NBA/NFL age limits

[StrangeSox]

No, but their Owners do, and I am sure the owners dont like seeing picks and money being wasted on the Leon Smiths of the world

yeah but talking about the latest labor negotiations doesn't really tell me anything about how dumb GM's are

[Balta1701]

yeah but talking about the latest labor negotiations doesn't really tell me anything about how dumb GM's are

Do you honestly need a summary of how bad at winning championships NBA GM's are? You can write an article like this every year, and then every year we gawk at how much money got handed out by some GM who had cap space to spend and found a guy whose sole talent was being tall.

 

The NBA GM's are actually in a terrible position. The best way for an NBA Team to suddenly become a title contender is to hit the lottery, but that means, for most GM's, building the worst team you possibly can. One way to do taht would be the Marlins route...but the NBA Has a salary floor so you can't just sell everything off. The end result of this is a lot of GM's waste enormous amounts of money on guys who they hope will make them good enough to keep their jobs for one more year.

 

The NBA GM's can't stop themselves from spending $8 million a year on Tyrus Thomas (while giving up a draft pick to boot!). A workable system for the NBA Basically requires the owners to protect their franchises from their GM's, because the GM's best method for success means risking his job on a 25% (at best) lottery chance.

[ptatc]

No its the best post, because not 1 person in this thread as an 18 year old would have liked to have been told:

 

"You cant get paid $10million dollars because we have an arbitrary rule, so you have to play next year at a risk to yourself and potentially not get the $10mil."

 

Thats just insane.

18 years olds don't have to like it. Most of them are too immature to know what is best for them. Playing in the NBA is not a right. It is best for the NBA and the player that they mature both physically and emotionally before they are thrown into professional sports.

[Balta1701]

18 years olds don't have to like it. Most of them are too immature to know what is best for them. Playing in the NBA is not a right. It is best for the NBA and the player that they mature both physically and emotionally before they are thrown into professional sports.

One thing that would really be useful in the ideal situation is a working NBA minor league. It works spectacularly in baseball...but there's one difference. In baseball, you don't start earning time towards your free agency period until you make the show, and there are only limited protections for guys who are kept in the minors for multiple years.

 

The NBPA would actually be the deterrent here. They're not going to give up the right to making FA 4-5 years after a player is drafted unless they get something really precious in return.

[StrangeSox]

Do you honestly need a summary of how bad at winning championships NBA GM's are? You can write an article like this every year, and then every year we gawk at how much money got handed out by some GM who had cap space to spend and found a guy whose sole talent was being tall.

 

The NBA GM's are actually in a terrible position. The best way for an NBA Team to suddenly become a title contender is to hit the lottery, but that means, for most GM's, building the worst team you possibly can. One way to do taht would be the Marlins route...but the NBA Has a salary floor so you can't just sell everything off. The end result of this is a lot of GM's waste enormous amounts of money on guys who they hope will make them good enough to keep their jobs for one more year.

 

The NBA GM's can't stop themselves from spending $8 million a year on Tyrus Thomas (while giving up a draft pick to boot!). A workable system for the NBA Basically requires the owners to protect their franchises from their GM's, because the GM's best method for success means risking his job on a 25% (at best) lottery chance.

 

Ok, so that's a good example of how dumb NBA GM's are. How the owners and the commissioner negotiated with the NBAPA recently isn't.

 

[Soxbadger]

18 years olds don't have to like it. Most of them are too immature to know what is best for them. Playing in the NBA is not a right. It is best for the NBA and the player that they mature both physically and emotionally before they are thrown into professional sports.

 

You presume that is best for the player. And you can presume most are to immature to know what is best for them.

 

But as someone who is over 18 and who is paid for living to advise people, I would advise almost every 18 year old who can make a maximum of $20mil per year, who is being offered $20mil to take the money and run. Because when you are already being offered the maximum amount you can make, you have 0 reason not to take it. You are taking risk for nothing.

 

And I am extremely risk averse. Now other people may advise differently, they may say you should stay in college for 1 year because in their opinion that 1 year is invaluable. I would strongly disagree, but that is opinion. And I guess when it comes to opinion, Id rather that the kid gets to use his own, as opposed to the NBA telling them that this is whats best.

 

No one has a right to be in the NBA, no one has a right to an employment. But we all do enjoy the right not to be arbitrarily discriminated against and I believe that this type of age restriction falls into that box.

 

 

[Kyyle23]

Ok, so that's a good example of how dumb NBA GM's are. How the owners and the commissioner negotiated with the NBAPA recently isn't.

