Photo via TheScore.com.

Here’s a question for the NBA and its owners: If the league preserves this season and is wildly successful over the length of the next collective bargaining agreement, will it ditch that CBA as the starting point for the negotiations over the next one?

via The Point Forward » Posts Players aren’t wrong to continue to fight «.

Yes, what about the next collective-bargaining agreement? Zach Lowe raises a concern here that I’ve had for a while, one which hasn’t gotten nearly enough play amongst the coverage of negotiation blowups and new-CBA hypotheticals. Maybe four-plus months of lockout overload have made me unduly cynical, but with as ugly as these negotiations have been, I’m terrified of what will happen in six years when the agreement the NBA and NBPA do eventually reach expires.

As nearly every writer and blogger has outlined this week, there are a few possibilities for how the next few weeks and months could play out. The sides could miraculously come to an agreement before David Stern’s Wednesday ultimatum (unlikely). The players could put through a decertification petition and attempt to leverage the owners into compromising before it goes to a vote. Or, both sides could dig in, the players could actually follow through on the decertification threat, almost definitely wiping out the 2011-12 season (and maybe more), and this thing could hit the courts. None of these options make me particularly confident that we won’t be looking at this scenario again in six years.

If the sides come to an agreement this week (and again, I’m not even entertaining the idea of getting my hopes up for this), the concessions the players have made already will only empower the owners to employ the same hard-line negotiating tactics they’ve used this year when it comes time to draft the next labor agreement. Even if the league does gangbusters under the upcoming CBA, can you picture Michael Jordan, Dan Gilbert, and Robert Sarver saying, “Nah, we’re good, we don’t need to squeeze more money and system concessions from the players”? I can’t.

Either of the other two possibilities promises to set the table for an even uglier future negotiation. If the players threaten decertification with a petition, the owners won’t be amused at their thumbing their noses at the league’s authority. If the union does decertify and the case goes to the courts, all hell will break loose. History points away from the players getting a favorable deal by going this route, but if they do, the owners will unquestionably be out for blood in the next round of negotiations. On the flip side, if the owners win in the courts and eventually secure the blowout victory they’ve been seeking all along in the new CBA, the players won’t be looking to get played again six years down the road.

As fans, we lose no matter what. Whenever the next CBA is agreed to, the possibility of this happening again will loom in the back of our minds. No matter how great Blake Griffin and Kevin Durant become, how the development of the superteams in New York and Miami unfolds, what the (possibly) revitalized Nets do once they move to Brooklyn, and how Kobe Bryant plays out the twilight of his career, all of the awesomeness that any given NBA season provides will be tempered by the realization that the whole thing will very possibly be reset by another lockout in a few years.

I fell in love with the NBA when I was nine years old, after watching the 1998 Finals with my dad. Over the next few months, I became obsessed, collecting cards, reading every book and magazine I could get my hands on, and sending fan mail to my favorite players in hopes of getting autographs. My dad promised to take me to a Blazers game when the next season started, but he didn’t know when that would be. He tried to explain it to me. All I got out of it was “the players and the owners are arguing about money and they might cancel the season.” I didn’t get to watch another basketball game until February of 1999.

Of course, the owners and players have negotiated one additional CBA since then without resorting to a lockout. But the ownership contingent is different now, less in awe of David Stern. It’s become plain to see that Stern isn’t the one calling the shots on their end. He doesn’t want to blow up the season (his 27-year legacy as commissioner is on the line), but he’s forced to threaten to do so because he knows he needs to sell any prospective deal to the hardest of the hard-liners. If the owners get a favorable deal here (which they will), it will only encourage them to try this again when the new CBA expires.

And so, kids like me might have to get used to this. When they are being taught about the history of the NBA at a young age, this is now part of the deal. They’ll learn about Russell, Wilt, Kareem, Magic, Dr. J, Bird, Hakeem, Jordan, Shaq, Kobe, Dirk, LeBron, CP3, Blake Griffin, and the definitions of “Basketball-Related Income” and “union decertification.” Future generations will have to be conditioned to expect a work stoppage every six or eight years. It may not always happen, but it has happened twice now in 13 years, and as long as the attitudes of the owners remain the same, the current lockout almost certainly won’t be the last. And that’s what will hurt the league in the long run more than any bad contracts or insufficient competitive balance.

The big fish eat the little ones,
The big fish eat the little ones,
Not my problem give me some.

