The NBA dynamics have sure changed over the years but no more than it has in the past 10 years. Gone are the Days when a player was traded and he had no say which team he was going to play for. Gone are the Days of a true salary cap where now team have no issues going way over the cap and paying a luxury tax if it means having a winning team. Gone are the Days where teams have Owners and Management that knew the game inside and out. And gone are the Days where if Players and ex Players had a beef with one another it was settled on the court or face to face.
Gone are the Days when a player was traded and he had no say in which team he was going to play for. The trade deadline in the NBA has become somewhat of a joke, star players who have been in the league for some years now tell Owners which team(s) they will or will not play for if traded and if they are near Free Agency. Case an point this year when the Indiana Pacers were going to trade All Star Paul George to the Denver Nuggets but the deal was nixed for George and or his Representatives made it known He would not resign with the Nuggets when His contract was up in 2018. The same has happened numerous times over the past few years as well. With the amount of money that NBA Players make, especially the Star Players this comes not as a surprise anymore that its is the Players who are running the NBA nowadays.
Gone are the Days of a true salary cap where now teams have no issue
going way over the cap and paying a luxury tax if it means having a
winning team. The NBA has a soft cap where teams can go over the Salary cap but then have to pay a luxury tax when they do. Every year the salary cap goes up and every year teams are paying its players more and more money. This year, the Cleveland Cavaliers have the highest payroll in the NBA and pay the largest luxury tax while the Utah Jazz have the lowest payroll and pay no luxury tax at all. Having one of the highest payrolls does not always guarantee a winning season or an NBA Championship. See where all NBA teams rank. http://www.spotrac.com/nba/cap/ Teams with salary cap space usually are the ones who can make the biggest splash in Free Agency during the off season.
Gone are the Days where teams have Owners and Management that knew the game inside and out. Some teams have great Presidents and GM's and Coaches and some do not. Also, there are many Owners who are micro managers and stick their noses into the running of these NBA teams and have no clue as to what it takes to run a team nor do they have any idea as to know if a player is a star or not. I could give you so many examples of this but I will give you just a few as they have come to the front page of NBA in the last few weeks. First off, The Lakers have been run into the ground by the current Owners Jeanie and Jim Buss. But Jeanie had the power in the Family Ownership and fired her brother Jim, the President and also the GM Mitch Kupchak. She only did this after she decided to turn over the reins to ex Lakers great Earvin "Magic" Johnson. Another ex player with no front office experience running an NBA team. Time will tell if this works out or not for the Lakers who are the 2nd ranked team in worth in the NBA behind the NY Knicks. The second example is the Sacramento Kings, who by all accounts are the example of an Owner who has no clue how to run an NBA team. Kings Owner Vivak Randadive' hired ex player Vlade Divac to be the teams GM, and between the two of them have no clue how to run an NBA team. The team through top draft picks due to many losing seasons should have a top 5 team in the NBA but instead they keep letting top NBA Players leave for other teams. This year they are only a game out of the last playoff spot in the NBA Western Conference but for some unexplained reason traded the best center (DeMarcus Cousins) in the league to the New Orleans Pelicans for literally nothing in return. GM Divac stated he had better offers for their star player but instead at the Owner Randadive' insistence went with the Pelicans offer because He is infatuated with player Buddy Hield whom he thinks is the 2nd coming of Warriors All Star Player Stephen Curry. Mind you, Randadive' has no experience judging NBA talent. Thirdly, you have the NY Knicks. They have been in the sports news lately because Owner James Dolan and his incident with ex Knicks player Charles Oakley but even more so the disarray of the Knick as Dolan continues to allow Phil Jackson who is the President of the Knicks to run this once storied team into the ground. There is no doubt Jackson could care less about running the Knicks or being in New York but his handling of Carmelo Anthony and the Knicks around the trade deadline has the team not trusting him or wanting to play for him. The team has no chances to make the playoffs once again. If I am a Knicks fan, I would say enough is enough and stay away the remaining home games. The ticket prices the Knicks charge fans is crazy. No wonder the Knicks are worth the most in the NBA at $3.3B. And last, the Reinsdorfs conflict of which way to take the organization going forward caused them to miss out golden opportunities to trade top player Jimmy Butler. The Bulls who will make the playoffs but not go far this year need to get on the same page from its ownership and figure out if they are going to rebuild or add a player or 2 in free agency. These are only a few of the issues NBA teams face with Ownership nowadays.
And gone are the Days where if Players and ex Players had a beef with one another it was settled on the court or face to face. Just in the past few weeks and even the past few days, players and ex players now use social media as an avenue to battle one another instead of the old days of settling it on the court, or on the phone or in person. It is the sign of the times as Charles Barkley goes after LeBron James and vice versa, You have Draymond Green talking trash on the court this week to Paul Pierce and Paul Pierce goes back at him on social media. Ex Player and TV Analyst Shaquille O'Neal goes after Warriors center JaVale McGee and vice versa and then Warriors Kevin Durant and Head Coach Steve Kerr join the feud and it has now gone viral. Instead of all being men and settling this man to man, they have now chosen to take to Twitter as this escalates and spirals completely out of hand.
So as we can see it is a new era in the NBA, star players have taken over, some Owners who now own teams worth billions, throw money around like it is monopoly money yet also at times get greedy and refuse to give top players the max deal just to show who is still the boss even when it is stupid of them to lose the player. Owners and Players are making so much money nowadays yet each wants a bigger slice of the pie. And trash talk has always been a huge part of the game but now, instead of trash talking on the court, Social Media is the new trash talking venue for players and owners too. I am not sure the new dynamics of the NBA are what is best for the NBA but as with all things, change happens and we now wait to see if this will be good or bad for the NBA. twitter; @cupofjoeinthed email; cupofjoeinthed@gmail.com www.cupofjoeinthed.blogspot.com
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