If you had complete autonomy to reshape the NBA CBA etc.

[HawkItus]

No trades, no signings, so let's play what if. What if you had the combined authority of David Stern and Billy Hunter. With this power you could reshape the NBA today how see fit. Player contracts, alignment, drafting, contraction......it's all on the table. So give me your best shot at remaking the NBA.

[Randy]

I'd say no salary cap but all players are immediatly free agents except rookies who do so after 2 or 3 seasons. The thing that drives up salaries is the fact that there are only a limited number of FAs each year. If every guy was up for renegotiation each year, you would have much lower player salaries. A

We'd have a draft like now, but players would be FA after 2 or 3 years. If a player doesn't like it, he can sit out a year and get redrafted. Or just wait and he becomes a FA by waiting the 2 or 3 years.

I know the complaint about this is that there would be no balance, but there's no balance now. We now have some teams winning 60 games (or close to it) and others losing almost as much. I don't think it would change things overall that much, but guys like Marvin wouldn't be able to collect big $ for year after year.

[hussamga]

guaranteed contracts only for first 3yrs, or negotiated contract by contract basis.. If we cut dead weight players making big $$$ off each team, would free up alot of money in savings and for those more deserved. Maybe less trades as a consequence but more FA movements i think.

Just think of all the rosters with deadweight high $$$ contracts; arenas, marvin, baron, brand, at least 1 per team. Sure, teams are partly to blame for this predicament, but its also a product of the system.

[sturt]

Fwiw, I believe I'm already on-record on this one... see last week's post (http://www.hawksquaw...rofessor-sturt/ ).

There is one new modification, though...

Players' pay would still be generated by something like 65-100% by the structure I'd indicated... something I originally called Player-Directed Merit Pay, but that I've now nicknamed the "performance pyramid" (... catchy, huh? ;) ) And, the bonus pay to the top-tier players on playoff teams would also remain as-is.

But there is this additional brainstorm, in the interest of trying to allow players some additional lee-way w/o subverting the hard cap...

Team-Directed Guaranteed Pay would be based on a hard cap, but with the new caveat that the cap is based on a rolling 5-year period.

Kinda like a "rollover minutes" principle applied to the CBA...

That is, if we take the hypothetical figure of $15 mil that is the hard cap for 2011-12, Rick Sund could

(a) spend all $15 mil of that on this season's roster...

(b) spend less than $15 mil and plow the difference into spending either on the next season's roster or any or all of the next three seasons', or...

© spend more than than $15 mil, with the difference having to be deducted from either the next season's payroll or any or all of the following seasons'...

One other way of thinking about it, Mr. Sund, is that you've got $75 mil to spend over the next 5 seasons, but you can choose how much of it you spend in any given year.

Similar to how the current salary cap can vary, if revenues go up, the per-year rises proportionately... so, yes, you can spend a little extra if you're feeling bullish... but then, if revenues go down, the per-year constricts and gives advantage to those who had been bears. To further spell that out, if next season the cap increases to $16 and Sund had only spent the $15 mil this season, he'd have $80 mil to play with... to the degree that he spent more or less than that, he'd have that amount in addition to or less than $80 mil.

A corollary is that the maximum years for any player's contract would be 5 years.

Edited July 6, 2011 by sturt

[xhawk]

I don't think anything will prevent franchises from giving out bad contracts.

The only thing I'd add is one year of an arbitration decided CBA. If owners and players cannot reach an agreement, then an arbitrator would decide the terms for one year. It would mean more basketball and a responsible third party providing input.

[Diesel]

I would like the following.

1. A harder cap. I would say... no LT... But a cap set at about 70 Million (this year, whatever percentage of the BRI 70 Million is right now). With the only exception being that a team can go over the cap to resign players who have played there for 5 years or more.

2. A rookie contract last 2 years with a TO for an additional year.

3. A buyout results in a players salary coming off the books totally.

4. A 30 day wait on a buy out players re-signing.

5. The ability for a player/team to restructure the player's contract within 30%. That means if a player is signed for a total of 120 Million, he can restructure his contract but he would still get at the least 84 Million or 156 Million but they cannot add more years or take away years. (buy out).

6. Automatic Injury release. IF a player is injured for more than 2/3 (54 games) of the season, his contract is voided for that season (insurance). The team can also force a buy out for the next two years regardless of how many years the player has on the contract.

