by Shaebaun "Suge" BenjaminIt is Mid-July and the NBA Offseason as we know it is probably over.
I don't expect the Timberwolves to end up trading Kevin Love before the season, so maybe there might be a minor trade or two before September.
From here you will probably see minor veteran minimum signings and players cut or designated to the D-League.
So let's talk about what happened that got us here.
Lebron returned to Cleveland, a magnificent story. Miami felt that Chris Bosh was worth $118 million for some reason and they also feel signing Luol Deng for 2 years is a franchise changing move. I think Lebron leaving moved Pat Riley ten years forward into dementia. Lance Stephenson will be blowing air into people's faces in a Charlotte Hornets uniform. Pau Gasol is Chicago's Carmelo plan B.
Now let's talk about Melo.
Of course the feeling if you are not a New York Knick fan your feeling is that he took money over a championship. He signed a 5-year $124 million contract with a full no-trade clause and an opt out after year 4. Much more than the 4 years and $73 million Chicago had to offer.
That's a $51 million difference. I know some of you are saying $73 million is a lot of money regardless. Well $51 million regardless.
The only thing Chicago could guarantee was the "chance" at a title with that contract. That's like giving someone a lottery ticket with 25% chance at winning because we can assume with Chicago, Melo would at least make it to the Conference Finals. But there are a pack of teams out west that would still beat that Bulls squad in the NBA Finals.
Carmelo Anthony emphasized wanting to be able to contend this season and thereafter. He consulted with Phil Jackson, Knicks president, on the offseason moves he made. Jackson highlighted that the Knicks may not be able to contend for a title in 2014-15 but would be able to have plenty of flexibility in 2015 and 2016 to make moves to make them championship contenders. He also offered him that max contract.
The NBA these days is structured in a way that promotes "superteams", but with a salary cap at about $60 million you cannot pay multiple players maximum money. So the term "sacrifice" comes up a lot.
This is why as fans we talk about players being greedy and taking money over winning. For instance I was mightily upset when former New York Yankees second baseman Robinson Cano left for Seattle. The Yankees had offered 7 years $175 million and Seattle Mariners offered 10 years $240 million and he took the latter. I hate that he left, but $65 million is a lot to pass up.
The people that don't sacrifice are the one's who get the trophy handed to them when the players win it, the owners. You never hear of any sacrifices made by them.
In the courting of Melo, the plan for Chicago was to acquire him by sign & trade. The Bulls did not have the necessary cap space to sign him outright. The name that kept coming up was Carlos Boozer, who is on an expiring deal for $16.8 million. The Bulls attempted to trade him rather than use their amnesty provision, which would clear cap space by paying him his full salary and releasing him.
Jerry Reinsdorf who owns the Bulls as well as the Chicago White Sox, one could assume, simply did not want to pay someone to not play for him. It isn't far fetched. Reinsdorf with a few other baseball owners were found guilty of collusion by an arbitrator in the 1980's. Collusion is the act of having an agreement with other owners to not sign a certain player in order to decrease their salary demands.
So the Bulls strategy was for the Knicks to facilitate moving their star by taking an unwanted contract and maybe some draft picks, probably not much else besides that.
That's like someone taking your nice leather couch in exchange for their ugly, stained couch and some coupons for a recliner.
Point is championships are far from guaranteed, which is why only a small percentage of players have them. You can only put yourself in good position to do so. Jackson offer that to Melo as well as the money he deserved. Money, at least in all sports except football, is all guaranteed and going for top dollar should not be criticized as vehemently as it has.
We all know the ones that criticize would not do it themselves. If you were working at Macy's you wouldn't take a paycut for the better good of the company knowing the CEO would still be jet-setting his family to Aruba and Italy for vacations year in and year out.
The other thing about Carmelo Anthony is that he was not leaving a 20 win team but a 37 win team coming off a down year with absolutely no leadership from the front office to the last man on the bench. Some would say that he did not deserve a max contract because he missed all three All-NBA teams. The man averaged 28.1 and 8 rebounds, you can't hold the fact that Raymond Felton was his point guard against him.
Phil Jackson arrived with a plan and implanted a coach with the tools to do well. They will have enough cap space to go after one or maybe two impact players in next year's free agent class and their first round draft pick.
Somehow in the past 2 months the thirteen-time NBA champion convinced Melo to take the money and follow his blueprint.
Jerry Reinsdorf and the Bulls offered a former MVP who relies on his quickness with questionable knees and defensively effective team. I actually speculated that the Bulls were sitting on their amnesty in the case that Derrick Rose's legs would give out yet again.
In actuality, they used the amnesty on Boozer because they could not work out a sign & trade for Gasol, involving him.
Lebron James' contract with Cleveland is only for 2 years but he smartly did so. The maximum contract and salary cap is decided by the result of revenue the league makes, which is why there was a lockout in 2011. This issue was the amount of revenue the players would receive. In 2016, the NBA's television contracts are up. With the league being the second most watched in the country and the second most popular sport in the world those contracts will be worth a lot.
The owners are always in good position to make money. Whether it is through television money or the sale of their team. A truly ignorant man will sell his franchise and make more than any other owner in history all because he made some sensationally idiotic comments to a female companion.
So Lebron has done this not as threat to leave Cleveland but as a way to insure that as the best player in the league he is paid as such.
If the owners continue to collect money and improve their ring and trophy collection, so should the players.
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