Jersey Retirement: Even On a Bye Week, Cleveland’s Josh Cribbs is Still The Man
November 1, 2010Source: Team Varejao Angling for a Change of Scenery
November 1, 2010
(Buckle in folks. This is going to be a long one. Â (Over 2300 words.) Â In my head, it is all part of a cohesive thought encompassing most of professional sports. Hopefully at the end, you will agree. Now, where to begin?)
I got into a conversation over the weekend on Twitter with Jason McIntyre who runs popular national blog, The Big Lead. It all started with his comment agreeing with Bill Simmons about how the Knicks should only care about getting Carmelo Anthony with the intent of getting Chris Paul as soon as he becomes a free agent. Simmonsâ comment was that nobody else on the roster mattered and McIntyre, a Knicks fan, agreed. Instantly, I asked him why he was in such a rush to ruin the NBA with another super team. His response to me was quite simple. âWhy would stacked teams ruin it? I think the opposite – would help greatly.â
From there the conversation exploded as I proclaimed to no avail that I thought fans were looking for parity like the NFL. We talked about player movement in which he claimed that LeBron left money on the table to go to Miami. He isnât wrong, technically. Then again, I think to say that LeBron really sacrificed financially for his decision is a bit of an overstatement. He didnât chase every last dollar, but after choosing Miami, Pat Riley persuaded the Cavs to participate in what turned out to be a sign-and-trade getting LeBron the bigger annual increases. Donât tell me that wasnât always a part of Rileyâs pitch to LeBron either. I donât believe that LeBron ever intended to give up all the financial compensation that should have come along with leaving the Cavaliers. Additionally, LeBron left some money on the table to increase his flexibility, much like he did on his prior contract in Cleveland. So he did gain something of value in leaving money on the table. To paint it as a financial sacrifice on LeBronâs part to create the Heat superteam is disingenuous in my opinion.
This is just a small point. Back to the argument.
Superteams promote unhealthy player transactions around the league.
Obviously from a Cleveland perspective it is easy to see why super teams ruin the NBA because now we have the benefit of hindsight. The Cavaliers have been engaged in an arms race for the last few years with every other team in the NBA. How else would you explain Danny Ferryâs trade of nothing but bad contracts for Shaquille OâNeal and then trading virtually nothing for Antawn Jamison? The Cavs were doing everything they could to create a super team on the fly to compete with the Celtics and Magic in the East as well as the Lakers in the West.
From my perspective, all of it seemed fine until the Zydrunas Ilgauskas trade. The Cavs werenât the first team to trade someone only to watch that player get cut and eventually end up back with his original team. It happened earlier with McDyess when he was traded along with Billups for Allen Iverson. Still, when the Cavs traded basically nothing for Antawn Jamison, on the one hand, I was happy because the Cavs got Antawn Jamison. On the other hand though, I knew it was bad for the NBA. I knew it was bad just like I knew the McDyess deal was bad. It reeked of the same stench that was in the air when the Mavericks traded a retired Keith Van Horn to New Jersey as a salary match for Jason Kidd. Of course, once LeBron James completed his departure from Cleveland it made it all much easier to say it out loud. Regardless, it is important to recognize it. Super teams are bad for the NBA because it promotes this complex movement of players with lopsided trades that seemingly do nothing other than punch fans in the gut.
The presence of superteams creates such a large chasm between the haves and the have-nots that a lot of these irrational trades occur as teams throw in the towel and tank for the lottery.
With TV ratings like this, how can superteams be bad?
Everyone wants to watch the Miami Heat this year outside of the Cleveland Cavaliers fan base. Whenever they play there will be massive ratings on TV as people either root for the Heat or hope they lose. Doesnât that prove the point that super teams are good for the league? If it is an NBA TV ratings victory with the Heat, why wouldnât we want a super team in New York too?
Britney Spears. Yes. I am going to talk about Britney Spears. Spearsâ first album …Baby One More Time sold an estimated 30 million copies. Popularity can be an interesting measure of something in entertainment, but it doesnât have a 100% correlation to quality. This is why you should just snap every time you hear a Yankees fan make an off-handed comment about how the TV ratings are going to stink for the World Series after the Bronx Bombers get eliminated. Just because the Yankees are more popular for TV ratings doesnât speak to the quality of the baseball meant to be witnessed. As fans, we shouldnât really care about the ratings anyway. Should you enjoy a game any more or less because it had a larger national audience? I would argue no, just like I donât like that stupid Britney Spears album just because 30 million other people seemed to.
