Eddy Curry might be the poster boy for the NBA lockout, but Larry Hughes should probably be in the team picture.
Hughes spent 12 seasons in the league. His career averages (14.2 ppg, 3.2 apg, 4.2 rpg) are ok, but not spectacular. His career shooting percentage (40.7%) is awful when you consider his job was to shoot the ball. But he did have a couple of years where he played pretty well.
You get my point. He had a nice little career but he was nothing special. Perhaps the best indicator is his career PER of 15, which is exactly average. But his career started during the last NBA lockout, which produced the system that brought us to this “nuclear winter.”
What did that system provide an average player? Well, this:
I wonder if David Stern will send Larry an edible arrangement or something to thank him for making the owners’ point loud and clear for them. Larry’s overall average career earned him more than $84 million, including an average salary over $12 million during the last five years of his career. Oh, and those just happened to be five of the worst years of his career, and they happened to come after signing a huge free agent deal with the Cleveland Cavaliers. And that huge free agent deal came after his huge contract year performance where he posted career highs in points, rebounds, assists and steals, numbers he’d never come close to duplicating again.
But of course, the counter argument is everyone knew Cleveland was making a mistake by giving him a huge deal, but they were too blinded by his one big season to remember that he was largely average in the grand scheme of things. I’m digressing here, but this video couldn’t be more ill-timed. And if I’m David Stern, I’m showing this to everyone as an example of why things need to change. Because Larry Hughes earned way too much money over the course of his career, and that mansion, Lamborghini, and everything else are symbols of what was wrong with the last system.
