I found this interesting article about the state of the NBA from Bill Simmons at ESPN. The article is worth a read.
I especially like this bit:
They arrived at this specific point after salaries ballooned over the past 15 years — not for superstars, but for complementary players who don’t sell tickets, can’t carry a franchise, and, in a worst-case scenario, operate as a sunk cost. These players get overpaid for one reason: Most teams throw money around like drunken sailors at a strip joint. When David Stern says, “We’re losing $400 million this season,” he really means, “We stupidly kept overpaying guys who weren’t worth it, and then the economy turned, and now we’re screwed.”
This isn’t about improving the revenue split between players and owners. It’s about Andre Iguodala, Emeka Okafor, Elton Brand, Andrei Kirilenko, Tyson Chandler, Larry Hughes, Michael Redd, Corey Maggette and Luol Deng making eight figures a year but being unable to sell tickets, create local buzz or lead a team to anything better than 35 wins.
I wonder if it might be because the NBA over values scoring, as Dave, Marty Schmidt, and Stacey Brook contend in Wages of Wins and other places. And maybe some NBA executives are beginning to see that.