One-off high ratings arenât the ultimate indicator for a leagueâs health and quality. Even if you can get a big spike from a team like the Heat, that isnât really what we should be concentrating on. TV revenue is important to be sure. Then again, do you really want your TV ratings to be completely top-heavy? What about mid-season games involving teams that arenât stacked like that?
In the NFL where parity is king, people finally started complaining about the Detroit Lions being a part of the Thanksgiving day matchup. That was understandable because the Lions were in a historically significant slump of epic proportions. We are talking about a single team that averaged about four wins for a decade. Make no mistake, though. Do you know why people were complaining? They wanted to watch the game and were dissatisfied with the quality. They wanted to watch though. As superteams get created and they are put on TV, it creates unrealistic expectations for the rest of the leagueâs teams as the talent becomes more concentrated in a few markets.
You take any two NFL teams in the league and put them on primetime and they will garner good ratings. Shouldnât the NBA aspire to have the same thing where people would still be interested in watching Minnesota vs. Golden State? Maybe people wonât be as interested in those two teams as they would in Lakers vs. Celtics, but the drop-off between those two matchups today is staggering. If Lakers vs. Celtics is 100 in terms of ratings, then I would say that Minnesota vs. Golden State matchup is about a 2. Then again if Pats vs. Colts is a 100 in the NFL, would Browns vs. Chiefs be a 2 or higher? I would argue it would be much higher.
What does the NBA aspire to be anyway?
I think the NBA aspires to be more like the NFL. They have a salary cap, albeit a soft one. They have special rules so that a drafting team will have more ability to keep their homegrown talent. But those rules failed to work in allowing a team like the Cavs, desperate to keep their star, to keep LeBron James in town. And now that the system was gamed so âsuccessfully,â other players like Carmelo Anthony and Chris Paul are looking to do the same thing, presumably in NYC. Add the Denver fans and New Orleans fans to the Toronto fans and the Cleveland fans as those who have been handed bigtime losses. (I wonât even mention the Sonics fans who I still feel sorry for, as that is a much longer topic. I havenât forgotten though, Sonics fans.) The gains? They happen in two cities. If you are keeping track at home, we have alienated fanbases in four cities so that we could create super teams in only two cities.
The NBA has special rules to help promote homegrown talent from departing and their expansion over the years indicates that they enjoy being in a lot of markets. Do you really think having more crippled franchises than healthy ones is the goal of the NBA? Do you think it is good for business as a whole? I donât.
Regardless of how big a market New York is, it is very difficult to figure out how this could be deemed positive for the game as a whole. The NBA is a national brand that is competing for entertainment dollars. The NBA needs all its franchises to be successful. Letâs say you are McDonaldâs and you have finite resources like the NBA does. How successful is the chain going to be if they only have Big Macs in a handful of markets? Maybe you can still get chicken nuggets everywhere, but what is a McDonaldâs without its signature dish available in each location? In the case of the NBA, guys like LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, etc. are becoming more and more concentrated.
That, is a bad thing to most people. That ends up making the NBA start to look like Major League Baseball, which slowly but surely is missing out on generations of new fans in certain markets year after year as the sport is completely irrelevant in certain towns. No amount of TNT games featuring the Miami Heat can recruit fans to the NBA the way competitive teams in every city will.
There is no right and wrong, just different perspectives.
And this next part might seem like I am taking a shot at Jason McIntyre, but Iâm not. I disagree whole-heartedly with him and I think he is dead wrong. Still, that opinion doesnât make me right. His opinion is important because it is representative of a big percentage of sports fans. Â McIntyre is a fan of New York teams. He is a Knicks fan, a Jets fan and a Yankees fan. The Knicks and Jets have been awful in the recent past, but the New York Yankees attitude seems to prevail in him like many other NY sports fans. Yankees fans live in a constant state of coveting all the best players. And if you were one of them, why wouldnât you? Who doesnât want the best players on their team? I get it.
In Cleveland, we havenât been conditioned to think like that because it is unrealistic. From the outside it seems very oddly selfish to constantly covet players that arenât yours. When Indians fans see Albert Pujols, we donât want him on our team. We want Carlos Santana to come up from the Columbus Clippers and hit like him. We donât see Lincecum and want him to come to Cleveland. We want Drew Pomeranz to develop into the next version of him.
