Cuttin' Down The Nets

NBA commissioner David Stern sat in his chair at a press conference over All-Star Weekend for what was essentially a state of the union as the league heads toward a renegotiation of the CBA. He announced that the league was on pace to lose nearly $400 million, a figure not too far off from the hundreds of millions of dollars the league has lost in previous years under the current arrangement with the player's union. He chastised the union for tearing up the owners' proposal and warned people in his own office, Godfather-style, of the consequences of playing the media game while both sides are involved in heated negotiations("They would be dealt with; they would be former, former NBA people, not current." Stern assured.)

While the labor strife is obviously the biggest iceberg to Stern's Titanic, there may be another decent sized cluster of frozen water that may stand to damage professional basketball: Salary dumping.

If this past Friday's 7-player heist, in which the Mavericks were able to steal All-Star forward Caron Butler as well as serviceable big man Brendan Haywood and veteran swingman DeShawn Stevenson from Washington in exchange for disgruntled/oft-injured forward Josh Howard and a couple expiring contracts, taught us anything it's that the NBA is continuing to move towards becoming a league in which small-market teams essentially become farm systems for their big market counterparts. The Wizards had quite a bit of buzz after the hiring of coach Flip Saunders and how his presence will affect a lineup that featured Butler, All-Star forward Antawn Jamison and All-Star guard Gilbert Arenas. What happened instead was a slow start, some crucial injuries and the much-publicized Arenas locker room gun bust that led to Arenas' season-ending suspension. All of those components have made the Wizards, much like their fellow losing counterparts, sellers in a declining sports economy.

With attendance being down across the board, the lack of butts in seats only stand to hurt teams on the wrong side of the win-loss record even more. It's why a team like the Pacers is looking to unload a young, budding star like Danny Granger or why the Raptors are so pessimistic about their chances of retaining star forward Chris Bosh in the offseason, that they are listening to trade offers. And they aren't even getting back fair value. The Mavs got potentially the best player on the Wizards for their fourth best player in their starting five and chump change. That gives the Mavs a lineup that features aging but still effective Jason Kidd, the equally declining Shawn Marion, Butler and former MVP Dirk Nowitzki.....and they may not be done dealing. With Haywood on the roster, there are rumors circulating that the Mavs will pilfer shooting guard Richard Hamilton from Detroit in exchange for overrated and overpaid big man Erick Dampier. While overloading the contenders may help the NBA's ratings come playoff time, what message does it send to fans of losing teams? The only glimmer of hope a Knicks fan has right now is that all of these years of purging the roster will be paid off with some big names this offseason, most notably LeBron James. Why should fans be forced to watch their favorite players be shipped out for pocket lint?

Now, in fairness to Stern and his people, the commissioner is trying to cut down the poor spending of incompetent owners by cutting guaranteed years on contracts in half, lowering the minimum salary by 20% and cutting the salary on first-rounders by a third. That may help teams like the Knicks, who are trying to put together overpaid benchwarmers like Eddy Curry and Jared Jefferies in exchange for a bigger contract that expires at the end of the year(like, say, T-Mac's $22M expiring deal) so they can get all that wasted money off the books. That's just deferring more bad contracts though and the team that foolishly takes on a big, lengthy deal like Curry's will only be looking to move it down the road. Even if Stern manages to get the union on his side with his proposal, we're still looking at another year or two of bad contract hot potato as well as small-market, poorly-attended franchises still being forced to deal its young talent. Here's a couple of proposed one-sided trades that have at least a decent chance of getting done:

1. Phoenix trades All-Star forward/center Amare Stoudemire to Cleveland for Big Z and young forward J.J. Hickson: That gives the Cavs a starting five of Delonte West, All-Star Mo Williams, reigning MVP LeBron James, Stoudemire and Shaq's big, fat corpse. It also means that, in the span of six months, the Suns would have given up two of its most recognizable stars(Shaq and Amare) to Cleveland in exchange for bit parts who either will have little impact(Hickson, theoretically) or won't play a minute in the desert(Big Z, Ben Wallace, Sasha Pavlovic). Oddly enough, it also means the three best players on the Cavs(King James, Shaq and Amare) have contracts that expire at the end of the year and could bolt if things go south over the next few months together(Remember, Shaq and Amare weren't exactly a dynamic duo in Phoenix and the jury's still out on whether Shaq was the right sidekick for LeBron in the first place). It also makes you feel bad for former 2-time MVP Steve Nash. Already aging and probably missing his boat on a championship ring, he now gets to see his loyalty repaid by watching the team sell off its best parts for the chance of being good down the road. Here's who Nash has played with since signing with Phoenix a few years ago: Joe Johnson(traded), Boris Diaw and Raja Bell(traded), Shaq(traded), Shawn Marion(traded) and now eventually Amare(who has to be the most likely to be traded of any star this season). That's not to mention that the team let go of the coach that made Nash a household name in Phoenix, Mike D'Antoni. The end result of all that talent around Nash? Zero rings, not even a Finals appearance. Meanwhile, LeBron gets Shaq, Mo and now possibly Amare. Paul Pierce gets KG and Ray Allen. Tim Duncan gets Richard Jefferson and watches the Spurs steal DaJuan Blair. Kobe gets Pau Gasol, Ron Artest and Lamar Odom. As for Nash, he gets fucked like Kim Kardashian after the Saints' victory parade. Speaking of Kobe.....

