Like The Knicks? Root For The Cavs!

I'm not a huge basketball fan, but my primary affiliation is with the Knicks, just based on who my dad rooted for and the Starter jacket I had in 5th grade. If most of my time living in NYC didn't coincide with the Isaiah Thomas era, I probably would have caught more than one game at MSG. I'd could have been even less of a fan if our gym teacher in high school didn't just roll out six or eight basketballs and do everything but rename our gym class "45 minutes of pick-up games".

I've never followed a full season of Knicks basketball, but if they get LeBron, I'm jumping on the bandwagon before ESPN has the headline up on their homepage.

True Knicks fans (or real fans of any team) would probably take offense to this, and rightfully so. They've suffered through the bad times, and know every bench player's name. They probably know the broadcasters verbal tics and are already intimately familiar with SSOL.

When a team is winning, they become more popular because casual fans become serious ones and also because assholes like me come out of the woodwork. We might not like the sport enough to suffer through a couple bad seasons in a row, but can be enticed into watching or coming to a game if the team is competitive. We might have some real sports loyalties, just not in basketball.

Donnie Walsh and Mike D'Antoni have all but screamed from the rooftops that they are pursuing Mr. James if he is available in the 2010 offseason. They've shed almost every contractual obligation beyond the 2009/10 season except Eddie Curry and Jared Jefferies (along with the possibility of picking up Danilo Galinari's option). They are creating a very tempting void for LeBron and maybe even one other max contract to fill in "The World's Most Famous Arena", home of the league's most valuable franchise.

A void doesn't only exist on the 2010/11 Knicks roster. Despite being founded in 1946, the Knicks have only two championships to their name (1970 & 1973). As a result, they don't really have an all-time "face of the franchise" type of player. Walt Clyde Frasier left in 1977 and Patrick Ewing never won a championship. LeBron is only going to be 26 when he becomes a free agent and if he puts in 6-8 years with the Knicks, I'd give him a 98% chance to be best Knick ever. That's not a bad legacy to leave.

King James has been remarkably diplomatic while being badgered by the questions of what he's planning to do in the summer of '10. He says:

I don't know if it's going to happen. I'm so focused on this season and what we have at task with the Cavs that it's hard for me to even think about that date. But at the same time, you have to stay open-minded if you're a Knicks fan.

But it's going to be a lot of teams that are going to try to strengthen their teams, and there's going to be a lot of free agents out there in 2010, so if you guys want to sleep right now and don't wake up until July 1, 2010, then go ahead, because it's going to be a big day.

LeBron is from Akron, and the Cavs are as close as he can get to a hometown team as far as NBA franchises are concerned. Common knowledge assumes that he could be a brighter star on Broadway or with Jay-Z's Nets if the Atlantic Yards project ever goes through, but how much bigger can LeBron get? He's got a massive Nike sponsorship with incredibly well done commercials (you're gonna want to click that). He's going to make basically the same NBA salary anywhere he goes and he's already in the process of surpassing an aging Kobe as the preeminent star in the league.

I think the single biggest factor in his decision is whether or not he wins a Championship in Cleveland. Just judging by his generosity with the ball (6.6 career APG), and his demeanor in press conferences, I think he's the kind of guy who badly wants to win a title for his city, whose lack of ultimate professional sporting glory stretches back to the Browns' NFL Championship in 1964. There are certainly other factors, but giving the city of Cleveland a Championship would free him of a ton of guilt and allow to to be embraced as a hero instead of jeered as a Quisling on his trips back to town.

Maybe I'm wrong, but wouldn't that at least make it better for everyone involved? It's not like the Knicks are going to win an NBA Title in the next two years...

Collusion or Delusion? [Follow Up]

In doing some more research on the topic of my previous post, I came across this article by Tim Marchman published in the National Review, back in December of 2003. He (not surprisingly) goes into more depth about the history of collusion in MLB than I did, and adds that joint holdouts were another big reason for the inclusion of the anti-collusion language in the CBA. He also says:

It was for violating this deal in the 1980s that owners agreed in the early 1990s to pay the players $280 million, a payment which drove expansion as owners sought to recoup the money by charging huge fees for the rights to new teams. Sandy Koufax decides he'd like to get paid something like what he's worth, and 40 years later you get to watch the Florida Marlins cavorting around in teal uniforms; what better illustration of the law of unintended consequences?

See what you can learn on these here Internets? The impetus of his post were "the ominous shadows of collusion falling across this weekend's winter meetings in New Orleans [in 2003]". These "shadows" stemmed from the exploitation of a seeming loophole the owners found in the CBA. At the time, the MLBPA was considering filing a grievance alleging that the owners were flooding the markets with free agents, according to Marc Edleman.

In his 2005 paper "Has Collusion Returned To Baseball?" Edleman details how, following the 2002 World Series, many teams began to talk about shedding payroll. Then, on Dec 20th, clubs simultaneously non-tendered 46 arbitration eligible players including Pudge Rodirguez and other top level talent, thereby devaluing the price of all free agents (Edleman gives specific examples if you have time to read the essay). This also redefined that year's "fair-market value" and adversely affected outcomes of the hearings of the players who accepted arbitration.

