HoopsHype – NBA Salaries.

The Lakers are the best team in the NBA. They haven’t played like it without Pau Gasol to start the season, but there’s a reason you haven’t heard me chirping when they lose to the Mavs or Thunder. I’ve started to actually realize that they really are a pretty phenomenal basketball team on the rare occasion when they both try and focus. Dwyer is right to give them thanks and praise.  It’s natural that he spends more words per column on them than other teams (and I’ve actually ran counts, that’s how much time I have and how petty I am).  They’re going to win the most games this year, though probably not 72, they’re going to be the #1 seed, they’re going to win the West, and they’re going to win the NBA championship. Sorry, Boston, sorry Cleveland, and very, very sorry Mavericks, but no one’s beating them. I almost get the sense that the league knows it, too. Every time they lose it’s like the opposing teams aren’t saying “we can beat you,” it’s “see, you’re NOT as dominant as you think you are, and we’re pretty good.” Nash has pretty much said that his team can’t compete with LA, and the games have proven that. The only team in the West that believes it can beat LA is Denver, and that to me is hi-ho-hilarious. But I digress.

My issue, though, is with all the accolades recently talking about this organization for the team they put out there. For all the glorious looks at their offense, how deep they are, how talented, we tend to gloss over the fact that they are BAZILLIONS of dollars over the cap. The cap’s set at $57.7 million. The Lakers are at $91.3! They’re paying  $21.4 in luxury tax this year. Now, the rest of that top list is made of contenders, the Jazz, the Knicks who have a small country’s GNP coming off the books, and Washington. So it’s not like they’re alone. But the rest of those teams are good teams. Because they pay to be good teams. LA pays more. LA pays more money to be the best.

What does this remind you of? Oh, yeah, baseball.

Meanwhile, the Hawks have the seventeenth highest, the Blazers are 28th, and the Thunder 30th! Those are teams we should marvel at their makeup of.  The Lakers are proof that if you give a team enough money with competent management, they will be the best.  This doesn’t change their on-the-floor product, I’m not saying it does. Again, they’re the best. But they’re the best because they pay to be the best. This isn’t some great combination of guys who came together and play for one another and are passionate about their bond. They’re the highest paid collection of athletes in professional basketball and they play to that potential. Just because Isiah Thomas sucks at running a basketball squad doesn’t make it more impressive that the Lakers are able to do the most with the most money. It’s intuitive.

The Bulls are 14th, with a massive chunk expiring this year. And yet it says something about the Bulls’ organization that they got wiped off the map last night? They should get wiped off the floor! The Lakers spend $20 million more! You can argue that with Chicago’s market size they should be spending more money, and that’s fine. But let’s not act like LA’s a superior class of organization just because they spend more money than God. They’re a superior team this season, and they’re paying for that. If only the Bucks could have such a widespread bandwagon fanbase to pull revenue from in a huge market. Or you know, we could have a more effective revenue sharing system. Either way.

UPDATE: Ian notes in the comments that OKC’s primarily made up of guys on rookie contracts, and the Blazers’ massive extensions haven’t kicked in.  So that’s a good point, especially given Bynum’s extension has kicked in (and is too much, but not by as much as we thought it was last year, so they’ve got that going for them).