https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel

I worked for a couple of huge corporations that owned multiple businesses with multiple lines of business within each.

There was some level of internal competition under the major corporation because of salaries, bonuses, and budgets. Employees moved around to suit business needs and when they wanted a change. Sometimes one department befitted more from a change. But no one was poaching the best employees from other departments or badly damaging other departments for their own gain. The ultimate goal was to maximize the company against other major corporations while also maximizing individual results.

That’s the way sports operate.

Think of the league as the umbrella corporation and each team as a line of business. They are all working to maximize their results as individual lines of business and employees do change hands, but the goal is generally to maximize the whole while competing with other sports and forms of entertainment. The goal is not for one team to keep totally fleecing the weakest links and screw up the league.

Is Strat arguing that Ainge is too good a trading and should be voted off the island?

strat-“win trades”o-matic complaining that Trader Danny wins too many trades is pretty good stuff.

I’m arguing the extremity of how Ainge operates is not good for the NBA/players and as result not good for the fans.

By way of comparison, Presti is a great dealmaker. He gets good value on almost all his deals. But I don’t hear any complaints about how he treats players and he doesn’t badly damage the teams he does business with.

Ainge is similar to Hinkie in that there is nothing wrong with tanking or winning trades, but Hinkie took tanking to a distasteful extreme and treated players like spread sheet entries so they pushed him out of the league.

I think owners and agents should avoid doing business with Ainge.

My feeling is that an NBA team is not a corporation competing with other NBA teams in the same way Coke competes with Pepsi. Teams are both working together for their financial benefit and as individuals for their financial benefit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel