by iKe7in on Fri Mar 04, 2005 2:01 pm
Basketball is becoming a joke. Too many players are bigger than the game and their team, and they know it, and often make it known.
The biggest problem in the NBA is guarenteed contracts. Too many 'breakout' players get huge max contracts and then start to coast. They know that they're only playing for that 'one' contract that makes them set for life. There's no incentive to keep playing their hardest.
One of the worst biproducts of that, is that they have taken up so much of their teasm cap, that they lose good young players and begin to decline. That star players first thought when this happens is, "I want out." If the league was run like the NFL, teams can actually mold their team year by year, instead of waiting out contracts to try to rebuild.
When these former superstar players with huge contracts begin to decline a couple years in, the team should be able to release them without having to basically pay them off to leave. It has cripple teams that have to try to lose every year just to add some big names from the draft. Some of these teams that have really screwed up bad are Portland, New York and Chicago.
Portland continually overpays either young talent or aging veterans. The latest two are Darius Miles and Theo Ratliff. Miles received a $50 million based on two months of last sesaon, which occurred after Portland was out of contention. Ratliff has a good reputation from his Atlanta and Philly days, and now basically stands under the hoop waiting for shot block situations, and often gets posterized. His block and rebound totals are good, but he is at the end of his career, and Portland should thank god that his contract is done. What Portland is left with after this year is a lot of unproven players who should be in their prime. They have Darius Miels locked up for 5 more years, and if he remains a bench player throughout that contract, he is untradeable and has thus far been a pretty bad influence on the team. The Jailblazers should be ashamed of themselves after they let Mo Cheeks go. He was such a good role model and genuine nice guy who knows the game well, at least what used to be the game. He shouldn't have to put up with a team of ego driven criminals who decided to tune him out after they sucked for the first half of the season. None of them have to be accountable for their play, only the coach, who is much easier and much cheaper to single out.
New York has some neurological disease that tricks them into acquiring names instead of talent. They have several past their prime veterans with not much to offer, yet most of them are still under contract for another 3-4 years, and are strong candidates to be bought out before then. Consider MSG as where overpaid one dimensional players go to die.
Chicago is the closest to being free from the New York disease, and is definitely heading in the right direction, but had to go through some really shitty times to get their. If every team tried to draft as many apparent 'franchise' players as Chicago did, the league would be full of DaJuan Wagners. Although they drafted some pretty good players throughout the past few years, the hype of the "'new' to-be-franchise-palyer" in the draft caused them to trade away some serious talent, and only getting busted projects or overpaid and overhyped veterans, like Jalen Rose, Antonio Davis, Eddie Robinson, and bringing back someoen like Scottie Pippen, who should have gone out in style, but instead got injured and fade dinto oblivion. They have traded away stars like Elton Brand, Brad Miller and Ron Artest. The Bulls are the poster boys for the eternal rebuilders.
The point is that there are no consequences for underacheiving. Salaries are still going up, as are ticket prices, while the number of lasting stars in the league are going down.
