Fortune Magazine puts out a list of the highest paid athletes every year. For 2007 they had LeBron at around 31 million. He's not going anywhere.
I was scrolling around on HoopsHype today and in various U.S. publications, the following players expressed that they would consider playing in Europe for the right money: Kobe Bryant Carlos Boozer LeBron James Chris Paul Chris Bosh Carmela Anthony Dwayne Wade ...sooner or later, a "star" or top draft pick is going to open the floodgates for a minor exodus of pretty good players to Europe.
I saw that too. I don't know if throwing $50 million a year at one of these guys would make business sense, but for a billionaire owner who wants a highly visible status symbol it might be tempting.
The way i see it, the NBA used to be THE place to bawl. ...now it seems destined to turn into ONE OF the places to bawl.
In all seriousness, will this not make the NBA eventually rethink the cap? In an extreme hypethetical, what if Kobe and Lebron were both lured away to Europe because they took offers that were above the limit in the NBA? That would kill the league. I like the cap, but this definitely gives the player's union some serious leverage in their next negotiation.
Kobe can go......Sign Shaq to your team Kobe..... Don't drink the Limoncello.....unless with lots of pasta and garlic [STRIKE]breath[/STRIKE] bread.
Kobe grew up in Italy, so it would not be a culture shock for him to play there. Money talks.........
The Sonics failed to turn a profit with both Ray Allen and (max contract) Rashard Lewis. Even with large public subsidy for the stadium, Howard Schultz and Clay Bennet claimed losses of nearly 40 million dollars a year. If the NBA changes the salary cap, how will smaller market teams be able to afford these players? Also, if Kobe is getting $60 mil, does that mean that Jarvis Hayes is worth 8 mil a year, or does the NBA become a league with one tremendously overpaid player and a supporting cast of D-League rejects making the league minimum? Perhaps the NBA will have to rethink it's superstar marketing and start building teams that can consistently win against Euro-teams built around the star and scrubs.
So why didn't they just tell the people to let it go? If it's the same ownership in OK City, they'll blow it there.
Pretty interesting question, isn't it? Seattle is anywhere from 3.3 to a little over 4.5 million people depending on how you define the market (from metro area to TV market). It's hard to get comparable definitions elsewhere, but for comparison, in France, only Paris is larger, the UK maybe has two, and Germany maybe three of comparable or larger size. I wonder how much more (if any) sponsorship dollars a Euro team might get, because the extra cash to sign LBJ or Kobe isn't going to come from usual revenues. This could be a case of talking the talk, but on the face of it, it might be pretty hard for a team to walk the walk. If LBJ were willing to walk away from all his endorsement dollars and let those flow through the team, then maybe something might happen. Otherwise, I'm must not seeing where the money will come from. And then of course there is the signing of Childress...
Now they are reporting that Flip Murray might go over seas? That is going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
With Arroyo and Ron Murray over in Europe, It's hard to even justify that backcourt play in the NBA is on the same level as what's happening on the other side of the Atlantic. The NBA is becoming a "minor league".
