So LeBron James and Kobe Bryant are on record for saying that if someone from overseas were to offer them $50 million a season, they'd bolt from the NBA. First off, who wouldn't? Anyone that claims they would turn down this kind of outrageous money for one season for any reason, patriotism or otherwise, is completely full of it. It's more than double the max contract the NBA will allow under current salary cap restrictions, and it's tax free!. Not only would they be lying, they'd be stupid.
This has to get David Stern's knickers in a twist. For decades now, Stern has led the way in marketing the NBA based upon its best and brightest superstar players. If, all of a sudden, there is a significantly better financial option for these guys, do you think its just going to be one or two who split? It's going to be a flood of the top players in the league, as long as the money is flowing from European clubs. And the NBA slowly becomes a league sporting the best of what's left over. I wonder if he's rethinking all of that International marketing, and the push to allow NBA'ers into the Olympics as the original Dream Team that seemed like such a good idea at the time?
Worst of all for the League is that there isn't really a damn thing they can do about it. There's no way Stern can allow NBA teams to match this kinds of money without totally scrapping the salary cap system, and that kind of upswing in pay around the league would make owning an NBA team a massive money pit. Not to mention that the kind of parity we saw this year would be a thing of the past. With no salary cap, high revenue clubs would dominate every year. This isn't baseball where one player, no matter how great he is, cannot make you a champion. In the NBA, one player is routinely the difference between 20 wins and 50.
There are only a couple of ways for the League to even try to deal with this. One is to let them go, stick to your principles and hope that the huge money being thrown around by foreign teams runs out. I mean, when you're paying one guy $50 million, that has to make it kind of difficult to turn a profit. Business sense would have to kick in eventually, right? Well, not if they guy writing those checks is a billionaire who spends $50 million a week on champagne, caviar and high-end escorts.
Another is to set up some sort of punitive rules against players who choose this route. Not sure exactly what those would be, but a buy-in to regain NBA eligibility would be an interesting possibility. Wanna go play in Europe, LeBron? Okay, but when you want back into the NBA, you have to pay the League 40% of the money you earned over there, up front. Otherwise, it was nice knowing you. This wouldn't work either, and is probably illegal, but Stern has played hardball with guys in the past, and I could definitely see him try to punish guys for having the audacity of leaving his league.
Another way, and this would be more in keeping with Stern's sneaky corporate manueverings, would be to lobby for the IRS to get involved. As it stands right now, the players keep all of this money, tax free. Make a few well-placed bribes (sorry, we call them campaign contributions now) and change the rules and make this money taxable for U.S. citizens at something like 75% and that levels the playing field, unless they want to not just play overseas but defect as well. Collecting a tax free paycheck is one thing, leaving the United States forever is quite another. And they could even cloak this in rah-rah patriotism, "Keeping the best of America in America."
But probably the most effective way, and one that doesn't involve sticking it to guys who have every right to tell David Stern and his flunkies to shove it and sell their unique talents to the highest bidder, is some kind of eventual merger between the NBA and the Euroleague. Two conferences, one in this half of the world and one in that half, everyone working under the same salary structures. That still wouldn't rule out rogue billionaires throwing around big money from lesser leagues, but it brings most of Europe's big money players (the financial kind, not the basketball kind) under the NBA umbrella and theoretically benefits all concerned, with the exception of the occasional transcendent superstar, and there's always marketing dollars out there for them, even more so with a truly world-wide league.
Any way around it, the face of the NBA is changing far more quickly than I or anyone would have anticipated. Major changes are coming if the NBA is going to stay the best league in the world and not just a footnote to the European Championships. The next couple of years will tell the tale. Both Kobe and LeBron have contracts running out, and someone from overseas will make a run at them. And it now looks like it's going to take a helluva lot more than just trading Richard Jefferson to clear salary cap space to make a run at either of them.
This is a well written blog and I commend you for your work.
I would like to take exception to something here that most people are doing and seeing the "alarm" in this whole situation.
It is widely assumed that these players will pay no tax. This may be the case with the recent defections but you need to understand what is going on here. An American playing in Europe is subject to USA taxes made abroad. They are also subject to taxes from the country they make their money in. Now these nobodies that everyone is saying is getting tax free money means that the team is paying those taxes. Then the team has to pay taxes (at least in America) on the money paid for the first round of taxes, then again and then again, each time the amount growing smaller until such time that there is no taxable amount.
What this means is that someone getting 5-6 million say, the team is actually going end up paying nearly 9-10 million. This might work for them at this level. However a player for 50 million? That works out to 80-90 million? Don't think so.
The reason why is the limiting fan base. No country in Europe has our population. China does and then some but most their people are dirt poor. They can't afford professional games any more than I can. Once in a great while. And the numbers you can pack into an arena just won't allow you to come out with a 50-90 million dollar player. You're reacting to what Lebron and Kobe says but I haven't heard any team offering 50 million tax free and you won't.
The subject is plain dumb. The media ran with it.
Why? A 5'5' NBA player just signed on in Italy as the league's highest paid player. Insert Joke Here.
LeBron's mouth has showed the true LeBron, a greedy mother.
This $50 million #### is just that, ####.
Who wouldn't play ANYWHERE for that kind of gold.
Basketball isn't supplanting soccer in Europe, so no one will be paid $50 million to play basketball.
Nique- if you are working for a US company, you are subject to US taxes. However, if you are working on a visa for a foreign company on their soil- the money is yours depending on their respective taxation (that a player would be subject to).
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I am an actual professional writer (hard to believe, I know, but I do earn a living at it) who even owns my own publishing company in Maryland. I am a proud drop-out from the University of Maryland and still a life-long Terp fan. My blog is named in honor of my favorite former NBA player, Tim Hardaway, without all the homophobia. I just loved the guy and his game. I only hope he doesn't kick my #### for saying that.