 

Well, Jenks mentioned the amnesty clause in the most recent CBA being included to relieve GMs of some of their previous stupidity

[ZoomSlowik]

Yeah but a lot of the provisions that were negotiated (amnesty clause, for example) was the NBA throwing up it's hands saying "our GM's are f***ing stupid, they keep throwing money and long term deals to s*** players and killing their franchises, so let's do something about it." That was my point.

 

I never really got the logic of the amnesty clause. "Well, we signed a lot of stupid contracts and they're clogging up our cap. I know! Let's create this rule where we can pay off 100% of the player's contract, let some other team pay them to play for them on top of that, then sign NEW guys to contracts equally as stupid!"

 

 

[Jenksismyhero]

I love that people are forgetting the INSANE f***ing perks these lottery picks get. If I were one of them, and I was amply covered by insurance (i.e., going from dirt poor to being insured by a few million even if I could never play another game in my life) I would stay for 4 years. f*** the money. You are a king of an entire student body of 35,000 people. You are a friggin' star. And if you win big, you're a hero for life to an entire fanbase. You go to the NBA and yeah, you get paid. But you also work your ass off. You're traveling/playing games constantly for 3/4 of the year. Who's having more fun in life - Cody Zeller or Kyrie Irving? I'm guessing Zeller.

 

(Edit: and yes, I realize that this is a much more difficult choice to make when confronted with the REAL option of making tens of millions. But I'd like to think having a ball in college would be worth the 1-2 year wait)

[witesoxfan]

Yeah but a lot of the provisions that were negotiated (amnesty clause, for example) was the NBA throwing up it's hands saying "our GM's are f***ing stupid, they keep throwing money and long term deals to s*** players and killing their franchises, so let's do something about it." That was my point.

 

I think that talks about the GMs, but it also describes a broken system too in a superstar driven league. To even remain relevant you have to either have to have a great coach with a front office with a great eye for talent who aren't afraid to make bold moves - I'm looking at the Thunder and Spurs here. Or, you have to get lucky and either draft or sign a superstar (Cleveland & Miami, Orlando & LA Lakers, Chicago). Other than that, you are pretty much screwed or more screwed, and I'm not sure which one is which. You can be a semi-competitive .500 team that always makes the playoffs, always gets bounced, and never gets the talent necessary to do anything in the playoffs. Otherwise, you're just a consistently terrible team.

[Soxbadger]

One thing that would really be useful in the ideal situation is a working NBA minor league. It works spectacularly in baseball...but there's one difference. In baseball, you don't start earning time towards your free agency period until you make the show, and there are only limited protections for guys who are kept in the minors for multiple years.

 

The NBPA would actually be the deterrent here. They're not going to give up the right to making FA 4-5 years after a player is drafted unless they get something really precious in return.

 

Because there is an inherent conflict of interest between the NBPA and players not currently in the NBA. The NBPA has very little reason or incentive to look out for non-NBA players. So if they can bargain more for current NBA players at the expense of future NBA players, they take that all the time.

 

This is why the 1 year rule is fundamentally flawed. The NBPA has no reason to fight it, especially if the NBA says "If you fight the 1 year rule we are going to lower salary cap and hurt players already in the NBA."

[Jenksismyhero]

I never really got the logic of the amnesty clause. "Well, we signed a lot of stupid contracts and they're clogging up our cap. I know! Let's create this rule where we can pay off 100% of the player's contract, let some other team pay them to play for them on top of that, then sign NEW guys to contracts equally as stupid!"

 

Well yeah, that last part is the problem. But you can't really make a rule like - you can amnesty a contract but then can't sign a max deal for 2 seasons.

[Soxbadger]

I love that people are forgetting the INSANE f***ing perks these lottery picks get. If I were one of them, and I was amply covered by insurance (i.e., going from dirt poor to being insured by a few million even if I could never play another game in my life) I would stay for 4 years. f*** the money. You are a king of an entire student body of 35,000 people. You are a friggin' star. And if you win big, you're a hero for life to an entire fanbase. You go to the NBA and yeah, you get paid. But you also work your ass off. You're traveling/playing games constantly for 3/4 of the year. Who's having more fun in life - Cody Zeller or Kyrie Irving? I'm guessing Zeller.

 

(Edit: and yes, I realize that this is a much more difficult choice to make when confronted with the REAL option of making tens of millions. But I'd like to think having a ball in college would be worth the 1-2 year wait)

 

Hell to the No. I would take the money, and if I want to be a college pimp, Id go rent an apartment in a college town and use my celebrity to be the king anyways.

 

But that sweet money is going to be in my bank yesterday.

