So the inmates continue to run the asylum, smh

[valade16]

In 1997, baseball strike, Corey Lidle and Kevin Millar come to mind.

The players need the NBA more than the NBA needs the players.

So it hasn’t happened in 25 years.

[joeyc77]

So it hasn’t happened in 25 years.

There also haven't been many strikes in that time either. Of all the sports, the NBA would probably be the easiest to find talented players outside of the league.

[Scoots]

I am not making personal jabs, I am observing your behavior. It’s a fact your a both sides, inauthentic poster. Remember the times you argued against me because you didn’t state an opinion you admitted you actually believed? Who does that? It’s bizarre.

It’s not the same product because the quality of the player matters. That you’d even attempt to argue the quality of the player is irrelevant shows how disingenuous you are.

I didn’t answer how many teams and games because the exact amount doesn’t matter so long as there is enough to turn a profit. If I said 65 games would you say it’s unsustainable but 72 is? It’s a semantically nonsense argument from the forums resident semantically nonsense king.

Remember all this started because I said if the players left the NBA it’d be screwed, and you dutifully ran to defend the owners.

It’s ironic you suspect me of lying, because I strongly suspect you of lying. You are the most inauthentic poster here. It’s why you left the politics forum, because I called you out for your inauthenticity and everyone else saw it.

It IS personal when you are talking about me. It is a fact you were arguing something I didn't say and attributing it to me. Who does that? It's bizarre.

I didn't argue the quality of the players was irrelevant, I actually said they would get investors, I just don't think it would be enough to make it survive.

The number of teams matters more than the number of games because the fewer teams the larger pool of veterans the NBA gets to start with. The number of games matters both for revenue and for logistics. I was making my argument from the assumption that the players league would need to make as close to NBA money as possible and to do that they need a similar number of games. I was assuming the best case scenario for the players. You are the one who implied it would be smaller.

It's interesting that me saying that the people with more money and more infrastructure and more protected revenue would likely win a protracted dispute with a group that has far less money, no infrastructure, and no protected revenue, would strike you as "supporting the owners" and not logical and reasonable, which is what it is.

I left the politics forum because it's a sess pool with no rules. It had nothing to do with you.

[ewing]

There also haven't been many strikes in that time either. Of all the sports, the NBA would probably be the easiest to find talented players outside of the league.

That’s totally absurd. The league needs to do something to make these players respect there contracts but the reason it is difficult is bc they need these stars so much and they have started disregarding convention. You could find a decent # of players outside the league to take the place of role players no one is replacing Luka or KD. The game would look totally different without them. Star players are WAY more important to basketball teams then they are to teams in any other sport. Losing these guys would be a death sentence for the league.


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[joeyc77]

That’s totally absurd. The league needs to do something to make these players respect there contracts but the reason it is difficult is bc they need these stars so much and they have started disregarding convention. You could find a decent # of players outside the league to take the place of role players no one is replacing Luka or KD. The game would look totally different without them. Star players are WAY more important to basketball teams then they are to teams in any other sport. Losing these guys would be a death sentence for the league.


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In the short term, maybe. But the league (and franchises) survive without those stars all the time. Look, KD left OKC. In fact, OKC has "lost" KD, Westbrook and harden but still managed to survive.

[warfelg]

So it hasn’t happened in 25 years.

Just because it hasn’t happened in that long doesn’t mean that it isn’t any less true. IIRC when the NBA and NHL had their lockouts (scrubs most often happened in strikes based on what I recall) players signed contracts overseas and some had issues getting out of them.


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[valade16]

In the short term, maybe. But the league (and franchises) survive without those stars all the time. Look, KD left OKC. In fact, OKC has "lost" KD, Westbrook and harden but still managed to survive.

OKC survived because it was part of the league which had KD, Westbrook, and Harden. It’d be a totally different story if the league lost all those stars in addition to OKC.

[ewing]

In the short term, maybe. But the league (and franchises) survive without those stars all the time. Look, KD left OKC. In fact, OKC has "lost" KD, Westbrook and harden but still managed to survive.

Yeah all eyes were on Lou Dort


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[NYKalltheway]

That’s totally absurd. The league needs to do something to make these players respect there contracts but the reason it is difficult is bc they need these stars so much and they have started disregarding convention. You could find a decent # of players outside the league to take the place of role players no one is replacing Luka or KD. The game would look totally different without them. Star players are WAY more important to basketball teams then they are to teams in any other sport. Losing these guys would be a death sentence for the league.

True, but eventually someone will rise to stardom and replace them.

