Everyone says it a lot and it can be really hard to keep the full implications in mind, but NBA teams are businesses. Any business’s first loyalty is to its shareholders. In most NBA cases that’s a principal owner or a small consortium of owners. The business exists first and foremost to make money for the owners.

Second thing you have to finally admit is that most teams are not managed to win championships. Most are managed to get some fans in the doors and to be credible playoff contenders which is required to keep fans coming back. With TV revenues split and salary cap tax dollars and other revenues flowing back down to all (hell, it’s practically socialist), teams are rewarded for making the whole league stronger, not for actually winning championships. And the base tenet of all human behavior is that what gets rewarded gets done.

The NBA is an entertainment product with a monopoly hold on the talent required for make it run. Yes, players can strike and shut things down for a while, but in the end, they know they have it good. Not too many labor pools out there with an average salary over three million.

When Shaq gets $25 million plus a year, there is a lot of lip service about winning championships, but the ownership will consider it a good value even if they never make it out of the East as long as the arena sells out and they can pick up enough second tier players each year within their budget to keep things competitive. Minnesota drops a lot of dimes on KG to bring in 17k folks a night and feels bad in the papers about never getting out of the first round, but happy in the back room with only the 10th highest payroll in the league. ($5 million more than Detroit.)

Now there do seem to be some teams that play for more than the owner’s pocketbook. While I have minimal knowledge of Mr. Davidson (or any owner for that matter – we don’t seem to run in the same circles, though I did once meet Abe Pollin), he does seem to have other motivations than growing his own peanut, and fortunately for the hardcore fans, winning championships seems to be one of them. The Spurs, the Mavs, maybe a couple of others seem to me to be about winning championships first. Unfortunately, that’s not the game the rest of the league is playing and it makes it hard to compete when your assets are being told by the monopoly that good enough is just that so you may as well go for the money first.

Well, I seem to have rambled a bit far from Mercury’s fine post. Maybe I can drag it back around. We are asking ourselves if Ben deserves a big contract even though his skills may deteriorate before the contract dwindles down. Same for a couple of other key guys. Guys who haven’t done very well in the endorsement game and heavens forbid, actually rely on their day job to make a living. Guys who have made a difference not only in terms of putting butts into seats, but in terms of winning the ultimate prize, regardless of whether or not that is the goal of the league. Guys who have been good citizens and so forth. If the Pistons offered less and Ben took someone else’s money (with hopefully his second ‘ship just under his giant gold belt) would we say he wasn’t loyal? Or is he just being practical? Would we say the ownership wasn’t loyal because they didn’t choose to overpay for an aging superstar?

From where I sit, I’m not sure you could say anything bad about either. Ultimately Ben has to do what is best for Ben. He has to face his family and his conscious. Same for Mr. D and Joe D plus they have the media and assorted pundits to answer to. Years of Ben and Chauncey well past their primes (which I’m hoping is several years out at worst) might still put butts into the Palace’s seats. Hard work and some luck on Joe’s part might put other pieces in place to insure more runs at the championship, but most likely the franchise will have to choose one path as being more likely than the other. You pay your money and your take your choice.

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"But first, are you experienced? Or have you you ever been experienced? Well, I have."
Jimi

DBA, look at the business aspect. Say you have an excellent co. and the shareholders are happy. But you see chance to make the co. even better by disannexing a current piece and annexing another piece. Risk vs reward. By losing a functional piece does it hurt the rest of the co. And by adding the new piece will it hurt the "base" co. My guess is JD choose loyalty to the functioning group at mininal risk rather than go for gross profits in the near future.

Not at all TheeTFD. There will be other players (like our two 2007 picks) coming down the pike. What Joe did is elect to renovate rather than rebuild during the Christmas rush.

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Momma was queen of the mambo, Poppa was king of the congo, deep down in the jungle, I start banging my first bongo
Every monkey like to be, in my place instead of me, cause I'm the king of bongo baby, I'm the king of bongo bong
-Manu Chao

My point to dba was we took the safe route. Even if Darko wasn't the second coming of Larry Bird ;we lost a chance at gross profits.
And what is a PM is to stay a PM!

Thank you for this very enlightening article. Wow! It crossed my mind that very few people (in SA anyway) know that David Robinson is one of the Spurs owners. So, how about offering Ben an ownership in the Pistons? That would acknowledge his value to the organization and also give him some bucks (maybe a lotta bucks) not dependent on his health and athletic ability. I don't know what kind of deal Robinson has, but in light of this article, it seems like it might be a good deal.

Great article, Bro Merc...but all I could think of while reading was a line from my Number One movie of all time.."The Big Chill" by Jeff Goldblum...I've learned to never write anything long enough that the average person can't read during the average crap!" Luv Ya!

Bruddah HQ, you gotta read it in installments.

Is it unusual to go with a front heavy contract? Its seems the opposite of the usual step increase contracts.

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