[ZoomSlowik]

Do you honestly need a summary of how bad at winning championships NBA GM's are? You can write an article like this every year, and then every year we gawk at how much money got handed out by some GM who had cap space to spend and found a guy whose sole talent was being tall.

 

The NBA GM's are actually in a terrible position. The best way for an NBA Team to suddenly become a title contender is to hit the lottery, but that means, for most GM's, building the worst team you possibly can. One way to do taht would be the Marlins route...but the NBA Has a salary floor so you can't just sell everything off. The end result of this is a lot of GM's waste enormous amounts of money on guys who they hope will make them good enough to keep their jobs for one more year.

 

The NBA GM's can't stop themselves from spending $8 million a year on Tyrus Thomas (while giving up a draft pick to boot!). A workable system for the NBA Basically requires the owners to protect their franchises from their GM's, because the GM's best method for success means risking his job on a 25% (at best) lottery chance.

 

This is another thing I don't get: why is the salary floor like 85% of the salary cap? You're basically forcing teams that are rebuilding to sign stupid, cap-clogging contracts on mediocre players, and then they wonder why these teams are losing money. Make the salary floor something more reasonable (maybe like $25 million) and then lay off some of the crazy luxury tax penalties so teams that are actually trying to compete aren't forced to let good players go. Are we really going to see a substanial difference in the caliber of the team if the Kings or Bobcats only have a $20 million payroll?

[StrangeSox]

I love that people are forgetting the INSANE f***ing perks these lottery picks get. If I were one of them, and I was amply covered by insurance (i.e., going from dirt poor to being insured by a few million even if I could never play another game in my life) I would stay for 4 years. f*** the money. You are a king of an entire student body of 35,000 people. You are a friggin' star. And if you win big, you're a hero for life to an entire fanbase. You go to the NBA and yeah, you get paid. But you also work your ass off. You're traveling/playing games constantly for 3/4 of the year. Who's having more fun in life - Cody Zeller or Kyrie Irving? I'm guessing Zeller.

 

(Edit: and yes, I realize that this is a much more difficult choice to make when confronted with the REAL option of making tens of millions. But I'd like to think having a ball in college would be worth the 1-2 year wait)

 

If you were dirt-poor and couldn't receive any compensation during that 4 years of college play, you wouldn't be living the high life. You'd be dirt-poor, but with a roof over your head and regular meals. Unless you're relying on corruption to undermine the NCAA rules, which means we're right back to asking why those payments shouldn't just be above-board in the first place.

 

Your rep, fame and fortunes as a professional athlete are going to be much, much greater than as a college athlete. I don't think Lebron missed out on much by skipping college.

[StrangeSox]

Hell to the No. I would take the money, and if I want to be a college pimp, Id go rent an apartment in a college town and use my celebrity to be the king anyways.

 

But that sweet money is going to be in my bank yesterday.

Yeah I don't think multi-millionaire superstar professional athletes have a harder time enjoying life than some college kids.

[Soxbadger]

This is another thing I don't get: why is the salary floor like 85% of the salary cap? You're basically forcing teams that are rebuilding to sign stupid, cap-clogging contracts on mediocre players, and then they wonder why these teams are losing money. Make the salary floor something more reasonable (maybe like $25 million) and then lay off some of the crazy luxury tax penalties so teams that are actually trying to compete aren't forced to let good players go. Are we really going to see a substanial difference in the caliber of the team if the Kings or Bobcats only have a $20 million payroll?

 

There is an odd phenomenon with a salary cap, it basically creates an inherent floor anyway. In baseball with no cap you can get away not spending cause you can always say "We just cant spend like the Yankees, they spend stupid money."

 

In a sport like NFL, NBA where you have a cap, your fan base expects you to spend to cap, even if it means spending money stupidly.

[Balta1701]

This is another thing I don't get: why is the salary floor like 85% of the salary cap? You're basically forcing teams that are rebuilding to sign stupid, cap-clogging contracts on mediocre players, and then they wonder why these teams are losing money. Make the salary floor something more reasonable (maybe like $25 million) and then lay off some of the crazy luxury tax penalties so teams that are actually trying to compete aren't forced to let good players go. Are we really going to see a substanial difference in the caliber of the team if the Kings or Bobcats only have a $20 million payroll?

A salary floor is a great victory for a union, and the higher it gets, the more revenue it pushes onto the players.

 

The NBA has such high revenue sharing that it probably makes sense for most of the owners to accept those sorts of limits.

