lifelong

I doubt this will ever happen because the majority of the state legislature hates MARTA and hates trains.

Even fewer teams are going to be paying the luxury tax going forward. With the new labor deal the tax is like $3 per $1 of salary above a certain level. Even Mark Cuban won't be paying that.

Not that important, but I interpreted the weight watchers "scam" comment as positive about the company. My interpretation: "man, this weight watchers is so damn easy, all I have to do is eat their food, lose a bunch of weight, feel great, and they pay me $$$ for it! I am totally scamming them"

If you amnesty a player I thought I read somewhere that there is an "auction" for the player, where the amount they're willing to pay him offsets what you have to. Isn't this the case?

Man, what a sh!tshow this is going to be. I wonder if this "voiding contracts" thing is just an empty threat or if they really plan to do it. If they are going to do it, I also wonder if they can selectively void contracts (i.e. overpaid players) or if it is an all or nothing deal. I guess we'll be seeing a lot of Chris Broussard reporting in front of a random courthouse for the foreseeable future. Super.

The difference is customers don't really pay for the expertise of the labor at Wal-Mart. When you pay for an NBA ticket, to hire a law firm, a consulting firm, you're paying for the talent. Wal-Mart's cost structure is also a little different (they have to stock the stores with stuff).

OK, unnecessarily bad sentence by me. I'll revise and say something like: It's not that I think they're liars, but it's possible that they just suck at their jobs. And that's not the players' fault. What else is gobbling up all this BRI? They already get credits for various things, so the "57%" isn't REALLY 57% of the overall pie. And do these "losses" potentially include things like depreciation of player contracts? If so, the losses could be completely phantom.

Yes, I guess my post was taking an argument to the extreme. However, I do believe the system they want is a socialist system. What the NBA wants is basically a centrally planned economy. But, competitive balance is good, so some regulations regarding player allocation are needed. I would argue that MLB actually has it right. MLB has more parity than the NBA or even the NFL for that matter. Like the NBA, MLB can never really use a system like the NFL, where most of the revenues are generated by national television rights. However, lower revenue small market teams can compete by signing and drafting players before they are ready for the major leagues at a very young age, develop those players, and then hold onto their rights for a number of years. In the NBA system, you basically have to win a lottery ticket to be a contender. There is no amount of salary cap exceptions, luxury taxes, or whatever that you could impose under the current system that will change this. This isn't about competitive balance. This is a money grab by the owners. They want to reduce the amount of BRI going to the players and limit their compensation with these extreme luxury taxes. It's not that I don't believe that 22 of the 30 teams can't cover their costs at 57%, it's just that I feel like that shouldn't be the players' problem. If you read and believe the interview with the NBPA's widely respected economist on NBA.com there are some important points there. He states that labor is 60% of the economy. In service industries like law firms, he states that the cost of labor can be even higher than that. So, why is it the players' problem that the owners can't make money? They play in largely publicly financed arenas with no raw material, manufacturing, or other costs. Basically their only cost is labor.

I don't get arguments along the lines of "we own the business so just take what we offer and be happy with it." Then why can't the owners just let the FREE MARKET decide player compensation and player movement like every other business in the country? Then they would see what players are truly worth. If one is pro-business then why would you support this type of socialism? And this isn't one business, it's 30 competing businesses getting together and agreeing on what to pay their employees. It's like if Apple, Google, Microsoft and every other tech company got together and agreed that no engineer can be paid more than $30k. The only reason this isn't illegal under anti-trust law is because the owners are dealing with a unionized labor force.

True, but then why the whole "the Hawks are off the market" statement? Why don't they put it back out on the market? Is it because nobody else wants it?

I bet ASG decided they can actually afford the team if David Stern gets a radically better labor deal, which it looks like he might (after a whole lot of pain, but still).

To be clear, this is a lockout, not a strike. The owners initiated this work stoppage by opting out of the labor deal, not the players.

Don't worry, the commissioner would never let it happen. The officials have probably already gotten a sternly worded memo, and now Rose will probably head to the line 25 times in game 2. Great D by Teague in game 1, by the way.

As long as they aren't violating the salary cap I don't see how we can complain. I guess we can complain about how our team is broke, though.

Doc Rivers can't opt out of his contract at the end of the year to coach anywhere else. He can retire, but that is different.