So if a player signs for 6 yrs... and like Mike Redd is injured in the 2nd year, it becomes Milwaukee's perogative to buy out Redd's next two years... so if he's making 10 Million and 12 Million respectively over the next two years, Milwaukee can pay him 22 Million and not have to pay for the rest of his contract and his numbers are no longer on their books.

7. Do away with trade kickers.

8. Have no limits or minimas on extensions. (if you have a player on the down side of his career, coming off a big contract, you can extend him for whatever you want).

IN essences, my changes will

1. penalize dumb GMs for bad mistakes but not hold the teams hostage to dumb mistakes.

2. Make it hard for stars to move but not impossible.

3. Give both teams and FAs power.

One last thing....

Forget College... Really start the NBADL... Pay High school players/Euro players to come into the NBADL... A stipend of no more than 1 Million dollars. Every team has a nearby farm league. THE NBA DL becomes the minor league of basketball. Get a contract with Versus TV and local affiliates. Make the draft 4 rounds long.

[Anansi]

Contracts would be like they are in the NFL. Nothing guaranteed except for signing bonus, roster bonus, performance bonus and workout bonus. Plus a hard cap and a franchise tag. IMO this would level the playing field for all teams.

[Trueblood]

1. FLEX CAP or MID LEVEL EXCEPTION THRESHOLD

The owners want to get rid of the mid level exception while the players not only want to keep it but add a 2nd one with more penalties heaped on teams that utilize a 2nd one.

I’ve always maintained that I support the concept and existence of the MLE but that it had to be limited so that the big markets don’t take advantage of it and create a league where competitive balance and parity gets tossed to the side. With the luxury tax in place during the just expired collective bargaining agreement, my thinking was that if you limited the MLE to the teams whose payroll fell in the window of the soft cap of $58 million and the lux tax threshold of $70 million and disallowed it for big market teams who were already well above the threshold, you would have a league with much more parity.

Towards the end of June, when the league and players were trying to come to an agreement, the league made a proposal to the players that included something called a “flex cap” which sounded very similar to what I wrote in the previous paragraph. While details were somewhat sketchy, the rough draft idea was that teams could slightly exceed the soft cap in order to sign MLE players or resign a player using their early bird or bird rights but that they could only exceed it to a certain extent before hitting a hard cap.

The players countered that they don’t want any form of a hard cap and that since the “flex cap” still used a hard cap above the flex cap, it would be considered a hard cap and thus, a non starter.

Since this is a compromise oriented article, my solution is to meet halfway. I like the idea of a hard cap as long as you have the layers of a flex cap/midlevel exception threshold cap then a soft cap and a minimum cap where at least 75% of the soft cap must be spent by owners on player payroll. Since current payrolls are so high, you would have to phase this in over a 3 year period. For me, it would look something like this…

2011-12 season……$95 million hard cap followed by a $68 million flex cap and then a $55 million soft cap.

2012-13 season……$88 million hard cap followed by a $65 million flex cap and then a soft cap of $53 million.

2013-14 season…….$78 million hard cap followed by a $62 million flex cap and then a cap of $51 million.

2014-15 season……League would finally get to a hard cap of $70 million, $60 million flex cap and a $50 million soft cap. Adjustments from here on out would be based on whether revenue is increased or decreased as a whole for the league.

The concept of how this works is simple. Like it is now, teams who want to sign a free agent to a contract exceeding the MLE would have to get below the soft cap.

Teams could exceed the soft cap by resigning their own free agents AND using the MLE or any portion of it as long as their payroll falls below the flex cap level. For example, if they have $3 million below the threshold and the MLE is $4 million, a concept I’ll get into later, they would only be able to spend $3 million of the MLE instead of the full $4 million.

Teams could then only exceed the flex cap up to the hard cap by signing their own free agents.

The owners could then decide if they want the flex cap/mid level threshold to also act as a luxury tax threshold depending on if revenue sharing solves their in house problems or not.

In summation, I think the players would be wise to accept a hard cap but not at the ridiculously low number of $45 million. Get it up to $70 million with the possibility of going up or down based on league revenue and you have a legitimate middle ground.

Example on how this would effect the rest of the league:

The hard cap numbers of $95 million for the first year and $88 million for the 2nd year are derived from contracts already on the books for players. $95 million represents the largest payroll, this case being the Lakers and since the owners aren’t allowed to terminate any guaranteed deals YET, another concept that I’ll get into later, we have to set a cap where the largest payroll is.

