The NBA is in something of an identity crisis coming out of the lockout. The contentious and bitter bargaining sessions that led to this new NBA were supposed to solve a lot of problems within the owners themselves. The details of revenue sharing are still to be sorted out. And there are numerous provisions that were supposed to give small market teams a much larger advantage in retaining free agents and prevent teams from dipping too far into the luxury tax.
Yet the headlines and contracts handed out so far have done little to convince anyone that it is not the same old NBA with stars flocking to large markets regardless of even their remaining contractual obligations and boneheaded general managers taking massive risks with questionable contracts (although the recently implemented stretch provision and its implications in these contracts likely has not been fully considered or planned for… mostly because nobody knows how this will or can be used).
It feels right now that the competitive balance that small-market owners fought so hard for, delaying the season and holding up negotiations it seemed, is as far as ever.
Bucks owner Herb Kohl, one of those small-market owners in maybe one of the least desirable markets the league has to offer, believes competitive balance will come and it was partially achieved in the last round of collective bargaining. He told Jeremy Schmidt of Bucksketball that part of his and other small-market owners goals were achieved in collective bargaining and that he feels the competitive balance will come as the labor contract is given time to work and breathe.
“The players if given their options tend to migrate to the big markets, the more glamourous markets,” Kohl said. “And this (the lockout) addressed it partially. Because there are clear advantages to the team that has the rights to a player to offer him a better contract than what another team in a big market can offer.
“And I’ll say, some of us lobbied heavily for a franchise designation. We didn’t get there, but we got partially there. You have to look at the thing in the sweep of it and not try and micromanage it, every line, every dot and tittle in the agreement there are things to like more, there are things to like less.”
Yes, the collective bargaining agreement was not a total victory for the small-market owners. And small-market owners like Herb Kohl recognize that the margin for error for them is incredibly small because of the attractiveness of the bright lights to star players and the fewer financial opportunities for these teams to dip into the luxury tax and still generate a profit — or at least lose as little as possible.
The league is largely operating under the old rules for the first two years of the collective bargaining agreement. We may not see the controls on player movement and contracts that this collective bargaining agreement envisioned to create competitive balance kick in until the 2013 offseason before the 2014 season. It is hard to judge the collective bargaining agreement based on the rumors that have circulated in the first week of its existence.
Teams like the Bucks work under a very small margin of error. Milwaukee is not exactly a place star free agents want to play unless the team is winning. No amount of tinkering with competitive balance will likely change that any time soon.
