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It’s a 140 Character Battle, and the Owners are Winning
Posted by: Shauna Brock on July 18th, 2011
The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of the Utah Jazz.I wish I wasn’t on the side of the players in this fight. Why? Because the idiots in the Union don’t have a single clue about Public Relations. Instead of painting the big market owners as kings in a broken system; mafia bosses making the smaller markets dependent on them lest they get their windows smashed in, the owners are controlling the PR and they don’t have to do anything but sit there and on occasion release 140 character tweets about how teams lose money. Meanwhile, they mention, the crybaby players are whining about max salaries being capped at $13 million a year.
If it was up to me, I’d be out there talking about the realities of a players life after the league, about health care, about what “revenue sharing” really means and how much Kobe and Lebron and D-Will and Paul Millsap mean to team revenues. I’d find a way to do it in 140 characters because that is all that seems to matter in today’s world anymore. And I would remind players of something: when you accept $2 million dollars to go play in Europe, you are lessening your bargaining chip with the owners. They’re more than happy to invest the money in the #1 draft pick they just scooped up. After all, that star is going to shine anyway.
It isn’t that the players are wrong, it’s that they’re spinning it wrong and media outlets are more than happy to pick up on the spin the owners are generating. After all, what small market team can really afford a twenty million dollar a year contract? So rather than talk about how the twenty million dollar a year players end up in LA anyway, it’s made to look like Minnesota or Utah have to somehow carry the weight of these impossible contracts and the benevolent big market owners want to make it fair for everyone.
A couple of months ago, I predicted that the NBA lockout wasn’t going to be any big deal. I forgot about the European market. The owners will sit on their hands and let the players flee overseas. The owners probably would love it if it happened. They can get new talent for cheap and still win in the end.
Look at the Jazz, for example. Five of the players on the roster are in their first or second years and are still working for the equivalent of dirt cheap. Even Millsap’s contract is not enough to make an owner choke. CJ Miles is good talent for just a couple of million a year. Let AK go overseas to play. The next rotation is ready and waiting and salivating. The fans will come back, especially if the owners keep winning the PR battle.
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7 Responses
I’m seeing a pattern with the players going overseas. It’s either A) a big name star or B) a euro player.
I’m also noticing a big drop in pay. D-Will is going to make $5M. Granted, that’s $5M more than he’s going to make in a locked-out season, but its also $12M LESS than what he would be making in the NBA. He’s also risking injury. I’ve also heard that some of the euro league owners are less-than-scrupulous in getting those checks out correctly and on time.
I see the 15% ’superstar’ players who have a market (albeit a lesser-paying one) in the euro-leagues causing a rift between them and the lesser-paid 85% players in the league. Who has a bigger Union voting share out of those two groups? Hmmm.
Also, players playing overseas are just more likely to cause the lockout to extend rather than get fixed sooner. Also not good for the other players.
I wish the owners would just hire D Leaguers/Replacements. I’d rather watch half assed Jazz rather than no Jazz. Plus it would probably get the players to cave.
Thanks Shauna, I have not really thought about the lock-out from this angle. A big difference in PR, and that is how much of this conflict is being played out, is that owners have legions of PR people or spin doctors who are paid very well and know the market. Some of the big name players have PR people, but I bet their salaries and knowledge would pale in comparison to the owners’ “people”. I imagine agents advise many of the players on PR and their salary level is based on how much their clients make, so they are looking for the best salary possible. I doubt many PR people that work for owners have their salaries based on how much the team brings in. This is speculation on my part though. I don’t think most fans would pay hundreds of dollars or sponsor teams with D-League players, look what happened to the Flash.
Yeah, but I’m a Jazz fan, not a Flash fan. I’d still watch the Jazz if they sucked.
it really is getting ugly – the players are confused…they should be putting on their own league here in this country. So what if it were less teams in fewer cities in smaller venues. …even if there were a group of teams in California and a group on the east coast…sponsors would line up, so would fans, there would be lots of money to split up between the player owners.
…Another thing that doesn’t seem to be brought up is putting corprate trademarks on uniforms … Imagine how much money bud light would pay to be on LeBron’s jersey …that would be the rest of the money right there. It works fine in Europe and everywhere else in the world.
Employees unions were created to protect employees from being exploited. Even the lowest paid player is paid a lot of money to play less than an hour a game for 82 games a year (and to keep themselves in game shape). The players are not being exploited. There is no reason to strike. But as usually happens when there isn’t an actual issue to fight for, the NBA players union continues to make up crap so that they can explain the nion dues the players are paying, and they grow more and more indifferent to the survival of the company/companies they work for. NBA teams are losing money. The owners didn’t buy the teams as a charitable endeavor, nor do they love basketball so much that they are just fine with losing over ten million dollars per year just for the privilege to write obscenely large checks to the players. The lockout will not end until the players cave, which will probably not be until the middle of the next season at the earliest.
Sure, look at that on the Jazz … and then realize their payroll was still the 7th highest in the NBA last year and the team lost money. Sweet. The owners are right, though not as right as they try to make themselves seem. NBA players are a money sieve because of the long, guaranteed contracts to mediocre players. Find a way to systematically lower how much these average or below-average MLE-type players make and the savings can go absolutely everywhere, including the top players, the owners, the rookies/new players and even players below the MLE level who are kinda scraping by right now.