So, can it happen?
Can the NBA stars form their own league and be successful?
On Tuesday, a day after NBA commissioner David Stern canceled the first two weeks of the 2011-12 regular season, New York Knicks forward Amare Stoudemire posed the scenario in which the players would give "serious" consideration to beginning their own league. To some, like radio personality Stephen A. Smith, this type of approach is "asinine."
But is it?
In 1974, the late Gerald Scully, an applied microeconomist who specialized in the understanding of sports economics, wrote an article for the American Economic Review entitled, “Pay and Performance in Major League Baseball,” shortly after the 1972 baseball season opened with the first players’ strike in baseball history and after a lockout threatened the 1973 season (it never transpired).
Owners complained of substantial losses in their financial picture similar to how owners of professional sports teams claim a disproportionate economic loss. In response to the owners’ gripe, Scully created a formula to figure out a player’s worth to the organization, both in the won-lost column and the team’s receipts.
He used a variety of statistical measures like slugging percentage for hitters and the strikeout-to-walk ratio for pitchers and combined them with a complex formula for determining team revenue based additionally on a team’s won-lost percentage, the attendance figures and the marketability of a franchise through the popularity of a player.
For example, according to Scully, Hank Aaron had a $520,800 value to the Atlanta Braves in 1968 and Sandy Koufax $725,000 to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1966, which was his last season. By comparison, Aaron’s top salary never exceeded $250,000 a season in his 23-year career and Koufax earned his highest salary, $130,000, in his last season as a pro, far less than their worth to the team.
Even “mediocre players” contributed to the team’s value because of the complexity of success manufactured on the field throughout an entire season and then manifested off the field in relation to a popularity and marketing standpoint. Scully theorized these middle-of-the-road players contributed “in excess of $200,000 to team revenues.”
Role players, based on this formula, would come away with a better piece of the pie than what has been speculated in the ongoing negotiations with the NBA owners and players.
In creating and running their own league, this utopia created by current NBA players would ultimately build larger profits for the players to distribute because they no longer would have to share them with owners.
The players could either use this new league to prosper and grow to a point where they could completely separate themselves from the NBA. Or this could be used as a ploy to convince the NBA owners a better bargaining agreement must be created. Either way, the players should stand firm and keep the upper hand by proving they have the capability to operate a league.
They've already shown over the past few months how they're able to stage successful charity games in front of sold-out arenas across the nation. This type of barnstorming technique in exhibition-type scenarios resemble the early period of professional basketball.
During the beginning stages of organized basketball in the 20th century, clubs, civic associations, athletic unions and YMCA centers from specific areas of the country competed against each other initially for a sense of pride and recognition. As each game grew, the idea of an organized league with contracts for players blossomed.
The first competitive basketball league included teams from local leagues in the larger East Coast cities like New York, Philadelphia and Boston. The first known professional basketball game took place between the teams representing the Trenton (New Jersey) YMCA and the Brooklyn YMCA with each player receiving $15, except Fred Cooper, who made $16. These players were from their region and competed for pride in addition to the compensation they received.
On September 25, 2011, a similar form of game for pride occurred with professional basketball players when a charity game pitted Team Philly, comprised mostly of NBA role players and marginal starters who grew up in the area, against Team Melo, which included Carmelo Anthony, LeBron James and Chris Paul.
While the game was put on more for entertainment purposes than anything else (as well as a way to give players a chance to prime themselves for some type of basketball season this year), the native Philadelphians boasted about earning a 131-122 victory behind Kyle Lowry’s 34 points.
“They were saying we didn’t have a chance,” Hakim Warrick of the Phoenix Suns said in a New York Times article by Matt Flegenheimer. Warrick, who is from West Philly, was in charge of recruiting the talent to represent his city and proudly declared his local squad would take on “all challengers” only if they would “come through Philly.”
This is the type of braggadocio which made competitive sports blossom in their infancy and why a so-called professional sports league run by players would succeed.
While other sports can use star power to increase their specific league's popularity, professional basketball is a sport built on star power...see above with Fred Cooper. Fans go to see Kobe Bryant, Blake Griffin, Kevin Durant, LeBron James and Dwayne Wade because of the skill set they bring to the court. They fuel the popularity because they're able to be "amazing."
When James and Wade stepped on court with their Miami Heat teammate Chris Bosh for the first time since this past NBA Finals defeat, they played in front of a packed house of 4,000 fans for a charity game at Florida International University's U.S. Century Arena.
Then on Sunday, a rematch between two of the nation's most storied summer league teams took place in Long Beach, Calif. when the Washington, D.C.-based Goodman League team, featuring John Wall and Kevin Durant lost 151-144 to the Los Angeles-based Drew League squad, featuring Durant's Oklahoma City Thunder teammate James Harden and Los Angeles Lakers forward Matt Barnes.
Wall had a game-high 55 points and Durant had 50, while Harden had 48 points to thrill a standing room-only crowd at the Pyramid at Long Beach State.
Time is running short for the players. It is clear they are offended at the proposal by the owners in which the league's best offer would stand at 50 percent of basketball-related income. Now, it appears the two sides are caught between 47 and 53 percent. The owners can get by with losing a season of hoops, but can the players?
Many of them don't make the millions that a Kobe or LeBron make, so they need to figure out their next step. So far, 61 players who would either be contracted to play in the NBA this season or are free agents have signed some type of deal to play with a team overseas.
An additional amount of approximately 90 to 100 players have expressed serious interest in following their peers, including Bryant, Durant, Stoudemire, Carmelo Anthony, Dwight Howard, Chris Paul and Derrick Rose. Take away the stars and you have about 150 players who are pretty much laid the groundwork for playing overseas.
There were 436 players on NBA rosters for opening day last season. Subtract the players going overseas and that leaves the "players league" with around 280 to choose from.
The way I see it is they could divide the top 16 players (the stars) onto eight teams and then they would essentially treat it like a pick-up game in selecting players for each team, just as long as each team has a proportionate amount of guards and bigs.
Financing this type of "league," per se, would have to come from major sponsors that don't already have deals with the NBA, ABC/ESPN and the Turner Broadcasting networks. I think the players could tap into the techie world and social media entities to secure creative money that not only helps keep them afloat, but generates a buzz.
Something like an association with Facebook or Apple or Google. Just imagine the "Likes" Mark Zuckerberg would get if he partnered up with the best ballers in the world. The players league could secure a television deal with the new NBC Sports Network, which needs to make a splash to compete with ESPN. And they could play in college venues or old basketball arenas like the Palestra in Philadelphia or the Prudential Center in Newark.
The league would essentially operate in similar fashion to the way the World Wrestling Entertainment organization does in that it would have teams travel the country competing in different cities. Four teams would stay on the West Coast for a number of games, while the other four teams would compete on the East Coast and then they would criss-cross the country meeting up somewhere in Dallas and Chicago.
To appease fans in current NBA cities, they would try to play in arenas either in the locale or close to the current arena.
There would be hurdles to leap to make this work, but the players have already shown the ingenuity and dedication to make it happen. There are plenty of billionaires in this country and beyond who would pony up the cash to make it happen.
Finalizing the logistics would be the most difficult part. Some say it could be the same as the American Football League, but I just see it as a showcase for the best players in the world displaying their talent while making a hardened point: the NBA needs the players more than the players need the NBA.
Utah Jazz Washington Wizards Kevin Garnett Ray allen kendrick Perkins Rajon Rondo
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen