It’s a sad commentary on our franchise that David Lee is one of the top ten players ever to take the floor as a Knick”…………………..STOP IT, are you for real? if that is the case, then Amar’e will go down in the top 3, PEACE!

It’s a sad commentary on our franchise that David Lee is one of the top ten players ever to take the floor as a Knick and
A. So few fans realize it
B. Most of his coaches and his management didn’t realize it.

My hope is that in the acquistion of Morgov will give me an exciting new rooting interest. I find it promising that the man charged with guarding the paint for us next year has a name ominously similar (for our opponents I hope), to the arch villain in the Tolkien books, Morgoth. For years I have been pushing for the Knicks to acquire Smaug or one of the Balrogs currently playing over in Europe, maybe even a cave troll or an Oliphaunt. Hopefully he can fill the niche.

Ok, someone had to attempt that pun, I did my best…

Good points.

I don’t know much about NBA economics but the question is really, why are costs increasing faster than revenues? Using your example, decreasing ticket prices through special offers *will* be reflected in revenue (less revenue than full ticket cost, if they’re giving things away to entice people to buy tickets and losing money on what they’re giving away they really have to rethink that strategy… just decrease the ticket price to it’s market value…). If your revenues are increasing, but your costs are increasing faster there’s a good chance you’re doing something wrong. You have limited control over revenue, but you have total control over costs.

I agree that owners shouldn’t be using the argument “We need to change the CBA to protect us from ourselves”. If they’re the ones giving out the huge contracts and stand to lose money from it, then it’s their own fault.

However, like you said, we’re in a recession/hopeful recovery, so I think it is important to change parts of the CBA to better reflect the economic times as well as hopefully produce a better business model.

The only thing I was pointing out in my post is that you can’t point to the rise in the salary cap as evidence that the league isn’t losing money, because it’s based on revenue, not profits. That’s all.

The question is why are teams throwing around such ridiculous contracts when they’re (supposedly) losing money? *If* the T-Wolves, for example (no idea about their financial situation), lost millions of dollars last season, why did they feel the need to give $4 mill a year to a guy who is a marginal rotation player at best? Winning can help drive revenue, but you can have someone who will help you win as much as or more than Darko for 1/2 the price. Z’s example of Rudy Gay is perhaps the best… above average player paid as if he were a mega-star. Same for Joe Johnson. Memphis and Atlanta are two organizations you always hear are having financial problems, yet they threw two of the summer’s worst contracts out there this off-season. A. I would say these organizations don’t really understand basketball and need better statistical analysts and B. They might not have a clue how to run a business either. The individual teams might have reasons to justify their excess spending (Memphis, for example, has a lot of money coming off the books soon and is not a draw for free agents… i.e. can’t necessarily use cap space well in free agency), but on the whole the owners need to control themselves.

I agree with Z’s larger point that the owners are acting inconsistently by all going up to or above the salary cap and then crying that the salary cap is too high or whatever they’re crying about. No one is forcing them to spend up to the salary cap… that’s a (soft) maximum of what you can spend not a minimum of what you have to spend.
And also his even larger point that a strike is going to alienate fans and hurt the league. Even the thought of an impending strike is a turn off for me, a diehard NBA fan… Can’t imagine how marginal fans view the news of a bunch of million and billionaires arguing over money in the middle of a recession/(hopefully)recovery.

Accounting wise, you can also record things in such a way that it looks like you’re losing money when you’re not. I’m not implying that they’re doing anything illegal and I have never looked at a single NBA team’s books, but accounting isn’t that straight-forward. You can make reality look how you want it to.

Look, if the owners of the Wolves, Clippers, Nets, Raptors, and Cavs all vote to lockout, then fine, I get it. But the Grizzlies, the Hawks, the Knicks, the Heat, the Pistons, and the Nuggets, among others, have no grounds to stand on. They offered ridiculous contracts, some to ridiculous players. If they are worried about money they should do the obvious thing: not commit billions of dollars to Joe Johnson, Rudy Gay, Amar’e, Lee, etc… If you can’t afford the guys, don’t hire them.

@79 – Z, the issue with interpreting the numbers is that the salary cap is based on revenue and revenue alone, whereas the owners are saying they lost $370 million NET. That means that the costs of producing that revenue were astronomical and pushed them into the red. This makes sense to me – almost every team has had special offers to try and sell tickets (and that’s just one small example).

I agree that Azubuike makes a lot of sense as the Knicks starting SG and would also call him the favorite. The thing I disagree with is just that it’s a total no-brainer.

There was never much chance of Rubio coming to the NBA this offseason, no matter what team. His NBA opt-out is next offseason. Right now he’d have to fork over a lot of money out of his own pocket to come to the NBA. Next off-season he can come for free.

Playing with Kevin Love and Wesley Johnson might not be the worst thing in the world. Ricky can hold out and play in the B-league his whole life, but the T-Wolves have a good amount of leverage in that if he ever wants to step up to the plate and challenge himself he has to go through them. Pau Gasol is by far the most popular basketball player in Spain. He’s in tons of ads. No one who plays in the Spanish league is in any big ads. Rubio will be eating millions and millions of dollars/euros if he decides to spend his whole career in Spain.