://www.streetopia.me/m/news/60a7af9d8ecb984cbf376f3b/should-we-invest-in-stocks-or-in-an-nba-franchise

Um. Well. Pardon the observation. But. There's also... 6) Adopt a different NBA team where you perceive reason for confidence in ownership's highest priority on hoisting the banner. (I've done that. It's really hard unless you have a scumbag owner like Jim Crane who has a blatant history of open disregard for fans. I don't recommend it because it really requires an overhaul of your mind to get yourself reoriented to a whole other roster, coach and front office.) 7) Take a hiatus until you perceive reason for confidence in current ownership's highest priority on hoisting a banner. 8 ) Take a hiatus until the franchise is flipped at a price that satisfies current ownership. Not pleasant. But, emotionally maybe more healthy. Maybe. In the bigger picture. Some don't like me saying so, but I can only tell you that the water is warm over here in the hiatus pool... and yes, you can keep your friendships with other Hawks fans... without the constant beating your head against the wall otherwise. Just sayin.

@Diesel first, I love the analogy and plan to use it. I'm just not sure it is actually new insight to the person you responded to... he's not that much younger than you or I as far as I've understood. Point being, I'd be slower to think it's a generational thing where he's concerned... there's another explanation I'd be more inclined to accept, but hey... it's Christmas... a day to be positive toward and about everyone, imo.

Yes and no to that verb choice. Yes, the Hawks wear the name of Atlanta, and play home games there. And in the theoretical world where they were to ever win a championship, yes, the parade would be in Atlanta. So, yes, to that much. But only that much. No one looks at the players, coaches and staff of the team and perceives that group of people as being the face of the city... "representing" the city. Most people are lucid to the fact that they're all mercenaries, and Atlanta just happens to be the franchise where all of them have found employment. And if you think about it, this is why it's been important to Ressler from Day One to try to persuade Georgians that his allegiance is to them... he recognizes that the definition of carpetbagger applies here... and it is part of the business model, then, to do everything possible to promote the imagery of his commitment to Atlanta... and I'm not even accusing him of being insincere necessarily, but just pointing out, cynical as it may seem, he is a businessman and his priority being black ink, he will always choose to make business decisions regardless. True to Atlanta was a smart tag line to adopt. I'll give him that much.

But you're really not. Right? It's just an illusion that you have to support a team that wears the name of the city you're from (or close to where you're from). It's not as-if the Dallas Cowboys feature players from Dallas, which in turn, makes me want to cheer for those players and that team. Not at all. They're all mercenaries from places all over the globe... who rarely have any actual connection to the city named on their uniform. We as fans should stop making these owners... and I'm not just talking about Ressler, but all of them... feel like they own us. Among the reasons I stopped being an Astros fan was the smirk on Slim-y Jim Crane's face shortly after he purchased the team and it came to light that he'd negotiated effectively a $65m bribe from Devil Bud Selig to let his new team be transferred to the American League after almost a century of connection to the National (ie, as Houston major league and Houston minor league for Cardinals)... most Astros fans per Houston Chronicle poll were outraged. Can't give you the exact quote, but it was along the lines of, "Well who else are they going to support?" No. No. No. That's not okay. Especially in this day that I can see pretty much every game of any team in any league of any pro sport without leaving my home... it's not a one-sided relationship. I don't have to conform to these owners' ideas of obligations of sports fans. This is a consumer choice, not unlike choosing a favored restaurant, a favored beverage, a favored car brand... I get to make up my own criteria for what product is out there that I'm going to select to obtain. Blackhawks? It was totally their public reaction to the Redskins controversy. Nationals? It was totally the premise that that franchise had been competing with my old team for the MLB's most disregarded franchise for all its existence. Cowboys? I randomly chose a favorite football card, and it happened to be Craig Morton. Hawks? I became enamored with Pistol Pete after my older brother said something positive about him. Feel strongly that owners abuse their fan bases as a result of this secure feeling that they face no competition from other teams for their fans' affinity/attention. So, they really only have to win just enough ... it's not about the threat of other teams taking their fans, it's the threat of not winning enough and their fans going into hibernation. So to the degree that owners are made to feel more insecure, that makes for a healthier situation where us fans are concerned.

Grew up in Bengals/Reds territory, and to this day, I still listen to Mike McConnell on 700WLW with some regularity. And I understand this 100%. How many years was the Brown family going to run it back with Marvin Lewis because he was willing to let Mikey play GM? I'm still not persuaded that the team didn't just luck out with getting a franchise QB, and a plausibly decent first-time (ie, "economical") head coach, and that what success they've realized in these last 24-ish months won't withstand the Browns' priority on black ink.

Happy to learn that meeting the threshold of "fun" and "exciting" "nerve-wrecking" is sufficient for some... and I've said as much without trying to judge which ones here are that, and which ones aren't. My take, as long as people are honest with themselves about it, that they get it that... like Days of Our Lives and All My Children and As the World Turns etc etc etc... the story may never actually give them that one pinnacle moment (and particularly given the new evidence that the owner's first priority is black ink) but it's consumer entertainment they're going to enjoy no matter a given owner's priority. I'm not like you. I fully recognize how difficult it is to win a championship having only seen my Cowboys ever get to the top of the mountain in any professional sport that I still follow. (Thankfully, Nats won just before Manfredball was adopted.) I'm not impatient. I'm very used to my teams falling short. I was an NLstros fan until 2011, seeing only one WS appearance in all that time. And I've been a ATLHawks fan, seeing... well, you know. It's not perseverance I need. It's trust. What I have to see is that there is a God-honest legitimate attitude that the leadership of the franchise shares in that priority over any other priority. I have to trust that there's a genuine pursuit of the holy grail going on. So what I will not do is continue to support an owner who's priority has emerged as keeping me just interested enough that I'll continue to help him/her generate income... watching ads, buying tix/merch, etc. I feel I'm giving-in to a big con... the True to Atlanta tag line, a marketing line to mask over what Peter Antony Ressler's bottom line is... a fraud... paying him to watch a hamster on a hamster wheel... the sports version of being hooked on a soap opera.

Until we get our own forum here, I suppose this thread will have to do, @shakes.

(Guy, that's a whole other conversation, immaterial to the conversation being had about how the deal reflected/reflects on the owner. To be clear... whether Hawks were undefeated now, whether Collins was the early favorite for MVP right now... whether Hawks were winless right now, whether Collins was cut and out of basketball... none of that matters. The only thing that matters are the facts as they were known... known... on June 26, 2023, when the deal was made. Because that is what is indicative of the priority of the owner.)