Good news everyone! Radiohead is going on tour in 2012!

via Consequence of Sound, here are the dates so far:

02/27 – Miami, FL @ American Airlines Arena
02/29 – Tampa, FL @ St. Pete Times Forum
03/01 – Atlanta, GA @ Philips Arena
03/03 – Houston, TX @ Toyota Center
03/05 – Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center
03/07 – Austin, TX @ Frank Erwin Center
03/09 – St. Louis, MO @ Scottrade Center
03/11 – Kansas City, MO @ Sprint Center
03/13 – Broomfield, CO @ 1stBank Center
03/15 – Glendale, AZ @ Jobing.com Arena

There are two things to glean from this list:

1) Radiohead loves small markets in the Central and Mountain time zones.

2) The dates in the larger markets fall firmly within the NBA season.

Now, the dates may not match up exactly with NBA game nights, but it certainly is a gut-check to those of us who were looking forward to an NBA schedule in those months (though I’ll still be looking forward to Radiohead coming to DC during that tour).

Bonus annoyance! According to my good friend @JeffreyMervosh, the “online transaction” fees for purchasing tickets are at least as high as $17.25, on top of $60-ish ticket prices. (Perhaps arena owners and their ticket distributors are trying to offset costs from lack of NBA ticket sales. That’s pure speculation, but I’m OK with admitting that.)

(H/T @LeeStuck, for the CoS article, getting me into Radiohead, and bringing the NBA back into my life after a long hiatus)

Image via tobo on Flickr

So last Thursday evening, I was struggling to find something on TV. I landed on Community, which was really hilarious. I watched the first few minutes of Parks&Rec then changed the channel during a commercial break, and found myself channel-surfing way too long. So then I fired up my Xbox to watch something on Netflix. I picked The Girl Who Played with Fire, because, why not?

Why not, indeed. It was Thursday night during the NBA season. Well, it was supposed to be, anyway. And I didn’t get to watch my regular weekly Thursday night TNT double-header. From June 2009 to August 2011, I worked full time and was in grad school in the evenings. Keeping up with the characters and plotlines of regular network TV was pretty much out of the question for me and my schedule, but every Thursday I could come home after class and catch the 2^nd half of the East Coast game and the 1^st half of the West Coast game before I passed out from exhaustion. I could keep up with NBA characters through articles, tweets, podcasts, and youtube clips. The drama and comedy lasted through the whole season. Each episode was a product of the one before it and affected the one after it, but you could always tune in for one game and still not miss a beat. This year, I was going to get the chance to watch both games with my wife and our friends, but no dice. Now we’ll finally get the chance to catch up on our NBC and FX from the past two seasons.

According to multiple reports and Matt Moore’s depressing tweets, the standoff between the owners and players is getting worse, and the entire season is legitimately threatened. Sometime over the next several months, an agreement will be worked out to bring professional basketball back. And when it comes back, it’ll certainly be a treat. But it shouldn’t be a treat. It should be a given. It should have been there on Thursday. And I don’t want to have to get used to the fact that it won’t be on every week, but I will. Now even though I’ll get to hang out with Troy and Abed every week, I’m a little sad I won’t get to hang out with Marv and Kevin instead.

Photo via "Joe Fulks" Facebook page

“I remember telling my wife,” Fulks said, “‘This is great — I’m going to get paid for doing something I like to do.’”

Via “Legends profile: Joe Fulks” on NBA.com

Years Active: 1947 – 1954

Career Stats: 16.4 ppg, 5.3 rpg, 1.2 apg, 30% FG, 77% FT

Accolades: 3x All-BAA 1st Team (1947-49), All-NBA 2nd Team (1951), 2x NBA All-Star (1951-52), 1947 BAA Champion (Warriors); 2x BAA PPG Leader (1947-48), NBA FT% Leader (1951)

Nearly two months ago, I wrote that the stories of Joe Fulks and Paul Arizin would have to “wait for another day.” Well, while adding Neil Johnston to the mix, that day has come. Welcome to the Forgotten Warriors mini-series! Arizin, Fulks and Johnston are unquestionably three of the greatest Warriors players yet they are generally forgotten due to playing in the 1940s and 1950s and also playing for the Warriors when they were in Philadelphia. The 1st of this trio to join the Warriors, “Jumpin’ Joe” Fulks will thus be the first chronicled.

Now, you may look at Fulks’ statistics and not be particularly amazed. You could lead the league in assists with less than 4 a game back in the 1940s. Rebound stats weren’t kept at all until 1951. Minutes played weren’t logged until 1952.  But, they did keep track of field goal attempts and Fulks’s field goal percentage is startlingly bad by today’s standards. However, context is golden.

Consider that Joe Fulks, even if he was a pioneer, was still a product of his era. In 1947, only four players shot over 33% from the field. In 1948, only 2 accomplished the feat. Finally in 1949, a significant amount of players breached the barrier of 33%, with some even reaching the 40% mark! Basically, chiding Fulks for atrocious field goal percentages would be like getting on the Wright Brothers for not being able to fly a 747. We wouldn’t have the 747 without the work of the Wright Brothers and we wouldn’t have the NBA of today without Fulks.

