Nobody likes talking about. It is an elephant in the room, akin to kicking somebody out of the club. No owner likely will go for it and the players would not like to see the league lose 12-15 potential jobs.
Yet, every time we reach a near labor impasse, it rears its ugly head. The suggestion is made and a group of small-market fans begins to worry that the axe is coming for them.
Contraction.
Those who remember the 1980s pine for the days where talent could more easily be concentrated in fewer teams and the overall talent of teams was higher. They dislike the watered-down nature of talent as it spreads itself thin across 30 teams. Others will argue that expansion has helped introduce more talented players — especially with the influx of foreign players in the late 1990s and 2000s — to the league while exposing the game to new markets across the NBA. Die hard fans of small market franchises certainly appreciate this opportunity.
Contraction is very much a dirty word. But with 23 of the 30 teams in the league claiming they are losing money, the NBA struggling to find a revenue sharing plan that works for all its owners and revenue in general remaining a problem causing what many see as a brutal and lengthy lockout, shouldn’t every possible avenue be tried? Shouldn’t the NBA think a little outside the box?
Ken Berger of CBS Sports, who has been way out in front reporting and explaining the goings on of the lockout, suggests contraction might be the simplest, and most painless, solution to solving some of the problems that are causing this ongoing lockout. Berger puts the contraction thought pretty succinctly: “If the NBA is losing so much money — $300 million last season and $1.845 billion during the six-year collective bargaining agreement that just expired — then why continue to pour good money after bad into markets that have proved beyond any doubt they cannot support an NBA team without massive transfers of wealth that have failed to make them viable?”
The league seems perfectly willing to threaten contraction but no team seems willing to volunteer for it. The NBA does own the Hornets, but the league seems amazingly committed to making basketball work in the Crescent City. Contraction of the Hornets despite making sense seems unlikely.
Then you have the issue of how hard cities fight to remain in the club of professional sports. Many teams expect cities to contribute to large, expensive stadiums in areas where they may be unsupportable and unpopular or they will pick up and leave. It leaves many of these towns in the conundrum of choosing between staying in the club and biting the bullet with taxpayer dollars or seeing a pro team walk away. Much like it is for owners, like the Maloof brothers for instance, once you are out of this club, it is very difficult to get back in.
Still there is no denying the wide gap between the owners and players proposal for a new collective bargaining agreement. The owners’ offer is based on hundreds of millions of dollars of losses. As Berger suggests, wouldn’t it be easier for the owners to just lop off the biggest loser and hope that gets the owners and players closer to a number they agree on?
It is one outside-the-box idea for sure.
There are benefits to contraction. The re-dispersal of talent could potentially make some of the worse teams in the league much more competitive, creating the balance that draws fan interest in struggling markets. More importantly, as Berger points out, eliminating a team could save the league’s owners somewhere around $100 million in salary and benefits that could somehow be re-dispersed to other teams or back to the players in the future.
There is some appeal to this thought. But contraction does not solve all the problems. The owners still want some way to protect themselves from themselves and ensure costs stay at a reasonable, preferably set rate. That is ultimately what this whole lockout is about.
Contraction also makes the league look unhealthy. If you are not growing, you are not progressing, right? There are other issues to consider in this extremely complex lockout to decipher.
But contraction might be the kind of outside-the-box idea that could finally solve this thing. Few have suggested adding sponsorships to jerseys to help the individual teams increase revenue. To save the season, that seems to be a concession even hard-line fans would be willing to make.
If the two sides are really this far apart and losing a season is really a risk, everything should be on the table. It might be time to talk about the thing everyone — owners, fans, players — fear most and see if it helps.
Photos via DayLife.com.