Same thing in the NFL. We donât want Peyton Manning or Tom Brady to be a Brown as much as we hope Colt McCoy (or anyone else for that matter) can someday be realistically compared to them. That doesnât make Cleveland fans better than New York fans, really. I mean, deep down as a Cleveland fan, I think it makes us better, but I am tragically biased, so my opinion doesnât really matter. It just makes us different. Thatâs fine, but it goes deeper with the NBA situation.
I know the NBA is broken. With LeBron and the Cavs the past few years, I have spent a whole lot of time acting like a Yankees fan coveting other teamsâ players. Amare Stoudemire, Chris Bosh, Antawn Jamison, Montae Ellis and many many more were on my list at various points. I didnât feel badly about it at the time because I was too busy trying to figure out how to trade the retired contract of Wally Szczerbiak. You see what I mean?
In hindsight, it is quite easy for me to tell you that the NBA is broken. Players are creating super teams. The soft salary cap is creating giant disparities between teams that isnât supposed to occur in leagues with caps. The competition in the game is very top-heavy as bigtime players are desperately trying to find ways to play together.
In order to be a sports fan, you have to be willing to endure losses. Originally the losses were mostly limited to the field or court of play. Now you have those, plus injuries, plus all the things that go along with player movement. I know that we will never stop player movement, but the rules of the NBA and the collective bargaining agreement were put in place to limit that movement and increase franchisesâ ability to compete on an even playing field. Now that that system has produced the Miami Heat and is threatening to produce the New York Knicks with Stoudemire, Carmelo Anthony and Chris Paul, I know the system is tragically broken.
I might have even admitted it was broken last year as the Cavs were trading nothing for something because it felt so unnatural for my Cleveland sports fan pedigree. Now, I wonder if Jason McIntyre will find it bad as his team looks to capitalize on the dysfunction and cripple two additional markets in order to make the Knicks a contender. From my conversation with him on Saturday, I am guessing not.
In the end, I appreciate the conversation. Â It at least lets me know where I stand and how many people aren’t with me.
30 Comments
Wait you mean ratings and album sales and pageviews don’t equal quality?
I think if the NBA allows there to a few super teams and the rest are just subpar NBA teams they’ve just recreated MLB. You might get a team full of young talent to make a surprising push, but you will have a few heavy hitters in the big cities. For the most part, teams like the Indians are training grounds for the future elite players (see CC and Lee) and a place for almost elites and washed ups to grab a payday before their time is up.
If the NBA = MLB, I want even less to do with it.
If the NBA = NFL, I will maintain my casual fan attitude towards it.
As long as players can dictate trades to what teams and with what other player(s), it’s a joke.
There are fans and there are ratings. Fans spend money on their teams, sure, but they will also watch another team, too. The ratings from the WORLD are what make money; not the dude from Parma who buys a Cribbs jersey. It’s the 2.1 billion people who watch the XXXXX game, etc. And, a super-team will bring super ratings, super advertisement money, etc. Money is the ultimate end.
untru Denny; if it makes people in NYC happy, it is good.
Money, money, money…..
Actually watching a sporting event is great for 2 major reasons, spectacle, which creates sudden moments of wonder, and spontaneity, which creates the more consistent drama. Super teams load up on the first at the expense of the latter. In order for a league to thrive, you need both.
I can remember Sports Illustrated from when I was a teenager (back when there were magazines!) that had a front cover story about how Jordan and the Bulls were bad for the NBA because there was not any question about who was going to the Finals that year (and probably win it). The NBA is desperately hoping that the Heat can turn things around PR wise and become the overwhelmingly interesting spectacle that can generate a huge bandwagon. It’s a pretty huge gamble since Jordan required the requisite early struggles to become the champion everyone wanted to watch.
Me? I’m looking for Vegas to open up the odds for league contraction (goodbye New Orleans, Memphis, Minnesota, and maybe Sacremento)
It’s a good piece, but I don’t think it is as broken as you’re asserting; especially in light of the fact that I believe the 2 biggest problems are going to be corrected after the inevitable lockout.
1) The Jamison / Van Horn / etc. trades can’t happen anymore. I fully believe this will be corrected.
2) A hard cap will be put in place. I think this is almost an absolute certainty.
I really think the LBJ move with Bosh and Wade is going to start a landslide. These guys see it can be done now and its only a matter of time before you start seeing more of these Melo/Paul type situations. I agree with the parallels to MLB, teams are going to be forced to sell on guys early to get pennies back on their dollar (just to get anything in return).
