The Lockout: A Tragedy in Two Parts

The NBA is peaking.  Don’t believe me? 

The two marquee franchises are back in the Finals.  The league’s biggest names just won gold in Beijing during an international publicity tour, and the Commish just powered through a potentially devastating Donaghy-related scandal with only moderate damage.  Which, in retrospect, is utterly astounding if you think about it.

Two of the top three MVP candidates are under 24, and a bunch of franchise players are even younger, so the league is in good hands.  Attendance is high, TV ratings are up, and with the influx of high-profile international players, the world is paying attention, too. (See: China v USA, the most-watched basketball game ever.)

So, even as the economy is deteriorating, profits for the NBA just keep rolling in, and it seems they will continue to do so.  It’s an eerily similar landscape compared to a decade ago, when we were one day away from having an entire NBA season wiped off the books.  

And no one is making any mention of it.

* * *

So, as of next week, we are officially ten years removed from the NBA lockout.  

It resulted in an impromptu 2-game preseason followed by 50 games, where all the teams didn’t even get to play each other.  Its no wonder, after that much time off, no team could average 100 points (for the first time in history.)  It was the only time an 8-seed team (Knicks) made it to the Finals.  No Jordan, no All-Star game.  It was a season of anomalies.

I mean, Jason Kidd was on the All-Defensive First Team in ‘99.  Boy, have times changed.

In these ten years, we have seen the birth of two (loosely-defined) dynasties.  We had the Malice At The Palace and the Tim Hardaway Hari-Kiri.  Hack-a-Shaq and Kobe’s Colorado-gate.  And, of course, Brian Scalabrine.

If it wasn’t for the lockout, who knows where we would be now.  So, let’s take this time to go back and examine just what went down ten years ago.

Why did it happen?

It was the classic story of employees and management.  Serfs versus gentry.  There was an incredible amount of money being thrown around after the league’s success during previous decade (due in no small part to Michael Jeffery).  

Stadiums grew into coliseums, ticket prices skyrocketed, and media coverage was notched up to reality-television levels.  The Bulls’ success created a vacuum, in which there was endless attention given to the NBA.  

And the attention meant revenue.

But there was no precedent to where all the money should go.  Up until that time, the game was more important than the contracts, and free agency was only tested when a player was really upset with their team, or Dennis Rodman was involved.  

But then, that focus shifted.  

Agents began looking for the best paycheck for both themselves and their clients, and the players began testing the market.  As it was uncharted spending territory, there were no restrictions upon, say, throwing seven years and $105 million to a guy averaging 19 points, 8 rebounds, and possessing an epic goatee like Juwan Howard.  I’m sure the goatee cost an extra couple million, even in 1996 terms.  (I don’t think he actually has a chin under there.)

See, up until that point, one could understand Shaq making a 7-year, $122 million contract, or Jordan eventually making $30 million for one year.  They were the best at their positions at that point in time, and in the running for Best Ever.  And these were such astronomical values, it’s really difficult to grasp how much $115+ million really is, let alone complain about it.

But for the common player, there was no frame of reference.  What exactly was 20 and 10 worth?  Who knew?

So, Juwan Howard’s contract only exacerbated the situation.  The players averaging better than 19 and 8 were instantly on the phone with their agents, using that $105 million springboard upon which they may, well, spring.  If not Juwan Howard, why not Chris Gatling?  Why not Rod Strickland?  

There’s no right answer.  Management was in a bind.

Enter Kevin Garnett.  During the 1997-98 season, he was 21 years old, and still unproven in the eyes of many.  His numbers and talents were admirable, especially considering no one had gone directly from high school to the NBA in 20 years, and considering he had the physique of a lamppost.  Garnett’s future looked bright, especially in the eyes of agent Andy Miller.  

So, when it came time to talk contract extension with the Timberwolves, negotiations turned hairy.  

