Brief Sunday Notebook: Changing the League as We Know it, and the Future of the C’s
Posted by Zach Lowe on Feb 7, 2010
We’ll keep this notebook brief, because there is a fairly large NBA game today followed by a fairly large game in which large men will attempt to injure each other.
• Ric Bucher has a bombshell—assuming it’s accurate—on ESPN.com today: The details of an initial proposal David Stern presented to the player’s union as a means of kicking off negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement. The current CBA expires at the end of next season, and if you’re one of those people whose eyes glaze over every time someone says “soft cap” or “mid-level exception,” my guess is you’ll still be interested in this description of some of the Stern proposal’s key points:
The total value for a veteran maximum deal would be well under $60 million and for players currently on rookie salary-scale deals well under $50 million, the source familiar with the proposal said. Fully guaranteed maximum deals also could be a thing of the past, with the proposal allowing for less than half of any contract to be guaranteed.
The mid-level exception and other devices that allow teams over the salary cap to sign free agents also would be abolished, several sources said, effectively creating a hard cap.
Let me translate that for you: The NBA owners want to completely change the economics of the league.
Now, this is an initial proposal, and everyone goes for broke with the first salvo in any contract negotiations. And Bucher is getting this from anonymous sources, so there could be—and probably are—nuances to Stern’s (alleged) proposal that aren’t in this story.
But still. If the bare bones Bucher is reporting here are accurate, we are in for some ugly negotiations over the next 18 months.
I mean, consider this:
Perhaps the biggest shocker: The owners’ proposal includes a provision that would require any pre-existing deals to be revised to conform to the new deal’s limits.
The players will never stand for this. Never. And I’m not sure the NBA could legally void or reduce the max deal that LeBron James is going to sign in a few months.
The implications for the Celtics are huge. The team already has about $38M in salaries committed to just three players (KG, Sheed, Rondo) in the 2011-2012 season—the first season of the theoretical new CBA. Does the prospect of a hard cap impact how the team negotiates with Ray Allen, Paul Pierce and Kendrick Perkins and the kind of deals those players seek? Does the prospect of losing the mid-level exception—the main way the C’s have added talent since 2007-08—push the team to start dealing aging assets for first-round draft picks? Will teams even be willing to trade draft picks in this environment?
It’s far too early in the process to do anything by speculate wildly—and perhaps irresponsibly—on these questions. But you can bet every team is thinking about them.
• Chris Forsberg has a nice State of the Celtics piece on ESPNBoston.com that addresses the present and future of the C’s. Nothing in there is going to be news to the hard core fan; we all know the C’s have decisions to make about Ray Allen, Paul Pierce and (after next season) Kendrick Perkins. We know the future of the team lies with Rajon Rondo, and that the C’s surrendered their best draft assets in the Ray and KG trades. And that Lester Hudson, J.R. Giddens and Bill Walker don’t appear primed to turn into productive NBA players.
But it’s a good read as a sort of one-stop-shopping for all of these issues. I highly recommend it.
One thing in there that bugs me, though, is this:
As early as two months ago, the Celtics looked like world-beaters, maybe even more so than their 2007-08 counterparts. Boston started the season strong, and lofty expectations — including challenging the NBA record of 72 wins in a season and being the greatest defensive team in NBA history — were bestowed upon the team.
I’m sorry, but if you actually thought the C’s were going to challenge for 72 wins, well, I don’t really know what to tell you. I don’t know a single smart fan who actually thought this was a possibility, and it became news only because Rasheed Wallace said he believed it was possible. Rasheed Wallace also believes every technical against him is a grave injustice.
That is all. Let’s hope the C’s get a big win today against Orlando so we can enjoy the Super Bowl and a much-needed win against a fellow title contender.
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