Edleman says, "Federal antitrust law finds that an agreement to effect price exists even when there is a tacit or inferred agreement", and cites two cases involving American Tobacco and Monsanto (Sidenote: watch The Corporation) as indicators that the arbitrator may rule against the owners. He concludes:

When considering both the documented series of events that occurred during baseball’s 2002–03 off-season and their economic effects, it seems plausible that a baseball grievance arbitrator may find that Major League Baseball clubs once again violated baseball’s “collusion clause”.

This was of course written before the decision was handed down, and he was right to take an somewhat ambiguous stance.

Marchman's take was different, essentially dismissing the charges of collusion (also before any ruling had been handed down). He proposes a hypothetical situation in which two GMs are talking about each others arbitration cases and who they will or will not non-tender that year. He deduces that similar scenarios were probably unfolding at the time in team offices throughout the league, one at a time, but was likely not in violation of the CBA.

The owners did have to pay, but only $12M, and with no admission of guilt.

In light of this, the circumstances I laid out yesterday seem pretty frivolous and almost certainly won't result in any judgment against the owners, considering they non-tendered 46 players on the same fucking day, and didn't have to admit any guilt.

I just really don't like the thinly veiled, tacit encouragement to scale back spending that Selig endorsed when he asked Volcker to address the owners and executives. Like I said in the previous post, maybe the owners would have come to that conclusion anyway. So why allow the appearance of impropriety? Perhaps Bud could have presented Volcker as a resource for the owners to contact individually if they had specific questions.

It just gives a lot of credence to the sentiment that since Selig was an owner, he is now a stooge for the owners. Baseball will be better off if their next commissioner has the betterment of the game in mind, instead of the interests of the owners alone.

Collusion or Delusion?

The word "collusion" gets thrown around a lot in baseball circles, most recently in reference to this gentleman, and shortly before that, this guy and as Joe said in the comments it's only a matter of time before it's said in conjunction with Manny. In all three cases, I would tend to take things at face value and conclude that these are 30 teams all acting rationally and coming to the same conclusions.

An interesting fact that I was unaware of: It was Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale who created the need for these regulations by demanding joint negotiations with the Dodgers prior to the 1966 season (Wikipedia). As a result of the leverage provided by these transparent negotiations, the two pitchers received the two largest contracts in baseball history at the time. The owners were obviously none too pleased, and wanted to ensure this was not allowed to happen again.

In 1968, when Marvin Miller negotiated the first Collective Bargaining Agreement, he ensured that the owners were not allowed to collude either. The final language in the CBA reads "Players shall not act in concert with other Players and Clubs shall not act in concert with other Clubs."

According to Roger I. Abrams in his book Legal Bases, the owners didn't see how this restriction could ever apply to them. They were wrong. In the age of free agency, players gained the upper hand and were now able to negotiate with all other teams, and the resulting competition drove salaries upward, theoretically.

In 1986, a year when only four free agents switched teams and free agent salaries declined by 16%, the Player's Association filed a grievance against the owners, claiming that they had been acting together so as not to bid for each others players. The arbitration process consisted of 32 days of hearings spread out over almost a year, and in the end Arbitrator Tom Roberts ruled in favor of the players. Again according to Legal Bases, the rationale was that:

"Reaching a formal agreement was only one of many ways for two or more parties to act in concert. Some 'common scheme or plan' would be sufficient to provide a violation of that parties' bargain."

Which makes me think back to this. Remember when Bud Selig had ex-Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker speak to owners and executives of all 30 teams in November?

For roughly 45 minutes. According to several people who attended the meeting, Volcker discussed what led to the current economic plight and where things might be headed. His assessment was not upbeat, the attendees said.

At the end of his presentation, Volcker took several questions from owners and officials but did not specifically address how the economy could affect the 30 teams, big market and small, in the months to come.

Those who spoke about Volcker’s remarks did so on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be linked to the public discussion of a private meeting.

The off-season was already under way, but basically no free agent signings had occurred yet. On a certain level, you have to think that Selig knew that Volcker's assessment wasn't going to be "upbeat". They certainly must have spoken recently about the state of the economy before Selig asked him to address the owners.

Selig said he first broached the idea of having Volcker address the owners when he saw him at a World Series game last month.

You think they might have had some sort of a discussion about the economy when they ran into each other at the World Series? The World Series obviously took place in October, a month when the market posted triple digit fluctuations in 20 out of 23 days of trading. If Selig respected Volcker's opinion enough to have him address the franchise owners of his mega-billion dollar corporation, then he would surely have sought some expert insight in such turbulent financial times. Men of much smaller intellects and bank accounts were discussing the economy at that time. It was the most important and prevalent conversation echoing throughout the country and had been since the Lehman bankruptcy over a month before.

So what I'm getting at is... doesn't that sound like "acting in concert" or at least promoting or encouraging "a common scheme or plan"? Not surprisingly, neither Selig or Volcker have commented on the what was said during the 45 minute address. Even if Volcker didn't "specifically address how the economy could affect the 30 teams", doesn't this at least create the appearance of impropriety?

Maybe teams would have come to the same conclusions and almost universally ratcheted down spending (save for the Yankees, who have historically taken their own stance against the MLB). But if you were an executive or owner, wouldn't you be more reluctant to spend after hearing a pessimistic assessment of the economy from an ex-Federal Reserve Chairman who had "warned against the credit collapse for several years"?