Potential was discussed, and numbers began to skyrocket.  They eventually reached an agreement at six years, $126 million, the largest contract of its kind.  It was a year shorter, and still larger than Howard’s.  At least Garnett could sip the celebration champagne legally…he turned drinking age a mere five months prior. 

(Note: Andy Miller was still his agent last summer, when he said to the media “the Boston trade isn’t happening.”  Hrm…)

So, imagine yourself a 65-year-old franchise owner.  From high in your box seats, you see a skinny kid at power forward make more in one contract than you made in decades.  And he’s not doing anything special.  Players have averaged 20 and 10 for years.  Why does this guy deserve a contract ten times as large as theirs?  He’s only 21, for goodness sake!

So, the owners got together, and decided to put a stop to this spending spree.  You want $100 million?  Well, we aren’t paying.  Go play in France if you want to get paid.  Better yet, the TV contracts and merchandise sales still continued, so even if there was no product on the court, the owners still got their coin at the end of the day.  

Again, serfs against gentry.  There’s a reason those castles had high walls.

Problem Resolved?

Eh, not really.  One day before their “season-shut-down” day, the Players’ Association and the owners reached an agreement.  And though the players were originally unwilling to accept a “hard” salary-cap, which limiting the skyscraper contracts, they caved in the end.  

(Stern actually is on record, saying he thought the season was over, and that for the 1999-2000 season they may use replacement players - which I‘m sure was encouraging.) 

In February, they eventually began playing games again, though the basketball that was played was understandably sloppy and gross, in this writer’s opinion.  

The new Collective Bargaining Agreement of today, set in 2005, is a bit more lenient upon salaries, though they still have a “hard cap”.  Many of the players are still inexplicably rich, which is the way it should be.  In essence, little has changed.  So,…

What did we learn?  

What the players were actually fighting over - the absence of a “max contract” - in truth only effected about 5% of the players (the Shaqs, the Karl Malones) while the rest of the players lost over $300 million combined.  

And NBA fans, like me, had to bide their time with news like “Brian Williams changes name to Bison Dele”.  Argh.

The media was relentless, as expected.  Their stories covered the local businesses who were at a loss, and the young fans that had no team to follow.  There was little mention of the positions of the two sides (i.e. how the players suddenly had restrictions imposed on their salaries out of nowhere, and how the owners were grumpy about paying the players) but rather a focus on the lack of a past time, and the entering college players who had “nothing to do”, despite the fact they were the only ones who still played "for the love" of the game.

It was rough, believe me.  I’d take a gambling scandal over a lockout, any day.  

What was at issue was the astronomical amounts.  The “unchecked checks”.  The NBA is hardly a free market, since there is a limit on true talent, so when a bidding war begins on a player, everyone loses, even the player himself.  

As the TIMES Magazine senior business editor Bill Saporito stated, “this was a loser on all sides…the NBA instigated this lockout, and what did it gain? A waste of time, money and goodwill for both the players and the league. There's no great victory here." 

Sad.

* * *

The league is in a good place now.  Perhaps the lockout helped, perhaps it didn’t.  It was undeniably a dark spot on the history of the NBA, but who knows where the contracts would be if not for that January ‘99 agreement.  

And perhaps Vince Carter, the ROY in ‘99, might have had a better attitude after the whole thing.  There’s no way to tell.

We should learn something from the lockout, but personally, I’m not sure the whole thing wasn’t a big waste of time.  The precious thing about the NBA is that anything is possible in any given game, and by canceling those games, they took away those possibilities. 

 

I mean, Jason White Chocolate Williams was a rookie that year, too.  He is retired now, and will never throw those ridiculous passes again.  Don’t you wish you had a couple more Youtube clips of him?  Wouldn’t you pay anything?  Well, ‘99 was when he started dropping our jaws, and we could have had more.  That possibility is now gone forever.

The next negotiation period is either in 2011 or 2012, which is right around when the end of the world, according to the Aztec Calendar.  

I wonder, will Billy Hunter be leading our final negotiations?