No More Onion Bags

Socialist America

// February 24th, 2010 // Uncategorized

     Sorry about the delay in posts. Last week was the trading deadline for my other favorite sport/league, NBA basketball. And unlike soccer, you can’t immediately process the results of deadline activities. That’s because the NBA, like other American sports, is decidedly un-free market. In fact, the NBA is probably the most socialist of American sports. There are 30 teams, and each of them has a certain limit, called a salary cap, on what they are allowed to spend on annual salaries for their players — this year it’s about $55 million for up to 15 players. There are several exceptions, the biggest being that you can go over the cap when you sign a player to a new contract if he was on your team when his contract ended (this is known as owning a player’s “Bird Rights”, since the great but evil Larry Bird was the first player to get such treatment). Teams that enter the offseason already over the cap are allowed to use to other exceptions, one Mid-Level Exception (over the cap teams can sign one player to the average salary amount, about $5.5m per year) and one Million Dollar Exception (which, oddly, is now a $2m contract exception).

    Transfer fees don’t really exist — players can only be traded from one team to another for other players (although one team is allowed to throw up to $3 million in cash into any deal). The salary cap makes trading incredibly interesting, because you can’t just swap players — you must make their salaries match, which often means random fringe players are thrown into deals for no other reason.  So, the trading deadline becomes as much about math as it is about talent. Every February, this website gets A LOT of hits from interested and confused fans.  To make it more interesting, teams enter the deadlines with two of goals: 1) Get players to help them win now, since the playoffs are only a couple of months away. The problem is that getting good players usually means bringing in big salaries, which requires you to send away big salaries, which often means giving up good players; and 2) Prep your team to win in the future by getting rid of big salaries so you have cap space to sign new players in the off-season. What this ends up meaning is that good teams trade for good players with long-term contract in exhange for less good or once-but-not-longer-good players with the infamous “expiring contracts.” An expiring contract ends at the end of the season, freeing up a team to get new players in the summer off-season.

     Still with me? I hope so. What’s crazy is that my New York Knicks have been in a two year process of acquiring as many 2010 expiring contracts as possible.  We had the world’s worst general manager for several years, and he loaded our team with terrible players, but only after signing them to long-term contracts, giving us no hope of replacing them with better players in the short term. Two years ago, we finally fired the bum, and got a new GM, who promptly announced that he was not going to try to be competitive for the next two years as all he was trying to do was acquire players with 2010 expiring contracts. Realize that basketball is possibly the most popular grassroots sport in New York City. What’s terrific is that no one minded that we were giving up in trying to be good for two years. Why? Because in the summer of 2010, THE KING, becomes a free agent. Heard of Lebron James? He’s the best player in the game, and he’s only 25. Several other gigantic superstars will also be available this year. The Knicks found a way to trade about $24 million in non-expiring contracts over the the past two years and will now have about $30m+ in cap space this summer — enough to sign Lebron and whoever he would like to bring with him.   (The actual trade the Knicks just made with the Rockets is beyond complex: the Knicks got a guy with a $23 million expiring contract, and gave up three current players with salaries totalling almost $23m this year, one of whom is young, good, and cheap to keep in future years; the Knicks’ first amateur draft pick in 2012; and the right for the other team to swap draft picks with the Knicks in 2011 if they want to — confusing, I know.)  The problem is that the Knicks might still not get Lebron: Cleveland has his Bird rights and can keep him, and a few other teams have angled to get cap space, too. Free agents can sign starting July 1. This year, it’s like another World Cup.

     Why the post about basketball? Just because I am constantly baffled how the most capitalist country in the world still has the most socialist structure for sports. Real Madrid can buy whoever they want. They can pay them whatever they want. I watched them absolutely destroy Villareal this weekend, 6-2. They were awesome. Their recent 65 million euro signing, Kaka, didn’t even play well. But luckily, their 90 million euro signing, Cristiano, was awesome, and their recent 30 million (Xabi), 20 million (lass, Higuain) and 15 million (Albiol) signings were great. It’s really great that Spanish sports reflect Spain’s approach to the labor market. Hmmmn, but have you seen what the rest of the Spain looks like? There’s a reason they’ve got 20 percent unemployment — it’s because the rest of the economy is strucutured to promote fairness over labor market flexibility. Here in the USA, on the other hand, my company can fire me tomorrow with no repercussions. And they can hire me for any salary over the tiny minimum wage, but since I’m in a white collar job (a nonprofit, mind you), they can ask me to work extra hours for no cost.

   Sigh. I get the worst of all worlds. I live in New York City, the most expensive part of the country. I should at least get to root for the best sports teams in exchange for my paying a ridiculous amount in rent, etc. But no, we have to have fairness… in sports. Cleveland needs to have a good basketball team to root for. This is despite the fact that Cleveland itself is a mess because companies pick up and leave whenever the word “union” is whispered. Why can’t our sports show that capitalism isn’t fair?  Can we get the teabaggers on this?  Instead of making sure that we don’t get healthcare for all, it would be great if they could spend their time making sure that not everyone had an fair chance of having a good hometown basketball team. 

Posted by Lazar