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.

Based on this argument, the employees of Walmart ,any other retail store, or food establsihment should get 60% of the profits? How is this different than the business owner that puts in the investment (i.e. payroll, taxes, buildings, front office personnel, travel, on and on)? Those who make these arguments for the players, most have never been in a position to have to make the decisions and sacrafice. Most folks go to work, do their job and go home at night, while the owner has to worry about payroll, benefits, bank notes, keeping the lights on, etc. I guess its which side of the fence you are looking from that determines emotions on these subjects.

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).

I am trying to sort this out.

It's not (negative) that I don't believe (negative) [negative + negative = positive which means you believe whatever follows] 22 of the 30 teams can't cover their costs at 57%.

I am thinking you believe that 22 of the 30 teams actually can cover their costs while paying the players 57% of the BRI based on other commens, so I am confused by this.

Bottomline, the NBA pays a ton more than simply the costs of the player's labor. Even the players agree that the NBA is losing money, although they disagree about the amount.

I am of the opinion that the NBA is having problems generating operating income under the current system and I consider that to be a legit beef - particularly when you look at the NFL and MLB and see both those widely different systems generating operating income.

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.

If you believe the numbers that 22 of the 30 teams can't cover their expenses and are losing money on an operating income basis compared to virtually no teams doing that in MLB or the NFL, you probably don't have much problem with the owners moving the % of BRI so that it is at what they claim is a basically a break even number.

As a fan, if you like the fact that the NFL's Giants don't have a bigger payroll than the Green Bay Packers or Pittsburgh Steeler and you dislike the fact that the Yankees have a payroll that dwarfs the Kansas City Royals and Pittsburgh Pirates then you don't mind the idea of moving towards more of a true cap that would stop the Lakers from spending twice as much as the Kings.

I agree that the economic systems in the NBA, NFL, etc. are not a free market. However, they are in no way "socialist" either. I think that "socialist" and "communist" are just used to criticize things people don't like anymore instead of actually referring to what the words mean.

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.

While the ASG would certainly benefit from a much better labor deal, the ASG changing its mind was not the issue. This was an issue for the NBA who nixed the deal. It was out of the hands of the ASG.

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.

A Finals matchup of the Grizzlies and Hawks would be equivalent to the universe dividing by zero. Words cannot describe how truly epic that would be. Every media member might just spontaneously combust from it.

For that I say beat OKC, and we will do our best to take down Da Bulls!

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.

Yeah, I think Doc Rivers is going to opt out of his contract at the end of the year and come and coach the Hawks.

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.

Short thread at a T-Wolves forum about Casey when he got fired:

http://www.twolvescentral.com/forum/showthread.php?p=69270

Not sure if these are reposts, but they are new to me. I came across a couple of deep statistical looks at whether JJ is worth a max deal at this point in his career. I've always thought he is not, what do you guys think?

http://www.basketballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=945

http://www.blogabull.com/2010/2/8/1300945/what-can-we-expect-from-joe-johnson

If I'm the Wizards I'm not sure why I pay the guy anything for his buyout. He clearly was going to want out VERY badly, so I would have played hardball.

I dont think they bring their HD camera to some road games. Last night's game was not in HD. Whenever you see those bars on the side that say "SportsSouth", that means its not HD.

I think it's more about the HD ready production truck. I think they rent a production truck in each city. I'm guessing the HD truck is more expensive to rent and they are probably subject to availability. I doubt they actually lug cameras to all the road games. They probably also rent those in every city or use whatever the home team arena provides. Most broadcast quality cameras are HD. It's more about the truck with all the mixing equipment, recorders, computers, etc.

Then why even bother broadcasting the game on SportSouth HD channel? Why not just blackout that channel and broadcast it on the normal SportsSouth channel?

ehhh w/e. we won! so who cares

some people, myself included, don't watch the regular sportssouth channel at all. i have my directv set so that the regular channel doesn't even show up in the on screen guide.

