Thursday, May 28, 2009
How to make money in the NBA
Other than how good a player is, the main correlation with how much a player is making in the NBA is how old the player is and how long he's been in the NBA. It's why Eric Snow, a player not even good enough to get his feet on the court anymore, is making $7 million, and Kevin Durant, the best player on the Lightning, is only making $4.5 million. It's why Brian Scalabrine is making $3.2 million and Glen Davis is making $700,000. It's flabbergasting to look at what kind of money these old, crappy players are making.
One could argue that the owners don't know how good these rookies are gonna be in the future, so they have to hedge their risk by giving smaller contracts. But even with this argument, I don't think anybody would have wagered that Eric Snow would be better than Kevin Durant this year. What ends up happening is you have one player playing 35 minutes a game making less than a guy who never gets off the bench. It's why you have Ben Wallace making more than Lebron James.
The reason it's like this is because of the collective bargaining agreement between the players and the owners. It makes sense that the old players in the NBA are the ones that are best represented in negotiations (they have developed the contacts and they are looked up to by the younger players), and the owners agree to their demands in order to keep the salaries low in any way possible.
What sucks about the arrangement is what if Durant gets injured next year? He never got paid nearly what he should have made during these early years, and never got the huge contract he would have gotten later. If I had one piece of advice for a young player starting out in the NBA, it would be this- stay healthy at all costs. Think about it, if Brian Scalabrine went down with a career ending injury in his 4th year, he would have made $2.5 million for his whole career. Over his last 4 years, he's made $11.6 million. He has made 82% of his money in the last 50% of his career. And, he's averaged less minutes during this time!
This whole scheme just doesn't make sense to me. You should be paid for how good you are, how much you mean to your team, plain and simple.
One could argue that the owners don't know how good these rookies are gonna be in the future, so they have to hedge their risk by giving smaller contracts. But even with this argument, I don't think anybody would have wagered that Eric Snow would be better than Kevin Durant this year. What ends up happening is you have one player playing 35 minutes a game making less than a guy who never gets off the bench. It's why you have Ben Wallace making more than Lebron James.
The reason it's like this is because of the collective bargaining agreement between the players and the owners. It makes sense that the old players in the NBA are the ones that are best represented in negotiations (they have developed the contacts and they are looked up to by the younger players), and the owners agree to their demands in order to keep the salaries low in any way possible.
What sucks about the arrangement is what if Durant gets injured next year? He never got paid nearly what he should have made during these early years, and never got the huge contract he would have gotten later. If I had one piece of advice for a young player starting out in the NBA, it would be this- stay healthy at all costs. Think about it, if Brian Scalabrine went down with a career ending injury in his 4th year, he would have made $2.5 million for his whole career. Over his last 4 years, he's made $11.6 million. He has made 82% of his money in the last 50% of his career. And, he's averaged less minutes during this time!
This whole scheme just doesn't make sense to me. You should be paid for how good you are, how much you mean to your team, plain and simple.
# posted by Clyde @ 9:30 PM 
