What the hell is going on?
A reasonable question if you’re an NBA fan, or maybe an owner or team president.
The league that never sleeps is rocketing around as if fueled by an endless stream of double espressos, or maybe something stronger.
In the past week Anthony Davis – the best player in basketball on any given night – demanded a trade from New Orleans as part of a perceived effort to make his way to Los Angeles to team up with LeBron James then Kristaps Porzingis – one of the brightest rising stars in the game – demanded a trade from New York last Friday and was accommodated Thursday afternoon as he got sent to Dallas.
That move greatly improved the chances that the New York Knicks might be able to sign Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant in free agency this summer; a possibility Irving did little to quash when asked about it Friday morning — in New York, of course – and a plot which Durant may have inspired earlier this season when in an on-court clash with Warriors teammate Draymond Green lip-readers thought Durant was caught on camera saying ‘that’s why I’m out of here’
The fast-and-furious player movement is the next step in the NBA’s march to becoming a WWE-level soap opera with the added bonus that – we think, at least – no one knows who is going to win before the games start.
But has it gone too far? Players controlling their destiny is a great thing on paper and in the abstract, but how does a season ticket holder or any other fan in New Orleans feel right now, knowing that Davis – in theory, a Pelican for this season and next – wants out the door and seems to have the power to make it happen?
How about in Boston instead of savouring a potential powerhouse the question today is should they trade their best player (Irving) before he bolts for nothing in the summer? Or fans in Toronto — beneficiaries of Kawhi Leonard’s determination to get out of San Antonio last year – now spending a season reading and hearing about the two-year long-game the Los Angeles Clippers have been playing to land Leonard as their beachhead against the LeBronning of the Lakers.
Keep in mind that – as Newton’s third law suggests – for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Player movement begets player movement, fan loyalties be damned, while players feel they’re damning themselves if they let loyalty be their career guide.
On one hand, this should be NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s fever dream. His league is arguably more interesting off the floor than it is on, playing out like a reality TV show populated by the world’s most telegenic athletes. And the momentum seems to be building toward the league’s talent concentrating on the largest and most tradition-rich markets – New York, Boston and Los Angeles. No more glitches like 21 years of excellence in San Antonio to confuse the plot.
But how healthy is it for a league to be so clearly run at the whim of a small handful of superstars playing a slow-motion game of musical chairs?
There might be an argument for Silver to step in and do something, but it’s impossible to see how or what.
The heart wants what it wants, and if Irving’s heart says, ‘I love New York’ and the Knicks can create the salary cap space to make it happen, who is the commissioner to stand in the way of all that passion?
Does he really want to muzzle his players expressing their true desires publicly? Considering he fined Davis a whole $50,000 for having his agent go public with a trade request suggest no, he doesn’t.
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This where the league is and this is where the world is right now. Talent rules and the old rules don’t apply.
All that said, never forget: The NBA has always been a player’s league.
There is a statue outside Staples Center with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar captured in his trademark Skyhook. He is forever a Laker. But he was the best player in the sport when he demanded out of Milwaukee following the 1974-75 season and got his wish.
The league survived.
Do we forget that in 11 games into the 1981-82 season Magic Johnson — who liked to party with Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss — was unhappy with then-Lakers coach Paul Westhead so he flexed with a public trade demand only to see Westhead fired the next day?
The league survived.
And do we recall that when Pistons star Isiah Thomas went from playing in Motown to being the general manager of the expansion Toronto Raptors with no intermediate step no one paused to question his lack of experience – the joke-but-not-a-joke was that he’d already won two championships as the player/general manager of the Pistons.
So when LeBron took his talents to South Beach in 2010 he wasn’t carving a new path to sun, sand, and titles, or when he mused publicly about playing with Davis – with whom he shares an agent — in LA, he was simply following an ancient playbook of superstar self-actualization.
Sure there are a few pre-conditions at work that has turned the league’s always frothy player market on to full boil, but some are the product of unintended consequences on the part of the owners.
For example: among the reasons the NBA locked out their players prior to the 2011-12 season was small-market owners wanted to create a more level playing field. Teams could offer their own players more term and more money than they could get in free agency. A further tweak – the so-called supermax contract – was then introduced to provide even more incentive for the very best players to stay with the team that drafted them.
It seemed like a good plan: who would expect Anthony Davis to reject the notion of signing a five-year, $240-million with the Pelicans when the most he could get as a free agent was four years and $190?
Similarly the owners – seeking to limit their own long-term exposure – have pushed for shorter contract terms: four years for free agents and five for players staying with their own teams. The idea was the owners wouldn’t be stuck so long with players on bad deals.
The owners got their cake and the idea was they could eat it too – more tools to keep the players they liked and less risk of taking on players they didn’t.
But it hasn’t quite worked that way. One factor is that there is so much money in the league for star players now (even with an artificially limiting salary cap) that sheer dollars don’t seem to have the same traction human nature might lead us to believe.
If the choice is to be rich or be free the players choose freedom because they’re probably going to get rich anyway.
Davis is 25 years old, but he has already earned $120-million with another $30-million guaranteed for next season. He’s operating from a surplus that makes forgoing long-term guaranteed deals for the ability to influence where he wants to work less risky than it would seem.
If he plays his cards right and doesn’t get catastrophically injured he’ll make about $252-million over the next five years with a new team, according to the Kevin O’Connor of The Ringer, compared with $266-million if he stays in New Orleans. If you are going to have earned nearly $400-million playing basketball by the time you are 30, maybe giving up $12-$14-million in exchange for picking where you play is worth it.
LeBron has been the trailblazer in taking shorter-term deals and preserving flexibility likely because his off-court portfolio is estimated to be worth $50-million, annually, according to Forbes. Who is he working for, really? The Heat, Cavs, Lakers or LeBron James Inc?
Between stars signing shorter deals and the longer deals being shorter anyway, in the NBA there is always a big summer for player movement on the horizon – it is now the league’s permanent state.
Owners or fans in one city may not like it when a star player starts batting his eyes at another city, but that city, franchise and fans get energized at the possibility of a new saviour arriving.
In some corners, there may be a cry for the commissioner’s office to do something to bring more stability to the league or criticism of some players for using their wealth and influence to ‘game’ the system.
But you might as well save your breath.
What in the hell is going on?
What has always gone on, the ride is just getting faster. Buckle up.
