basketball pope

Chapter 699 [The lockout ends, the transaction begins]

In mid-September, the NBA labor negotiations collapsed again, and many owners tried to implement a hard salary cap.

The hard salary cap, as the name suggests, is a salary cap that cannot be exceeded. Even if you have money, you cannot spend it. Everyone competes fairly.

From the perspective of fans and owners, the introduction of a hard salary cap is good for the NBA.If the salary of each team is the same, there will be no teams like the Lakers F4, the Cavaliers and the Celtics, which can greatly enhance the competitiveness and make the game more exciting. Small city teams also have hope of winning the championship.

Many people think that the NBA in the 8s and 90s looked better because a team had at most two stars, and one more star owner would not make money. The only exception is probably the Bulls, because Pippen was a good guy who didn't want money. comrade.

Now, the league is too divided between strong and weak. How can a weak team with a total salary of 5000 million beat a giant with a total salary of more than 1 million?There are at least two missing stars in the team, or there is a huge gap in the strength of substitute and role players.

The NFL League has implemented a hard salary cap system to narrow the gap between teams. The NFL is also the most popular league in the United States, and the Super Bowl is as grand as a holiday every year.

The NBA now adopts a luxury tax collection system, which has indeed formed a certain restraint on the rich teams, but if the owner is very rich and is not afraid of spending money, this system is a piece of paper.Like the Russian owner of the Nets, spending [-] million is not a big deal, not paying taxes?

You can't buy a Super Bowl in the NFL, but in the NBA, you can buy a championship.

No matter what the owners and fans think, no NBA player is willing to take a pay cut. Derek Fisher, the chairman of the Players Union, made a tough statement that he would rather die than sign a hard salary cap.

Fisher has a calm face and a rational negotiating voice, and he speaks like an official spokesman.

"We won't agree and we won't have internal divisions like the owners of the team, you can see it in the clothes of the players' union members. We are together, we are united, there are no differences, it has been reported many times. , we want to continue to reiterate that."

Trade union members printed special T-shirts with silhouettes of several basketball players on their chests. In front of the silhouettes, the giant "STAND" was written in yellow bold letters! (It can be understood as "can bear it"!)
When the reporter asked if the owners would unite and sacrifice a season in exchange for the implementation of a hard salary cap policy, Fisher gave a very domineering answer. "No, it's totally impossible. 30 teams have 30 owners. In my opinion, less than half of the owners have similar ideas."

More than half, no owner is willing to sacrifice a season, no matter how much players lose money, they will not lose more than them.And if it is really going to be suspended for a season, David Stern will not agree, and the fans will run away, and no one will have to play.

In early October, a new round of negotiations broke down again, and the two sides made a little progress, but there is still a long way to go.The players have agreed to reduce the basketball-related revenue share to 10 percent, but the players' union has been told that such concessions still won't make up for the differences between the two sides.

To put it bluntly, the difference between the two sides is money, which is no different from the shutdown in 1998.

The NBA officially announced that training camps and preseason games in October will be cancelled, as will the first two weeks of November.

On the Internet, fans scolded, and those with a violent temper directly vowed not to pay attention to the NBA in the future.

Yang Rui did not show up from beginning to end, did not participate in the negotiations, and took a vacation in Los Angeles.The advantage of this is that almost no one knows that he is the "owner" of 30% of the Clippers' shares, and players will not be disgusted with him.

Yang Rui doesn't care how much money the Clippers make by shutting down, and now let Donald Sterling stand in front.Sterling lives up to the hype and is one of the toughest and most active bosses around.

Like the previous life, many NBA players without contracts went to China to play in the CBA, including several big names, JR Smith, Kenyon Martin, Wilson Chandler and so on.

Yi Jianlian joined the Guangdong team and attracted many fans.It is a pity that Yao Ming did not play for the Shanghai team. He was reimbursed for a serious injury last season, which made him understand the importance of rest and was reluctant to play in low-level games.He has already won the regular season MVP, no matter what stats he plays in the CBA, it will not give him a sense of accomplishment.

History and Yang Rui's previous life have changed a lot. If there is no butterfly effect at this time, Yao Ming should have become the boss of the Shanghai team.Now he is not interested in buying the Shanghai team. The newly signed contract will not expire until 16. Even if he wants to buy it in the future, he will buy an NBA team.

Yao Ming's maximum salary contract plus advertising costs is an astonishing figure, and now he is the top five players in the NBA's commercial value.

The management of each team is not idle, and sends the most unknown people to contact free agents to discuss signing intentions, such as assistant managers, establish a Minion account, communicate with players online, how does the NBA check?
Relying on the signing loopholes, many teams have already negotiated transactions, but they have not announced them.

The league's "seven prohibitions" are verbal warnings, which can be perfunctory by management personnel and players without meeting.It's impossible for the league to actually look up everyone's internet conversations or phone records. That would be too costly, even if Facebook couldn't do it.

Until November 11, the labor and management finally reached an agreement, ending the 26-day shutdown.

Stern announced that the new season will kick off on Christmas Day, December 12, with free agency and training camp opening on December 25.

The players finally accepted the plan of 49%-51% floating share. The management guarantees that under the premise of ideal NBA revenue growth, labor can get 51% of the revenue share, which is much lower than the 53% previously discussed.

Players are willing to make concessions because of heavy losses, and the owner is no exception. The combined losses of both sides exceed 20 billion US dollars.A full NBA season has 82 regular-season games, and now there are only 66 games left, and the direct economic loss of players is 5.3 million US dollars.

Kobe Bryant is the highest-paid player in the new season, with a total salary of $2524 million. Because of the shortened season, his salary loss reached $492 million.He played 12 games less, enough for the average family to eat for a lifetime.

In order to make money, the league has arranged the most intensive schedule in history. Each team has to play 3 back-to-back games, which will seriously reduce the physical strength of the players, which will not only directly affect the quality of the game, but also increase the possibility of players being injured.

In December, the free market started together, and each team began to strengthen.

The Clippers left three players first.Novak joined the Knicks, Dunleavy joined the Bucks for 2 years and 750 million, and Sheldon Williams joined the Nuggets.

It doesn't matter that the two are marginal. The management wanted Dunleavy to stay, but he refused.

Dunleavy wants to join a team that can play the ball. He thinks that he can still fight for a big contract and play a big role on the court, and he does not want to become a marginal person.If Dunleavy takes a pay cut to join the Clippers, he will be 33 years old in two years, and it will be very difficult to get a high salary.

This is an external statement. The reason why Dunleavy really doesn’t want to stay with the Clippers is that he doesn’t want to play the 4th position and is afraid of confrontation. He didn’t want to do the transformation requirements proposed by Yang Rui.

The Knicks also renewed the contract of Greg Oden. From the time he entered the league to the present, the "Great Emperor" has had a high attendance rate in one season, or blue-collar data.The Knicks were reluctant to let him go, and gave him a year in the hope that he would get his senses back.

The Knicks also signed veteran point guard Mike Bibby. The current Knicks lineup is not bad. Except for Stoudamire, there are no high-paid players. They have to make great achievements in the summer.

(End of this chapter)