Kobe Bryant, in his declining years, is easily the most overpaid player in the NBA. He played just 35 games this year before bowing out due to another season ending injury, making $23.5 million and he’ll make $25 million next year.
However, Kobe Bryant, for just about the entirety of his career and even when he was making the absolute most money the NBA would allow him to make, was completely and utterly underpaid. Kobe has long been aware of this, since his teens even, and he’s completely correct in reminding us that the NBA’s owners have developed a collectively bargained system that does not reward its stars with payment commensurate with their contributions.
What Kobe might be a little off on is including his beloved Lakers within the ranks of his moneyed martyrdom. In a typically-interesting and oftentimes odd interview with Chuck Klosterman at GQ, Bryant relayed that he thinks it was the Los Angeles Lakers that were the cause of the owners’ hardline stance during the 2011 NBA lockout. Despite the fact that the Lakers were swept in the second round of the playoffs prior to the work stoppage.
When asked by Klosterman as to how the Lakers were going to attempt to build a championship-level team this summer, Bryant dropped this:
But how could that possibly be done? Doesn’t the league’s financial system dictate certain limitations?
Well, okay: Look at the [2011] lockout. That lockout was made to restrict the Lakers. It was. I don’t care what any other owner says. It was designed to restrict the Lakers and our marketability.
The Lakers specifically, or teams like the Lakers?
There is only one team like the Lakers. Everything that was done with that lockout was to restrict the Lakers’ ability to get players and to create a sense of parity, for the San Antonios of the world and the Sacramentos of the world. But a funny thing happened, coming out of that lockout: Even with those restrictions, the Lakers pulled off a trade [for Chris Paul] that immediately set us up for a championship, a run of championships later, and which saved money. Now, the NBA vetoed that trade. But the Lakers pulled that sh-t off, and no one would have thought it was even possible. The trade got vetoed, because they’d just staged the whole lockout to restrict the Lakers. Mitch got penalized for being smart. But if we could do that…
Don’t flatter yourself, Kobe. Don’t flatter yourself, Lakers.
If there was any style of team that the NBA’s owners set out to destroy, it was a top-heavy Miami Heat squad featuring three of the best players at their position and cast lower-salaried helpers. It is completely fair to suggest that a litany of NBA owners, angry at superstars deciding to control their own fate in sunny Miami, wanted to somehow level the playing field. To make the money in Minnesota count as much as the money in Miami.
The real reason for the lockout was money, in general, however. The NBA’s owners needed to wrest back a chunk of basketball-related income in order to cap themselves from spending outrageously – not on superstars, but for everyone else. From tossing too-long contracts at middling players, or getting too giddy in dealing draft picks during trade deadlines and (especially) offseasons that were featuring more and more outrageous transactions.
Now, do you want to talk about a lockout that was about the Lakers? Look at the work stoppage that followed the 1997-98 season.
Prior to the collective bargaining agreement that was signed in January of 1999, the NBA did not have a cap on individual player salaries or a luxury tax for teams that had strayed too far over the league’s artificial salary “cap.”
This was why the Chicago Bulls were looking to spend some of the hundreds of millions of dollars they earned during the Michael Jordan years to toss unending amounts of cash at a new generation of players. This is why Jordan made over $31 million in his final season, and why the Lakers were able to clear cap space and outbid Orlando for Shaquille O’Neal’s services in 1996. Even with a salary cap in place, teams with space could choose to toss 90 percent of a team’s available cap space on one star, if they saw fit.
Following this CBA change, however, players were given set salaries based on how long they had been in the NBA, and the idea of a “maximum contract” was established. Not only that, the new CBA incentivized re-signing with your incumbent team, which is why young stars like Kobe Bryant, Ray Allen, Allen Iverson, and Antoine Walker all quietly re-signed with their current squads just following the lockout. Even had a team like the Bulls offered any of those players the max, as the Bulls did, those young stars could make more by staying home.
Despite the massive cap space and market advantage, the Bulls were forced into playing by everyone else’s rules, which led to the franchise’s decline. In a similar vein some 15 years later, the Lakers could not use the money earned from their massive local television contract to offer Carmelo Anthony or LeBron James $30 million a season to pair with Kobe. Not because of the 2011 NBA lockout, but because of the 1998-99 one.
You may also recall that Kobe Bryant was one of five players to actually vote against the final version of the new CBA in 1999.
Laker teammate Shaquille O’Neal had already gotten his massive contract in 1996 and he pushed to end the lockout sooner rather than later, taking on a cadre of agents and other superstars along the way. Bryant, with his second contract now likely cut from $100-something million to “just” $71 million in total, knew that this new deal would enhance the NBA’s middle class while just about underpaying even players earning “maximum” contracts. It was absolutely in his best interests to go against the grain in that instance, and an incredibly gutsy and intelligent move to make for someone at any age, much less 20-years old.
It was the subsequent overpayment of the middle class players – your Josh Childresses or Drew Goodens – that led to the 2011 work stoppage. Not a fear of a big, bad Laker machine. That had already been taken care of.
Did the NBA seemingly wrong the Lakers by overruling the trade that sent them Chris Paul, so soon after the 2011 lockout? Perhaps, but in the end the NBA-owned New Orleans club ended up making a better deal for Paul. Just nine months later, Laker fans were actually happy that the NBA overruled the Paul trade, as a lineup featuring Bryant, Steve Nash, Metta World Peace, Pau Gasol and Dwight Howard was seemingly superior to one featuring Paul, Bryant, MWP, Andrew Bynum and Josh McRoberts.
That obviously didn’t work out, but it doesn’t mean the Lakers still weren’t able to put together two different super-teams under the new rules. On top of that, the Cleveland Cavaliers worked their way toward a fearsome super-team last summer, and there is always a chance the Lakers or Knicks could do the same this summer or next with scads of cap space and a big name already in place.
Of course, that’s dependent on superstars choosing Laker or Knick-money over the money offered by their incumbent teams. Outfits in smaller markets such as Portland and Memphis don’t have to be fearful of the Laker or Knick television revenue as they cobble together maximum contracts that will actually out-bid the Los Angeles or New York offer, as outlined by a collective bargaining agreement that was preceded by a lockout.
The 1998 one, Kobe. Not the 2011 one.
- - - - - - -
Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
from Yahoo Sports http://ift.tt/1A3ICNE
