And really, I totally understand the logic of arguing, “We are too stupid not to pay Drew Gooden a long-term guaranteed money deal, so we need rules to protect ourselves from our stupidity.” I totally get that. I don’t begrudge the owners for asking for such things. My bone of contention is the notion that the players should want these restrictions. And moreover, the notion that the players do think that these restrictions are good for them, they just don’t want to publicly admit it.

Why, exactly, are they overpaid? Isn’t it because owners agree to pay them what they do? Did anyone force Otis Smith to give Rashard Lewis $118 million dollars? Did Magic owner Richard DeVos not have to okay they contract before it was signed?

Perhaps I only have a third grade understanding of all this, but how on earth can the owners be winning the PR battle in this? Does nobody remember July 1st, 2010? A day when career journeyman Drew Gooden got offered a 5 year $32 million contract that set in motion the most obscene public meat-market in sports history?

Darko Milicic, a career-scrub, canceled his move back to Serbia when his agent shocked him with the news that a real life NBA team was actually going to pay him 20 million guaranteed dollars to suck at basketball for the next 4 years?

Rudy Gay, a middling talent playing in the league’s smallest market, gets 5 years and $82 million?

Joe Johnson, a barely-recognizable “superstar” already several years past his prime, signs the mother of all albatross contracts, getting 6 years and $118 million?

And these were just the first 4 contracts agreed to!

It’s no wonder that the owners are having buyers remorse, but, come on… If you can’t afford Rudy Gay at $17 million a year, don’t buy him.

Now, of course, while fans don’t care that they guys are overpaid, they similarly don’t carry if the players get screwed by the owners in negotiations, which leads to the current situation where the players have no support from the general public because no one cares how much they get paid. Mediocre players getting the mid-level doesn’t piss people off, but the elimination of the mid-level doesn’t piss people off, either.

Brian Cronin (@Brian_Cronin):
Man, I continue to be irritated by Bill Simmons’ “it is everyone’s fault!” position on the lockout. I mean, I guess if he stuck to “the players are handling the public relations of this situation terribly” as a criticism of the players, then fair enough, but he continues to seriously argue that players getting overpaid is something that the players should feel responsible for.

That is so woefully unsupportable that while I am surprised/disappointed that he actually made the point, I’m even more surprised/disappointed that he seems to think that this is something that the players should cop to as though it were an obvious truth. Players were getting overpaid in 2010-11 and it was a great season. Players have been getting overpaid basically as soon as we had real free agency in the early 1990s (players were overpaid as soon as there was free agency at all, but “overpaid” back then meant a player got $500,000 when he was only a $200,000 player, not like the millions players began to make during the 1990s) and no one has yet given a shit (don’t get me wrong, people complain about how much players make, but it is a general “they get paid millions to play a game!” sort of complaint that all professional athletes get). It is a non-issue.

I’m wholeheartedly with the players in general, but don’t agree with you at all on this. it’s not exactly that they’re overpaid, it’s situations like Eddy Curry, where he didn’t even try for the last three obscenely paid seasons (going from memory) and he faced zero repercussions and just kept collecting massive paychecks. this never happens in baseball or football.

And Brian, health does have to be factored in, but I don’t think Amar’e's problems represent a permanent deterioration in his skills/ ability to use them (as with Duncan) but rather a temporary issue created by his minutes that hopefully would not exist next season.

Zach Horst: I am not positive, but I’m pretty sure this wasn’t concerning his rank, but rather the segment they did on him about his involvement in Puerto Rico with building basketball courts. It aired a few minutes before he said it, and his previous tweet was also referencing it, if I remember correctly.

If you read the NBA rank page they had this tweet in the reaction section under Melo’s page so ESPN thought this tweet was referring to their ranking. Thats where I saw it initially even though I do follow Melo on Twitter but didnt see the tweet when he initially tweeted it lol