In year 2 of the deal, the Lakers have options on both Lamar Odom and Andrew Bynum. The thinking behind the $88 million is another compromise. They would have room to keep one but have to get rid of the other.

On the flip side, the Lakers wouldn’t be able to improve their roster beyond signing their 2nd rounders to minimum deals since they would already be up against the hypothetical hard cap and wouldn’t be able to improve their roster via the MLE since they are also well above the hypothetical flex cap number of $68 million. Not only the Lakers but world champion Dallas, Boston, Orlando and Miami would be at a disadvantage due to being too close to or over the flex cap number. Dallas would be limited to concentrating on their own free agents like Caron Butler, Tyson Chandler and J.J. Barea, Boston with Big Baby and Jeff Green while it would be James Jones and Mario Chalmers or bust for the Heat.

On the other hand, teams on the cusp like New York, Chicago, New Orleans and Milwaukee would be far enough under to sign an MLE level player and thuse create a level of parity and competitive balance that the league has stated that it’s looking for.

2. ALLOW THE OWNERS TO TERMINATE ONE GUARANTEED DEAL OVER THE FIRST FIVE YEARS OF THE CBA AND THEN ONE MORE DURING THE 2ND FIVE YEARS.

This is one I could actually do without but with public pressure to limit or get rid of guaranteed contracts at an all time high, I concede this to the spirit of compromise. Plus, with a hard cap in place, teams are going to need to be able to get out from under mistakes and allowing for this clause makes that an easier task.

The thinking behind limiting it to one per five years or two over the course of a hypothetical, league proposed 10 year deal is that the public outcry from hard line fans and owners is for the most part, overblown. If you look at the history of team payrolls, it’s rare that a team has more than 1 or 2 horrible contracts that limit their ability to improve. Being able to get rid of just one of the them would usually put a team below the cap or at least in position to better the team via the MLE or portion of it.

If a team needs to get rid of more than one deal then I place the blame at the feet of management. At that point, they need to look themselves in the mirror as opposed to just trying to find ways to get more money back from the players.

I also add a phase in for this concept as well, only this time for the players benefit. We can point our fingers all we want and laugh at how much the players spend but at the end of the day, it’s their money and they can spend it how they see fit. They signed their contracts with the thinking that they would see every penny of it and have bought houses, cars and various goods for family members and friends, financing all of it based on their respective contracts. The phase in would make it so the owners would not be able to terminate any deals during the first 5 years of the cba until the summer of 2013. That gives players time to re-finance or prepare for the possibility of their contract being voided.

Another benefit to the players is that while someone will most likely get their contract terminated, that means that there is an available opening for someone else to get a well deserved contract whereas had the opening not existed in the first place, said player would most likely have to play for the minimum or in Europe as opposed to getting the MLE or contract created by cap space due to the outgoing contract. In short, the good players get paid while the overpaid jake loses out. Owners, fans and players win. Overpaid chump who didn’t live up to his deal gets tossed. I don’t see how you can argue with that.

I will also add that the concept of rollbacks is a no go as well due to what I pointed out above. A contract is a contract and you can’t just go back on what has been signed. Giving the Gilbert Arenas’, Brandon Roy’s and Mike Miller’s of the world a 2 year warning is a good compromise.

Also, make it so that not only is there a 2 year phase in period from the time the cba is ratified but also allow for all players to have completed 2 years on their deal before it’s eligible for termination. This protects players who get hurt in the first year. At least now, they have a 2nd year to fall back on and when you get down to it, injury isn’t their fault but the result of unfortunate circumstances so they shouldn’t be punished in full.

For those of you who want more and think the players are lazy, I will disagree with you but comfort you with the knowledge that nobody knows in advance who will be terminated. Therefore, it adds incentive to ALL players to play hard, team oriented ball despite the fact that only one can be terminated and should help improve the on court product all the more.

Also, BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR!! For those of you who want all contracts to be non guaranteed, we would actually be thrown back to a situation where this is less parity in the league. Big, attractive market teams could just terminate as many contracts as they need during a summer in which there are a number of big time free agents and just build more super teams. And trust me, it would happen. If the Heat could do it despite not being able to terminate guaranteed deals, imagine what the Lakers could do if they had that at their disposal.