It's scary to think how much he'll fall off by 2012. Is there some kind of injury or ailment we don't know about?

would we only be competing against teams not already over the cap? can Cleveland or Dallas even sign him if they want to?

who has the MLE available to use?

People are always crying about we didn't get Roy.

Aside from the fact that Roy had a deal in place with the Blazers...

and

He snubbed us twice.

The landmine is that Roy is about to shut it down for the season due to injury.

This guy is starting to make Camby look like unbreakable.

where did you hear this? i thought roy was going to play tonight. if he's shut down, the camby trade became pointless.

You are right in that the NBA teams share revenue. (BRI). A lot of which is luxury tax payment and nba merchandise sales, etc.

However, the National TV contract money is shared, but nobody said anything about it being shared equally. It is shared between 31 members.... however, I don't believe equally for this reason:

Each team has their own negotiated local TV contract.

A team like the Hawks jump from 1 National TV game to 18 National TV games. That local TV contract is worthless. IN fact, the team takes a loss If the National TV contract was shared equally. The reason being is that their negotiated local media has to get it's money back for those 18 games that it won't be covering.

You can't tell me that when MJ Played with the Bulls and the Bulls were on TV every week that the Bulls revenue vs. The Los Angeles Clippers revenue from the TV contract was the exact same? Does that make any sense to you?

Therefore, I have to believe that teams that play in more nationally televised games get a bigger share of the pot.

Check this article out.

Did you catch the wording?

"NBA owners have approved a new plan that increases the amount of shared revenue doled out annually to deserving teams to $49 million, up from $30 million, as owners try to close the gap between high- and low-revenue franchises."

Now check out this article...

"Here are some numbers to give you an idea of what I am talking about: In the NFL, the home team splits the gate 60-40 with the the away team. In the NBA, the home teams keep everything. In the NFL 70%-75% of team revenue comes from revenue sharing. In the NBA it is only 20%-25%. In the MLB 35% of each teams local media revenues (TV, Radio, etc.) are put into a pot and redistributed. There is no such agreement in the NBA. In the NBA $49 million was redistributed for revenue sharing (via the lux tax and the escrow system) in 2008, while the MLB redistributed $300 million in 2005. "

Right now, the high market teams get the most of the pots.

At the next CBA, I think this will be a subject for change.

I imagine that either everything is shared equally including Gate, local TV deals, National TV deals, Lux Tax...

or

The NBA will go through it's first period of contraction and may lose franchises like: Memphis, Bucks, Minnesota, and Bobcats....

so, in other words, you totally made up those numbers based on your own speculation and innuendo. for all we know, the deserving teams are the low revenue teams.

I think Ford is misreading the situation (badly).

Atlanta's investments are paying off.

Before, we couldn't get anybody in the Phil. We couldn't get a National TV date.

This year, we have had 15 Nationally Televised games (slated for 18).... and with us sweeping Boston and a possible strong showing in the playoffs, we will have as many or more next year.

The National Contract that the NBA made in 2007 means that the NBA will average $930 million from 2008 to 2016. So... 930 Million/200 games = 4.65 Million Dollars per game. = 2.325 Million for Hawks ownership.

That's not even including how much the Hawks can negotiate it's local media contracts for...

Right now, Atlanta Owners ought to be noting, when you improve the product on the floor, you improve your bottom line.

So all this talk about us being a broke franchise only mattered when we were 13-69.

Now, we're one of the top 6 teams in the game. There's money to be made....we're not going to neglect the on-court product in order to save salary cap money that we would just get back through profit sharing??

revenue from the NBA's national television deals are split evenly among the teams (except for the ABA share the Silna brothers get), regardless of how many times a particular team appears on national television. what is the point of "2.325 Million for Hawks ownership" and how did you arrive at that number? what does that even mean?

the Hawks make no more direct revenue by being on national television. it's all about whether ownership can capitalize on the increased exposure among the fanbase.