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Image by Katrina.Tuliao via Flickr

After last week’s overview of the various sizes of markets both in population and income, now is the time to see just how successful basketball wise these various markets have been where it matters most for fans: on the court.

I’ve reviewed the last 13 years of All-NBA, All-Defensive and All-Star selections since the last lockout. The All-NBA with three different teams gives 15 slots a year, the All-Defensive with two teams gives 10 slots and the All-Star squads give normally 24 spots, but with injury replacements the amount varies from year to year.

After finding out how many selected players each team has, I will then borrow a method used by my HP cohort, Noam Schiller, to determine how they got there: drafted, traded or free agent.  For our purposes, draft day trades will count as “drafted” and sign-and-trades will count as “free agent”.

This week’s analysis will focus upon the All-NBA Team selections.

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Photo by snowpeak via Flickr

Welcome to the 1st National Basketball League of Canada (NBLC) Roundup! My hope is to give a general overview every week of league action and to also catch a game live via webstream and deliver my take of the action.

London Lightning 109 – Halifax Rainmen 90

An impressive blowout victory for the London Lightning in Nova Scotia, Saturday evening.

The game’s 1st quarter was a fairly even affair as both teams scored 28 points. The Rainmen of Halifax were able to keep the tempo up with their press and swingman Rodney Buford dropped 12 points in the quarter on the strength of turnaround jumpers and a three. C/F Abdullahi Kuso notably gave a valiant effort on the offensive boards, taking three strong attempts on one trip before finally getting a whistle and two FT attempts. Moses Malone is nodding approvingly.

For London, Gabe Freeman (20 points on the night) was able to work his way into the middle for several good shots, most notably a give-and-go off an inbounds play that resulted in a swooping bank shot plus the harm for a three-point play.

As the 2nd quarter commenced, the Lightning struck hard and fast in pushing their lead to 51-41 by halftime. The 2nd half continued the trend of the 2nd quarter: London considerably upped the defensive pressure, which Halifax refused to deal with correctly leading to forced shot after forced shot. With the bricks a-flyin’, London was able to get into the open court either for a transition basket or they pulled back and found open men spotting up around the three-point arc as DeAnthony Bowden intrepidly pushed the pace on the break keeping Halifax on their heels.

Freeman continued his good play in the 2nd half with a couple of mid-range jumpers.  Meanwhile, Taylor King (21 points) was absolutely deadly from downtown and delivered the final blow early in the fourth with a dagger that pushed the lead to 26 and deflated what was left of Halifax’s spirit.

Earlier in the week, the NBL got into full swing with a full slate of action on Thursday night. Well, as full as can be. With the odd number of teams in the league someone had to sit out and it was the Mill Rats of St. John. The most enticing performance of the big opening night was that of Lawrence Wright, forward for the Rainmen in the 1st game of the home-and-home series between Halifax and London that finished Saturday.

Although losing 118-110, Wright was spectacular in 29 minutes off the bench with a Larry Bird shooting line: 10-14 FG, 3-4 3PT and 6-7 FT. The shooting may have been Birdian, but his rebounding echoed SwenNater en route to 7 offensive boards. Those 29 points, by the way, are the most ever in an NBL game. Not a huge sample size, but that’s something to hang your hat on.

In other outstanding performances, Mike Williams of Summerside had 15 points and 22 rebounds in a winning effort as the Storm prevailed 120 to 105 over Quebec on Thursday. Meanwhile in Oshawa, Akeem Wright powered his way to 27 points on 11-15 shooting, including a perfect 2-for-2 from downtown, and 12 rebounds in a blowout of the Moncton Miracle.

Here in Toronto, having Vince Carter, Tracy McGrady, and Charles Oakley on a talk show to reminisce about playing together was a big deal. I wish it had been an hour-long special so they could have gone into a bit more depth, but it was still a fascinating watch for those who remember the days when the Raptors were relevant.

The most noteworthy part of the show, to me, was McGrady saying “there’s no question” that they would have advanced to the Finals in 2001 if he’d stayed. He called it “the perfect situation” with “the perfect chemistry,” breaking host Michael Landsberg’s heart as he looked back on watching Game 7 of the Philly series with his son. It kind of broke my heart, too — even though I wouldn’t call myself a “fan” of the Raptors or any one NBA team at this point, I was DEFINITELY a fan in every sense of the word back then. When Carter missed that corner three in Philly, I was beyond crushed. And at that point, I hated McGrady for leaving. I was 13 when T-Mac chose Orlando, but I’d seen every game of his career and could sense that perfect chemistry. It was obvious he was headed toward stardom and I saw no good reason why couldn’t continue his ascent here with his cousin. In my mind, they could have developed into of the best wing tandems ever and, with the proper talent around them, led a championship-winning team. I thought it was stupid that he left and I thought he duped the franchise by making them think they had a shot to keep him when he’d already made his mind up.

