BUTLER INDICATIVE OF NBA’S SHIFTED POWER BALANCE
With stars now pushing for more control, hard cap looms large in game’s economics
From the beginning, the story of Jimmy Butler trying to force his way out of the Minnesota Timberwolves has had some eyebrow-raising details.
There was his initial list of “preferred destinations,” which is a funny thing to provide a team that was under no obligation to trade him, let alone to one of three teams of his choosing. There were the destinations themselves: Brooklyn Nets, New York Knicks and the Los Angeles Clippers, all bad teams with salary cap space in big cities. Isn’t this the new era of player movement, when stars conspire to join forces and, you know, win games? Butler seemingly would rather get paid and play in a cool town. The fact that he has since added Miami to his list of acceptable destinations does not dissuade that notion.
There are other odd elements in the Butler situation. He’s not mad at coach Tom Thibodeau and he’s not angry that the Wolves won’t pay him — Thibodeau would very much like to! — but rather it appears he doesn’t want to play with Minnesota’s young talent, specifically Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins. Judging by their reaction to his possible departure, they felt the same way.
So to sum up: A very good player who is under contract for another season has demanded a trade because he doesn’t like his teammates. And he has provided a very short list of worthwhile suitors, none of which would be good in the near term, especially since they would have to pay a steep price to acquire him.
I’m all for the age of player leverage in pro sports, but this is getting a little ridiculous. And it’s fair to wonder where it all ends. Quite possibly at a place that NBA players would rather not consider: a hard salary cap.
That eventuality is still a long way off with the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement and its soft cap to be in place for at least the next four seasons. But commissioner Adam Silver has already suggested that a hard cap could be on the table for the next CBA. When he says, as he has, that “those discussions are for another day,” it means he intends for that subject to be discussed.
One imagines he will get much support in that pursuit from the majority of NBA owners. The reality of the league today, where players have upended the power balance with ownership, was the result of a couple of things. Basketball players have inherently more leverage than athletes in other team sports because there are so few of them on a roster and fewer still who have a major effect on a game. NBA stars are on the floor 75 per cent of the time; imagine if Connor McDavid played 45 minutes a night instead of the 21 minutes he averaged last year.
Add in the ballooning salaries due to the huge increase in the NBA’s television revenues and it has created a system that has overwhelmed the mechanisms meant to curb player movement in the existing CBA. Kevin Durant took many millions of dollars less to play in Golden State the last two seasons, but he won two titles and still made more money than he could ever spend. He is set to be the NBA’s 10th-highest paid player this coming season, which is a significant discount for the two-time Finals MVP, and yet he will still make US$30 million.
Durant, at least, chose the Warriors when he had reached free agency. Butler is the latest case of a player who seeks to muscle his way out of town by threatening to leave when his contract ends. It worked for Paul George and Kyrie Irving last summer, although they at least had the good sense to not wait until the eve of training camp to tell their bosses to make a franchise-altering trade.
Players forcing a trade is nothing new (hello, Vince Carter), but now they have so much leverage they don’t need much of a pretence to do it. Irving made the final and then demanded out. Butler played just 59 games for the Wolves before he decided he had seen enough of that.
The owners of teams outside of the big destination markets, which is most of them, know now they are at the mercy of their stars.
Anthony Davis will be eligible next summer to sign an extension north of $US200 million to stay in New Orleans, but if he declines the clock begins ticking on the Pelicans trading him before his current deal runs out. And he just signed with the agency partly owned by, ahem, LeBron James.
A hard salary cap would bring with it many problems, including a squeezed-out middle class and a massive premium on cheap, young talent — the kinds of things evident in other sports with such an instrument in place — and, of course, greatly increased profits for the owners. But when players are throwing so much of their weight around, you can bet that the owners will be looking for a way to wrest some of that power back.