The Owners Aren’t Responsible For The Monster They Made, Just The Destruction The Monsters Created

Photo by Tasayu Tasnaphun on Flickr

So, sure, Billy Hunter is correct: there is no one literally holding a gun to the owners’ heads, forcing them to overpay a guy like Ben Gordon rather than discover a guy Gary Neal. But even if errors like that — or like the salaries given to Gilbert Arenas, Rashard Lewis and Joe Johnson — aren’t made, the 57% mandate forces the owners to give $2.2  billion to the players. 

Whether they’re worth it or not.

via Eight Points, Nine Seconds — An Indiana Pacers Blog.

Over at 8pts9secs, Tim drops another in a long series of articles shedding light on the complexities of the NBA lockout. He has provided a truly insightful approach to this lockout, and you should be reading the site daily (Jared writes there, too, and he’s okay, I guess — how’s that for a name drop, jerkface?) and following Tim on Twitter. That said, I have a problem.

The owners aren’t upset because they woke up one day and were all “Holy crap, we’re giving the players too much money! This offends me on an ideological level! I daresay we should stage a lockout simply so that this group of human beings will not earn so much! RABBLE RABBLE.” No, they’re upset because they’re losing money. That’s all this is about. “Wah, I bought a sports team and it’s losing money and I don’t like that. Wah.” The end. Instead of seeking out alternative options, rethinking their business model, fixing their revenue sharing, or bucking up and living with the reality of the capitalist system that has provided them with so much worldly wealth, they decided “Hey, let’s punish the players! We have leverage and they’re typically stupid as a union! (Not as much as the NFL’s, but still!)” and locked out the players. If you can’t think of a way to fix your problems, blame someone else and then extort what you want from them. The American Way.

My point here is that if the revenue covered their losses, we wouldn’t have this problem. Well, we’d have one, because everyone is greedy, but not as big of one. But the owners simultaneously managed to ratchet up their non-player-salary-costs and not generate enough revenue to fail to cover the 57% they hand over to the players. And that’s genuinely effected by their decisions.

Did you know only 40% of arena signage goes into BRI? Or 40% of luxury suites income? The margins there aren’t huge. But they contribute. And do you know what makes it hard to pull in top dollar for those kinds of opportunities, or for sponsorships, or for any other non-BRI income? Having a terrible team you’ve committed a lot of money to. Fans know these kinds of things. Sponsors know these kinds of things. Season ticket holders are going to know you gave Darko Milicic that extra year, that you gave Andrea Bargnani that extension, that you have limited your ability to compete now or in the future. And sponsors know how those season ticket holders feel about your team. That influences your market value on items. It impacts your television deals (which are included in BRI, but are still going to help cover your losses). Giving irresponsible contracts didn’t raise or lower the percentage of what the players get under the former system.

But it did impact their ability to generate a profit. And we know this because the losses weren’t standardized, nor were they consistent, nor were they across the board. This is not an impossible system to profit under. It simply became that way in combination with a recession and Isiah contracts floating around. If we’re going to pretend that the owners shouldn’t be held accountable for their poor decision making, we’re advocating a belief that the “fair” solution to this negotiation is one that punishes the players for forces beyond their control.

NOTE: I’m not advocating that fair has anything to do with this, other than our perception. The owners know this is a total lack of logical fairness in pursuit of their dreams of, I don’t know, MORE cars to not drive. But the public’s purpose in all this is to weigh in and give our/their thoughts on what should happen. And we’re seeing a distinctive “the players had it coming!” vibe that’s starting to pop up this week after a solid three weeks of “Are the owners out of their minds?!”

NOTE 2: Tom Ziller is not part of this new vibe.

If you want simplistic terms, if you make bad business decisions at the root of your revenue-drivers (player contracts), that’s probably going to impact all the things that play together to determine whether you post a profit or a loss (BRI plus Non-BRI). These things don’t exist in a vacuum. Signing a terrible player to a long-term contract is going to frustrate a ticket holder, who may be reticent to re-up or buy merchandise. When that contract plays out as badly as it seems when it’s signed, the impact is magnified.

Maybe the numbers do work out that way. Maybe it’s wrapped up in the tax implications, maybe it’s really possible that the owners have no way to succeed under the current system. But more and more this looks like wanting to cut your friend’s face off because you’re worried about that scar you gave yourself after downing a half bottle of tequila and getting on the treadmill. Here’s an idea. DON’T DOWN HALF A BOTTLE OF TEQUILA AND IF YOU DO, DON’T GET ON A TREADMILL.

And if you want to ask how I can support revenue sharing, given that it rewards owners who choose to make a poor decision by investing in a lesser market, I’d argue that revenue sharing isn’t fair, it’s just what’s best for the league overall, just as not blaming the players isn’t fair, but it’s what’s best for the owners. In a battle of competing interests, you gotta break a few eggs.

Oster-Tags: howmuchmoneydoyouneedforGodssake, MickeyArisonisvaluedat4billionpersonally, thislockoutisstupid