Here’s the thing: 13-year-old fans aren’t likely to see the whole picture. McGrady was just 21 and he wanted to play at home. He wanted the warm weather. Yeah, he’d be leaving his star cousin, but he’d be (theoretically) playing with superduperstar Grant Hill. I questioned his loyalty, but I’m not sure how loyal I’d be if I was just a couple of seasons removed from playing for a coach who belittled me and told the media I’d be out of the league in three years. On top of that, the coach who had given McGrady his chance had just been ousted, after an impressive display of self-destruction where he lashed out at ownership, sued an opposing player in the middle of a playoff series, and asked for the title of GM during his year-end evaluation. Going to Orlando wasn’t crazy and as a free agent he didn’t owe the Raptors anything.

Even now, I get embarrassingly nostalgic when watching old Raptors highlights. I’m thankful to have grown up with the franchise — my family moved here a few months before its first game — and it was amazing to see these two young talents up close when they were developing. It was gratifying when the city fell in love with Vince and basketball started gathering momentum. It was downright painful when the team fell apart and Toronto and Vince, uh, broke up. Even if T-Mac wouldn’t say he regretted going to Orlando, hearing both of them say they think about what it would have been like here almost made me scream. As Carter said, there are no guarantees, but we could have seen a few more years of something pretty special. We could have seen two of the most talented, athletic wing players on the planet throwing each other more alley-oops. With today’s perspective, it’s naive as hell to say that they would have won championships, but man, those two in their primes? It would have been fun.

Photo by jliba on Flickr

It sounds like Tyson Chandler could feel more secure about his future with the Mavericks.

“With the collective bargaining agreement and some of the things that they’re trying to enforce, it would basically prohibit me from coming back,” Chandler told KESN-FM FM in Dallas. “It would take it out of my hands — and the organization’s — because it would almost be pretty much impossible for me to re-sign. I just think that can be the worst thing that can happen.”

“For years, the Lakers have been able to win championships and re-sign their players and keep them there so they can go out for another title,” Chandler said. “Now, to put that deal in place after we win ours, I don’t like it one bit.”

Via Tyson Chandler: NBA Deal Might Not Allow Me To Remain A Dallas Maverick, 11/4/11

If we go by Howard Beck’s “95 percent complete” report, then the Mavs will be able to sign him to a 5-year deal. The more punitive luxury tax will be an obstacle, though. Beck reported that the tax would start at $1.50 per $1 spent over the threshold, then increase to $1.75 for teams $5 million over the threshold, $2.50 after $10 million, and $3.25 after $15 million. The Mavs paid $18.9 million last season for going over the tax. We don’t know the exact framework of the new system yet, but using Beck’s formula that number would have been more than twice as high. Essentially, this means it could be extremely expensive for the Mavs to bring back Chandler, but they would only be “prohibited’ from doing so in as much as Mark Cuban might decide it’s not worth it. Also faced with decisions about free agents Caron Butler, J.J. Barea, and DeShawn Stevenson, Dallas is in a tough spot.

There’s an argument to be made, especially when looking long-term, that bringing him back at a steep price would be too risky. The Mavericks acquired him for essentially nothing because he had years of injury issues. This causes Kevin Pelton’s SCHOENE projection system to be pessimistic about his impact next season. But if you ask me, it would be a heartbreaker to lose him. You can’t name five guys as productive as the healthy Chandler was on D last season. Even if you’re a stats guy and you got sick of the “he’s brought the Mavs toughness!” meme, there’s a reason that Dirk Nowitzki compared him to Kevin Garnett and Dwayne Casey compared him to Gary Payton. He’s as versatile as big men come on the defensive end and, for a team that mixed up man to man defense with zones so often and did not have many shutdown individual defenders, his ability to communicate and cover for his teammates was absolutely essential.

Brendan Haywood at his best might not seem like a huge drop-off if you’re trying to talk yourself out of paying Chandler, but it would not be enough for this team. Unfortunate as it may be that Cuban is looking at overpaying a center again, it has to happen. The Mavs’ unexpected title run was the best thing to happen in the NBA last season. On both sides of the floor, their teamwork and execution kept them ever so slightly better than the competition every time they needed to be. They can find ways to sustain this if they lose J.J. Barea, but it’s hard to imagine them coming close to a repeat without their man in the middle. It’s worrying that Chandler’s even thinking about having to leave.

I’d like to present these dunks without comment (Other than to say, “I’d like to present these dunks without comment”).

It would be nice to see some progress Saturday in CBA negotiations, don’t you agree?

(via @GetBangedOn)