Kobe Bryant: “I’m the Luckiest Basketball Player”
With pre-season at the halfway mark, anticipation for the regular season is starting to ramp up. For the next three seasons, including this one coming, there will be labor peace. After that, all bets are off. No one is predicting that games will be put on hold in 2017. Or that it will be another cold war with the players and owners accusing the other of lying. But what is clear is that the players will ‘opt-out’ of their current agreement. Michele Roberts, the executive director of the NBA Players Association, said as much. She mentioned she had been working on an opt-out since July. “As soon as I was told I was selected, I began working on the opt-out”, she told Bleacher Report.
Oct 9, 2014; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant (24) reacts during the first half against the Golden State Warriors at Staples Center. Mandatory Credit: Richard Mackson-USA TODAY Sports
Kobe Bryant is one of her soldiers. Today, he spoke about the players’ market share in a climate of owner wealth and prosperity. “Business is business and I think people get that confused very easily, the understanding that players should take less than their market value, substantially less, so their team can win championships.”
To be sure, that will be the crux of the divide. What is the exact market share for the players? (Economists will argue this for days.) How much of the profits are the players entitled to? How does their ability and achievement transfer into what they should earn given the bloated $24 billion dollar television deal?
What is true is that professional basketball is the only free-enterprise system in which its hundreds of laborers are asked to be responsible for the operating expenses of the company they work for. They are shamed into a skeleton form of socialism whereas taking less money is for noble reasons: to benefit someone else. In this case it is not the state inheriting the excesses but NBA owners. In essence, NBA players are penalized for being capitalists while NBA owners are romanticized for exactly the same reason. Steve Ballmer’s two billion dollar Clipper debt is a ribbon the NBA likes to wrap itself in because it seems to imply that the Los Angeles Clippers, as well as other teams, have skyrocketed in value because of the product. But on the other end of that two billion dollar price tag are the players that bring in the revenue because of their talent, performance and star power. It is not in dispute that they are the product.
The first year of the new television deal, in 2016-17, the league will receive $2.1 billion dollars. Every year thereafter, the $2.1 billion dollars increases, hitting a high water mark of $3.1 billion dollars. The salaries of veteran players on maximum deals will spike as will the salary cap. So why walk away?
The rookie salary cap, the mid-level exception, the minimum salary, all will stay at their current rate with minimum increases until 2021. There are other parts of the CBA that are player averse and are meant to prevent large markets like Los Angeles, Chicago and New York from doing business as they are assessed Draconian like penalties for overspending.
Why walk away? Once again, there is Kobe Bryant’s point about market value. “We are overpaid but so are the owners. And you have to fight for what your market value is.”
The players lost $300 million a year during the last lockout, and most believe they were screwed. The wound is still fresh. The owners’ chant of poverty during the last lockout was ridiculous and untrue. It’s what is called in this town “Hollywood Accounting.” A movie rakes in hundreds of millions worldwide but the studio has it at a loss, absorbed as they are by their own greed.
Aug 20, 2014; New York, NY, USA; , NBA commissioner Adam Silver meets the media during the Commitment to Service press conference before the start of a basketball game between the United States and the Dominican Republic at Madison Square Garden. Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports
When Adam Silver says, “I think we have a very fair deal”, of course he believes that. He is hired by the owners and speaks for them. The players are not so thrilled. Union representative and Brooklyn Nets star Deron Williams said, “I hope guys are prepared.”
1997-98 was the last year of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls as a dynasty. That year Jordan pocketed $33 million a year. The Bulls broke up over the summer because of General Manager Jerry Krause. The league locked the players out and instituted a cap on salaries so that the $33 million dollar Jordan salary would stand alone in time and not be awarded to Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, Vince Carter, Shaquille O’Neal.
Kobe Bryant’s 24 million dollar salary is the league high this year. It was given to him without a full understanding of where his game had gone. If it was feast or famine or somewhere between the two. Of the Lakers faith and commitment to him, he only said the obvious. “I’m the luckiest player in the league because I got very fortunate to be with an organization that takes care of its players, rewards its players and has a long history of doing it.”