How this effects teams around the league:

Teams like Orlando can take advantage of this after 2 years since they will still have 2 horrible contracts in Hedo Turkoglu and Gilbert Arenas on the books. By getting rid of one of them, they can better convince Dwight Howard that changes are coming and that the team can improve if he’s patience.

3. NATIONAL TV SLIDING SCALE

Revenue sharing is a big source of controversy. As mentioned before, the players believe that the majority of the league’s problems are a result of the lack of revenue sharing and that if the league could install a system of more revenue sharing, the players wouldn’t have to give back as much. This is true to a certain extent but as we’ve seen in Major League Baseball, it doesn’t stop the big spenders from spending more on talent. They can write a luxury tax bill that allows the little guy to be profitable but at the expense of the fans. You see, the small market owners just keep the money instead of spending on free agent talent to make the team better. If they keep their payroll low enough, they can be profitable but then wind up losing 100 games or so.

This is why a cap is necessary so the combination of a hard cap to go along with revenue sharing makes everyone a winner in this mess. The question now becomes, how do we go about implementing a system of revenue sharing that’s fair for the small market but doesn’t take away too much from the large market? You see, new owners in Detroit, Phoenix, Brooklyn and Golden State can say that they spent as much on their respective teams with the knowledge that they would get a large return on their investment due to being in a large or succesful NBA market. Having to give away too much to the little guy will make their investment a long term loser or so they project.

I actually agree with this sentiment to a certain extent. Some will argue that there is something fundamentally wrong with forcing large markets to share and that it’s borderline communist and un American. While I think that’s going too far, a good solution would be for the league to disperse their national tv money differently. Teams wouldn’t be forced to share their earned revenue but rather the LEAGUE itself would be deciding that for the good of the game, the gap needs to be closed so we’ll take it upon ourself to decide how to disperse the money that WE NEGOTIATED.

As it stands now, teams get roughly $32 million per season as a result of the national tv deal that Stern inked with Disney and Turner. Despite this equal dispertion, there is still a wide gap dividing the haves and have nots. Some teams are very profitable while others lose money in the eight figure range. In order to rectify this situation, the league should be able to disperse this money depending on how much revenue the teams bring in on an individual basis for the previous season. I will use the 2008-09 season as an example. The Lakers led the league in revenue earned, followed by the Knicks, then Detroit, then Chicago, Houston, Cleveland and Dallas.

At the bottom of the league, you had Memphis in last, followed by Milwaukee, New Jersey, New Orleans and then Minnesota at #26.

My system would then pay the top grossing team, the Lakers in this case, $17.5 million. The #2 team would get $18.5 million, followed by #3 at 19.5 million and so on, adding one million to each team in the ranking order. By the time you get to #26 Minnesota, you have $42.5 million, then $43.5 million to New Orleans, $44.5 to Jersey/Brooklyn then $45.5 and finally $46.5 to the lowest ranking team.

To some, this is an ugly form of welfare. My counter argument is that it’s not welfare. Franchises shouldn’t be penalized for being in small markets. Fans shouldn’t suffer losing season after losing season because their team can’t create enough revenue to compete. This is just a way of bridging the gap some. According to Forbes, the high ranking teams would still be profiting well above $30 million while if you add $15 million to a team at the bottom, they go from losing $5-10 millon to profiting $5-10 million. In short, the big guy doesn’t get hurt much while it makes all the difference for the little guy.

4. TWEAK THE NUMBERS

From here, it gets easy. You keep most of the elements of the old cba but just lower the numbers. What most people forget is that this recently concluded collective bargaining agreement was even more owner friendly than the cba that was ratified in 1999 after the big lockout. That 1999 deal was considered to be a huge victory for the owners. If that was a huge victory then the 2005 deal should’ve been considered a landslide. So what happened?