[StrangeSox]

This is another thing I don't get: why is the salary floor like 85% of the salary cap? You're basically forcing teams that are rebuilding to sign stupid, cap-clogging contracts on mediocre players, and then they wonder why these teams are losing money. Make the salary floor something more reasonable (maybe like $25 million) and then lay off some of the crazy luxury tax penalties so teams that are actually trying to compete aren't forced to let good players go. Are we really going to see a substanial difference in the caliber of the team if the Kings or Bobcats only have a $20 million payroll?

 

To drive up the overall compensation/revenue share going to the players. If the owners wanted a lower floor, they'd have to give up something else.

[Soxbadger]

And more importantly owners know that a lower floor wont really help them because fans expect a team to spend close to salary cap regardless.

 

This is a classic "Well give you something we dont really care about anyways"

[ZoomSlowik]

I suck at dual quotes, responding to Balta and Strange :re the cap floor...

 

The problem is that they're doing it in unison with gang-raping the teams that spend over the luxury tax, so they're dragging everyone to the middle. The Lakers can't spend $100 million anymore unless they want to subsidize the rest of the league. So basically the teams that make money and are trying to compete are sending money to the s***ty teams so they can pay Tyrus Thomas $8 million a year. Huh?

 

That's fine if it's like football and there are a ton of different positions where you can spend money and you can maybe make up the difference on the field by paying two good defensive players the same money the Patriots are paying Tom Brady. However, spending $16 million on Lebron and spending $16 million on Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva are very different things.

[Soxbadger]

I wish Zoom would have posted these stats as Im not a basketball stat guy but allegedly the salary cap in NBA is 58mil

 

http://www.nba.com/2012/news/07/10/nba-sal...ease/index.html

 

And according to:

 

http://hoopshype.com/salaries.htm

 

Every team but 1 is spending at or above salary cap. This is why the floor means nothing.

Edited February 14, 2013 by Soxbadger

[ptatc]

You presume that is best for the player. And you can presume most are to immature to know what is best for them.

 

But as someone who is over 18 and who is paid for living to advise people, I would advise almost every 18 year old who can make a maximum of $20mil per year, who is being offered $20mil to take the money and run. Because when you are already being offered the maximum amount you can make, you have 0 reason not to take it. You are taking risk for nothing.

 

And I am extremely risk averse. Now other people may advise differently, they may say you should stay in college for 1 year because in their opinion that 1 year is invaluable. I would strongly disagree, but that is opinion. And I guess when it comes to opinion, Id rather that the kid gets to use his own, as opposed to the NBA telling them that this is whats best.

 

No one has a right to be in the NBA, no one has a right to an employment. But we all do enjoy the right not to be arbitrarily discriminated against and I believe that this type of age restriction falls into that box.

I'm sure you would. Unfortunately, I've seen this situation really go poorly and the same player be destitute by 30. Again, I don't think 1 year does it. I would go for 3-4 years if no true minor league system is available.

Sometimes kids need to be told what is best for them in the long run and not be short sighted because as you said earlier not every kid could afford you or one of your brethren.

[StrangeSox]

I suck at dual quotes, responding to Balta and Strange :re the cap floor...

 

The problem is that they're doing it in unison with gang-raping the teams that spend over the luxury tax, so they're dragging everyone to the middle. The Lakers can't spend $100 million anymore unless they want to subsidize the rest of the league. So basically the teams that make money and are trying to compete are sending money to the s***ty teams so they can pay Tyrus Thomas $8 million a year. Huh?

 

That's fine if it's like football and there are a ton of different positions where you can spend money and you can maybe make up the difference on the field by paying two good defensive players the same money the Patriots are paying Tom Brady. However, spending $16 million on Lebron and spending $16 million on Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva are very different things.

 

I don't disagree that it provides bad incentives/requirements for GM's to work around, but it guarantees that the players as a whole will receive, at a minimum, at least 85% of the combined cap space. Maybe there are better ways to ensure they get that same minimum amount of revenue, but that's why it's there.

[witesoxfan]

I'm sure you would. Unfortunately, I've seen this situation really go poorly and the same player be destitute by 30. Again, I don't think 1 year does it. I would go for 3-4 years if no true minor league system is available.

Sometimes kids need to be told what is best for them in the long run and not be short sighted because as you said earlier not every kid could afford you or one of your brethren.

 

Bad investment or no investment and yeah, that money is gone in a flash. People don't think they could ever spend $40 million or so, but when you get bounced from the league in say 5-6 years and then have nothing to do, you start to spend money very poorly. It's not like a lot of these guys have real world skills, and they generally will not subject themselves to cooking at a fast food restaurant or anyting along those lines.