2. Raptors trade Chris Bosh to Lakers for center Andrew Bynum: This trade is the Lee Harvey Oswald in the book depository to the NBA's J.F.K.. The Lakers already look like far and away the best team in the West, if not the whole league, and now they could add a Top 15 talent like Bosh for a big man who is as much drenched with potential as he is overpaid and oft-injured. Remember when the Lakers wouldn't part with Bynum a couple years ago for Jason Kidd? Well, now they are ready to deal him for four months of Chris Bosh(I really don't see him staying with Lakers in the offseason if dealt to L.A.). The Raptors' theory behind moving Bosh is to get something for him before he inevitably bolts for Houston or wherever this summer and it's a modest strategy, but is Bynum the prize you want as compensation? Sure, Bynum has double-double potential with a few blocks per game added in, but it's not like he's the second coming of David Robinson. He also can't stay healthy and is limited offensively. Bosh can get it done on both sides of the court and has Duncan-like range from outside the paint. You're really going to deal him straight up for a guy who can't play 82 games on a loaded Lakers team? Now, you can always ask "Why don't the Raptors try a sign and trade in the offseason?" and that's certainly a valiant question(If you're the Blazers, would you not give up on Greg Oden and a few young stars like, say, Travis Outlaw and Rudy Fernandez in exchange for an all-world talent like Bosh? Just askin'.). You can't expect me to believe the Raptors will sell tickets with a nucleus of former top pick Andrea Bargnani, point guard Jose Calderon and Bynum. Even Canadians wouldn't go for that. Plus, there's already enough anti-Laker sentiment filtering outside of L.A., do you really want to rile up Laker haters more by allowing them to acquire one of the best young bigs in the game for Bynum's hideously awful contract?

Those are just a sample. Other guys supposedly on the block for financial reasons: Sacremento's Kevin Martin, New Orleans' David West, Minnesota's Al Jefferson as well as the aforementioned Danny Granger. Now, if the Pacers deal Granger, you might as well contract the Pacers. Nobody's watching that 1970's band of white guys anyway and if you get rid of its most polarizing star, you might as well just whip out your dick and piss all over Reggie Miller and all of Hoosier-ville. Even if Granger is dealt for Jefferson(as has been rumored for weeks), you still can't sell me on a Pacers team led by a Jefferson-Tyler Hansbrough Twin Towers redux. Speaking of Jefferson, remember when he was the central part in the KG trade a couple years ago? He was supposed to be a building block, now he's just a block too heavy and rich to move. As for Martin, all it took was some knee trouble, a big contract and Tyreke Evans to make him expendable. West is the Hornets' only proven big man but owner George Shinn has become infamous for being too cheap to keep stars(a small sample of guys Shinn has jettisoned: Larry Johnson, Alonzo Morning, Kobe Bryant, J.R. Smith, Eddie Jones, Anthony Mason, Baron Davis....just for starters. Oh, and don't think he won't eventually part with Chris Paul. Baron Davis was once the future of the franchise and they dealt him for Dale Davis and Speedy Claxton....and I didn't even have to look that up...it STILL chaps my ass.).

So what's the solution? Certianly, at this point, contraction can't be THAT bad of an idea. If losing teams are already giving up their best players for nothing and dividing the league into the haves and have-mores, why not just trim the fat, shorten the league to 20 teams and just have 10 loaded teams in two divisions fight for six playoff spots? After all, the league is already losing hundreds of millions of dollars and teams are being sold like Mickey Mantle rookie cards on Ebay. The Nets, on pace for the worst record in the history of the sport, are set to be sold for the 2nd time in less than a decade. The Bobcats, originally brought in to Charlotte to entertain the same fan base that barely showed up to watch the Hornets while they were good, are reportedly getting sold within the next two months. This coming after the team just arrived in 2004. So why not just get rid of them? Why even wait to move the Nets to Brooklyn? We can just move them to the D-League. Shit, we can even go back to the way things were decades ago when we had the NBA and the ABA. Two different leagues. Two different styles of place. Two different concepts of business.

Would that really be much different than what we have now?