In my opinion, the cap just kept going too high. With revenues in the league going up just about every year, there’s no reason why teams should becoming less and less profitable. If only 8 teams spent the luxury tax yet 22 of them lost money, then the simple answer is that the cap and lux tax threshold were just too high. The cap was determined by overall revenue created and since the large markets were mostly responsible for that revenue, the cap wasn’t fairly determined. Sure, the big market will still be profitable but the small markets weren’t seeing more generated revenue so the cap would eventually be too high for them. So……

a) Lower the cap. As mentioned earlier, the soft cap should get down to $50 million in 2015 and then from there, base the number at less than 40% of BRI as opposed to the current 48%.

b) Lower the amount of the max salary by reducing the percentage that players can get. Currently, 0-6 year vets can max out at 25% of the cap, 7-9 year vets get 30% and veterans with over 10 years experience can get 35%. Lower it to 20%, 25% and 30%.

c) Lower the length of contracts to 5 years maximum if you resign with your current team and 4 if you switch teams as free agents from the current 6 and 5 setup. Limit MLE signees to 3 year deals. The combination of a 5 year deal and a 20% max for players coming off their rookie deal would make for a $10 million base salary on a hypothetical $50 million cap. With 10% raises, this would make the total deal come out to $60 million over 5 years. This is well below the $100 million deals that we see all over the place and would lower the total payroll to the point that teams would still be under the hard cap and opportunities would still be abundant for free agents.

d) Add a “Keith Van Horn” provision. Dallas was able to use KVH’s bird rights to their advantage despite the fact that he was almost 2 years into retirement. It was a loophole that made a mockery of the system. To fix this problem, players should no longer have bird rights if they’ve been out of the league for over a year. The whole point of bird rights is to allow teams to retain their stars. If a player is out of the league for over a year, he really isn’t much of star anymore.

e) Add a “Big Z” provision. When Cleveland dealt Zydrunas Ilgauskas to Washington for Antawn Jamison, the Wizards then waived Big Z and he then went back to Cleveland. They basically got Jamison for nothing. Other teams have taken advantage of this loophole as well. To get rid of it and the possibility of teams colluding together in the future, a new simple rule should be put in place that says a team can’t bring a player back until the following season.

f) Make the raises in contracts be 10% for someone resigning with his team and 5% if they leave via free agency. Those numbers are easy to factor in your head and are lower than the current 10.5 and 8.5. Lower raises means lower overall contract and lower payroll.

g) KEEP THE GRANDFATHER CLAUSE AND FORGET ABOUT FRANCHISE TAGS!! This is a clause that allows for teams to resign their own free agents to a number that is above the max. For example, if a free agent is coming off his 8th year in the league and he makes $17 million, he should be eligible for a 5% raise off that $17 million. That would bring his new base salary to $17.85 million. With a hypothetical $50 million cap and a 25% max for 7-9 year vets, that would mean that he could only sign for a max of $12.5 million elsewhere. That’s a difference of over $5 million on the base salary alone and probably is enough to keep the player from leaving. It’s one thing for Lebron James to take a $2.3 million base salary cut but if you more than double that, he probably stays in Cleveland so future free agents will have less incentive to leave and eliminates the need for franchise tags, something the players union is justifiably fighting.

Edited July 11, 2011 by Trueblood

[Diesel]

Contracts would be like they are in the NFL. Nothing guaranteed except for signing bonus, roster bonus, performance bonus and workout bonus. Plus a hard cap and a franchise tag. IMO this would level the playing field for all teams.

I think Guaranteed money is what makes Basketball the best sport. You live and die with the GM's decisions.

Football signings are meaningless.

[Diesel]

Revenue Sharing.

Revenue sharing is probably the hardest deal when you consider big and small market teams. From the big market perspective, you have some teams that profit well from the local TV deal. Knicks come to mind. From the small market perspective, there are some small market teams that will just disappear without the revenus sharing.

The sliding scale is interesting... fairly socialist.... but necessary.

However, I think that there are two truths that must be addressed.

The average fan wants to see the best players. This is because Stern has made this a stars league. He promotes the stars through TV. He has found that TV wants the stars.

Therefore, here's my suggestion.

Go all out with Stern's vision. The stars dominate TV. The more star power a team has, the more TV appearances they get.

Then, instead of a slide rule, you use TV appearances to dictate how much each team takes back from revenue sharing. A team on TV less, gets a larger amount of the revenue. This eliminate the idea of owners playing the teams on the cheap to make profit because if you're bad, you're more likely to get a star player. A star player will be on TV more which means less money for you through revenue sharing.

The thought behind this approach is that teams that are televised more sell more merchandise and more tickets. Plus, their local TV contract and radio contract is much better than a team that never gets on TV. So they will have more revenue automatically. Less need for shared Revenue. The whole idea of shared revenue is to help struggling teams.

This does that.

[niremetal]

Contracts would be like they are in the NFL. Nothing guaranteed except for signing bonus, roster bonus, performance bonus and workout bonus. Plus a hard cap and a franchise tag. IMO this would level the playing field for all teams.