Guys like Steph Curry, Jimmy Butler and Kawhi Leonard weren't superstars from early on and generally not that many showed promise to rise to superstardom after their 2nd season ended. You cannot replace a superstar but you can easily create one. If you can't, you change the rules and someone will fill the gap, it's not like the NBA hasn't done this already several times, but in a more organic way.


As for the contracts, the players sign a contract with the NBA, not the respective franchise. Since the trade and contract system is what it is, players are within their right to demand a trade. The teams should also be allowed to stop paying a player that refuses to dress, which is where the gaps begin.

The issues are structural, there are several rules in place but way too many loopholes that players take advantage of.

And the only reason players have too much power is because the fans say so. When the fans change their mindset and become team first, we'll see a shift here as well. But this comes with the territory of the modern game. There is less traditional following with the NBA these days and it caters to a younger market that has a lower attention span and has little loyalty towards a team. You're very likely to meet young New Yorkers whose dads are Knicks fans that like the Nets because it had more popular players. That was inconceivable in the early 2000s when the Nets with a relatively cool cast reached the NBA Finals twice in a row!

Russell Westbrook has more followers than the Los Angeles Lakers on Instagram. And the league showed that this matters to them, because they think this is what matters to fans as well. If you don't change the culture, elite players demanding trades left and right will be a thing.
The coaches are borderline useless, the teams have lost their identity as they almost all play the exact same way, the rules make the game look extremely soft and dull, so all you have is a bunch of players that are ahead of competition so you cater to them. Fix the game and you indirectly, yet automatically, fix this issue...

[joeyc77]

OKC survived because it was part of the league which had KD, Westbrook, and Harden. It’d be a totally different story if the league lost all those stars in addition to OKC.

But if the league didn't have KD, Westbrook and harden it would have DK, Westen and Hardbrook. There will always be talented players. Maybe not as talented but enough to put an enjoyable product on the court. Just look at the NCAA, even high school basketball games get crowds. There's the Globe Trotters and other similar organizations with talent. Basketball also has a world market. Unlike football, hockey abd baseball, it's literally played everywhere.

[NYKalltheway]

But if the league didn't have KD, Westbrook and harden it would have DK, Westen and Hardbrook. There will always be talented players. Maybe not as talented but enough to put an enjoyable product on the court. Just look at the NCAA, even high school basketball games get crowds. There's the Globe Trotters and other similar organizations with talent. Basketball also has a world market. Unlike football, hockey abd baseball, it's literally played everywhere.

Hockey also has a huge talent pool. Not as big as basketball, but there's enough.

Baseball has some Caribbean and East Asian following so there's a relatively larger pool.

The NFL on the other hand is screwed because apart from the spectacle that is the Superbowl which gets brief coverage outside of the US, there's a far larger Rugby following in the world and they're not really compatible. Isn't it also the only major league without Canadian presence?

[Scoots]

That’s totally absurd. The league needs to do something to make these players respect there contracts but the reason it is difficult is bc they need these stars so much and they have started disregarding convention. You could find a decent # of players outside the league to take the place of role players no one is replacing Luka or KD. The game would look totally different without them. Star players are WAY more important to basketball teams then they are to teams in any other sport. Losing these guys would be a death sentence for the league.

I think the solution is just making it more expensive on players to move on demand by adjusting the CBA contract matching/tax rules. It would just mean fewer owners would be willing to do the move.

[valade16]

But if the league didn't have KD, Westbrook and harden it would have DK, Westen and Hardbrook. There will always be talented players. Maybe not as talented but enough to put an enjoyable product on the court. Just look at the NCAA, even high school basketball games get crowds. There's the Globe Trotters and other similar organizations with talent. Basketball also has a world market. Unlike football, hockey abd baseball, it's literally played everywhere.

I think more people would watch a rival league with the KD’s, Harden’s, and Westbrook’s than they would watch an NBA without them.

[joeyc77]

I think more people would watch a rival league with the KD’s, Harden’s, and Westbrook’s than they would watch an NBA without them.

But that rival league would still need owners outside of the players themselves.

[valade16]

But that rival league would still need owners outside of the players themselves.

There were a half dozen people interested in purchasing the Rockets in 17. There were three bids on the Clippers in 2014, and there are no less than three groups pursuing a Sonics expansion team (not to mention others pursuing a Las Vegas expansion team as well).

There are a lot of billionaires in the US. There’d be plenty of people willing to invest in a league in which they knew they were getting the top players.

The new USFL has secured $150 million in funding for the next three years, and that’s filled with no names. They managed to secure network broadcast of their games as well.