mushi's Contributions

As a fan I just want games. It just frustrates me that the commercial reality is pretty obvious and yes the owners are bludgeoning them with their power but that’s the model they work under I’m pretty sure none of them want to shift to a socialist concept of fairness and get paid $20 an hour. Now it seems with guys like Garnett involved, who’s competitiveness clearly outweighs his thoughtfulness and judgement, it is a measuring contest for the players the majority of which will lose in the grand scheme of thing even if they get their Phyrric victory (or Phallic in this sense) As for the structure I think the first thing we need to remember is that salary caps aren’t the magic parity fairy. It makes the false assumptions that: First: the only driving force for any employee is money when every single study I ever read has people also valuing things like colleagues, environment and opportunity Second: even if this is the only industry in the world which behaves like this it doesn’t account for differences in purchasing power, state taxes and the unequal third party opportunities in each locale. Third: Even ignoring those two indefensible positions GM’s and Coaches must be have 0 impact on the game and team as they aren’t included in the cap Yes salary caps increase parity but this is a by product not the intention, the intention is simply to cap costs. Ideally the few things I’d like to see: - Higher max contracts to reflect the higher influence of these players - Franchise tagging for max contracts (i.e. you can’t leave a team with a max offer on the table) - A weekly lottery where an agent is selected for physical torture by the bottom placed GM at the time and potentially, but I’m willing to move on this, once a month Sterling is sodomised by the tenants of his slums - X% of the players share of BRI is put aside into a players’ pension which pays out according to years of service - A degree of revenue sharing to ensure the survival of small market teams that have the passionate fans but not the economy to support a competitive team - For contracts I’d like to see a sliding scale for guarantees like 100% for the first two years then 75%, 50%, 25% with a minimum amount guaranteed (with the caveat that you are always guaranteed the minimum salary)

NBA lockout: both parties right and wrong

25 Oct 2011

Um you know that would mean a competition with only 3 teams right? 1 team per 2 million people in a rugby league heartland so 2 in Sydney and 1 in brsibane.

NRL can handle club funding demands, says Chalk

25 Oct 2011

I agree to an extent Ryan but one thing that does get missed is that players are guaranteed their cut of BRI so it doesn’t matter if they sign those mid level players to inflated contracts or not, because they still need to spend that money on players. So whether that money goes to Eddie Curry or Lebron James it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things because you still have Curry and James and you are still paying 57% of BRI. In terms of negotiating the theoretical end game is a deal that is struck just before the point at which it becomes viable for the players to split and form a new league with new owners. It is an unfortunate reality but it is a reality faced in negotiations all around the world where monopsonies/monopolies or oligopsonies/oligopolies exist. One could argue that the owners “concessions” were the original deal and they are now trying to move towards that balancing point. Now I think we are a long way from that point and so I would really think that the brighter ballers (the Foyle’s of the world) would do well to actually consider what that point is and maybe realise that locking in 10 years at 50/50 might actually be viewed as a win in 20 or 30 years time.

NBA lockout: both parties right and wrong

25 Oct 2011