I agree, for the most part. The consistent profitability of the NFL makes them, in my view, the league that the other pro sports league should try to emulate. And the NFL (and the MLB and NHL, for that matter) doesn't even have the international appeal that the NBA does (although with the appeal comes competition that the other leagues don't face).

But, I don't like the "no guaranteed contracts" thing. Let whether a contract is guaranteed or not (or only guaranteed up to a certain amount/time) be determined on a case-by-case basis - which you kind of see now with player/team options, but the NBA does have too strong a presumption toward guaranteed contracts, I think.

Other than that, phase in a hard cap pegged to league revenues. Add something akin to the franchise tag in order to maintain some incentive for players to stay "home." Remove the maximum contract and rookie scale contracts, which create market distortions (like, say, LeBron James being restricted to making no more than Chris Bosh or Joe Johnson, and Blake Griffin to no more than a mid-level player) and create too many situations where it makes sense for top players and prospects to consider playing in lesser leagues overseas.

Oh, and get rid of the minimum age rule. I used to be in favor of it, but I've been convinced by enough people that it makes little sense to tell Derrick Rose he has to spend a year playing college ball and taking fake classes.

I have mixed feelings about revenue sharing. Some level of it is necessary to ensure the league doesn't become like the MLB, where the league has increasingly lost the interest of large parts of the country because the local team isn't competitive. On the other hand, you don't want unprofitable or poorly-run teams living off the bankroll of the well-run and profitable ones. They need to find the right balance - the NFL has done so (there are no Clippers or Royals in the NFL, and I think every team is profitable), but the NBA won't be able to do quite the same thing since they can't get the supermassive TV revenues that the NFL gets.

They need to try to increase the pot of league revenues, and I think a major untapped market is for online streaming rights. The League Pass Broadband system is cool for diehard fans, but I gotta think that they could make more money by selling all or some of those rights to third party entities like NBC Sports, ESPN, Eurosport internationally, etc.

Edited July 11, 2011 by niremetal

[dlpin]

here's the thing with regards to guaranteed contracts: the cba doesn't mandate that all contracts be guaranteed. In fact, teams have a lot of discretion in that regard. They give out guaranteed contracts just as a matter of staying competitive in the FA market.

Which means that in order for contracts not to be guaranteed, you'd have to go above and beyond that, mandating all contracts not to be guaranteed.

And while I think that might be good for play quality (no slackers anymore), I am strongly against this on philosophical terms.

Regardless of unions/players/owners, etc. I think it is simply wrong to give a side the guaranteed ability to rescind a contract that they had agreed was guaranteed. Teams can already offer non guaranteed deals, so changing the cba to make even the guaranteed deals non guaranteed simply gives teams a way out of incompetence.

On top of it all, think about the teams that would have been bailed out by this over the past decade: Boston (Vin Baker), New York (Marbury, Curry, etc), Orlando (Lewis, Arenas, etc), Miami (Jermaine O'neal), Chicago (Hinrich, Tyrus Thomas, John Salmons). If these cities can be under the cap with less effort, would competitive balance improve?

[Randy]

Revenue Sharing.

Go all out with Stern's vision. The stars dominate TV. The more star power a team has, the more TV appearances they get.

Then, instead of a slide rule, you use TV appearances to dictate how much each team takes back from revenue sharing. A team on TV less, gets a larger amount of the revenue. This eliminate the idea of owners playing the teams on the cheap to make profit because if you're bad, you're more likely to get a star player. A star player will be on TV more which means less money for you through revenue sharing.

The thought behind this approach is that teams that are televised more sell more merchandise and more tickets. Plus, their local TV contract and radio contract is much better than a team that never gets on TV. So they will have more revenue automatically. Less need for shared Revenue. The whole idea of shared revenue is to help struggling teams.

This does that.

Isn't that the way it is now? If I didn't know better, I would have thoght there was only 4 or 5 teams in the league last year. Everytime I turned on a game it was the Thunder, Heat, Celtrics, Bulls or Lakers. All these teams have big name stars. Few people know it, or could know, that there are teams in at least 10 20 more cities.

I actually got sick and tired of wathcing Thunder games. I thought they were really informercials for Keven Durrant and Russel Westbrook. i wasn't sure what they were selling, but it was more like a paid announcement than an actual basketball game sometimes.