It’s really a sad situation. Everyone knows there is no loyalty in sports anymore because what used to be a small business has grown into a multi-billion dollar mega machine of marketing and glitz with zero substance. These guys see themselves as more than athletes and treat themselves as such. I don’t have any answers on how to fix anything (I wish I did), but it seems to me the leagues could be doing a lot more to quell these problems.
Spears analogy is great btw. Spot on.
@brownsfan, players dictate trades in the NFL too.
If you want to be a casual fan because you don’t care about the sport, fine.
GIVE ME A SIGGGGGGNNNNN
HIT ME BABY ONE MORE TIME
….i’ll leave now.
Put me in the Pro Contraction camp. Less teams would greatly help the league.
Nice article…unfortunately I disagree on some level about superteams being bad for the league. Marquee teams, especially those in large markets are what ESPN feeds on. And if ESPN is talking about it, it must be what’s really important and we should all pay attention.
The NFL is different. We like the NFL because of gambling, aka Fantasy Football, and violence. Unfortunately the NBA offers neither to much extent.
I hope I’m wrong about all of this, but the closest analogy seems to be MLB. Certain teams will always be competitive, or at least have the means to compete if they so choose, other teams have to hope for things to break right to have a chance.
By the way, wasn’t Jason McIntyre the HS Basketball team manager who when he finally got in a game proceeded to drain 6 3’s?
#12: Are you still cool with contraction if it’s the Cavs?
The NBA has always been about superteams. Since ’84, only seven teams have won the championships. I’m too lazy to look up the numbers for the NFL and MLB over that time, but I know it’s easily more than double that.
MLB actually gets a bum wrap. They consistently send a diverse set of teams to the playoffs and the WS.
You also failed to mention that “superteams” then will get super call from officiating crews, which makes the NBA even more unwatchable. There is not an individual on the planet that does not know that the “superstars” get preferential calls over other players. This puts the “regular” teams at an even greater advantage. The gulf will then grow even more. Establish a “hard cap” and live with it so competion can flourish.
marketing of stars over teams started with david stern in the 80s. see ‘magic and lakers vs jordan and the bulls.’ fitting that his policy may lead to contraction.
i share your hard-to-say-in-words feeling about coveting other players. it’s the same here in boston.. seems like the last three years sawks-tawk centers on where adrian gonzalez will bat in the order. like it’s a given that they’ll get him. just like it’s a given the yanks will get cliff lee. it IS gross. it’s just not … sporting.
there’s something to be said for bring the sporting* back into sports conversations.
* sporting – exhibiting or calling for sportsmanship or fair play; “a clean fight”; “a sporting solution of the disagreement”; “sportsmanlike conduct”
sportsmanlike, sporty, clean, fair, just – free from favoritism or self-interest or bias or deception; conforming with established standards or rules; “a fair referee”; “fair deal”; “on a fair footing”; “a fair fight”; “by fair means or foul”
@14… I don’t think they’re that bad off that it would happen. The NBA will cut Memphis, GS, Toronto, New Orleans & Minnesota before they get to the Cavs.
If it gets to that point then I’ll even start to consider Cleveland losing a team.
@15 – MLB gets a “bum wrap” because there are a subset of teams that are virtually guaranteed to compete EVERY year and another subset of teams that are virtually guaranteed to not compete EVERY year.
it is true that there has been good diversity in the WS despite that. as good as any sporting league.
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in the NBA, it’s tough to NOT have superteams because of the nature of basketball. one or two players can make a team infinitely better because there are only 5 players on the court at one time and you can mask deficiencies of the other players with a good enough coach.
however, you don’t want fans to think they have virtually no shot at ever competing or why would they continue to be fans?
@18 – don’t include GS in there. they have fanatical fans. the ownership change should help their fans mindset as well.
Fair enough. Forgot they are a good fan base. But the other teams still apply.
What you’re trending toward isn’t baseball but the international soccer system. The biggest money domestic leagues are limited to 4-6 teams with the only shot at winning the championship (or, in the extreme case of Spain’s La Liga, two teams). This works for a number of reasons. There are promotion & relegation, which will never happen here. There’s the tradition, which doesn’t exist here. There’s increased domestic and international competition, but we have no club infrastructure for an open cup competiton like the FA Cup, and if David Stern thinks hundreds of millions around the globe will tune in for an NBA Champions League final between the Heat and Panathinaikos or Maccabi Tel Aviv, he’s crazy.
your point about rooting for your own developing players as opposed to rooting for taking other teams players i s a wonderful point. It’s like certain fan bases think that fantasy rosters are realities. When the Cavs finally win it all it will be a team built the “right” way.
And I think that someone who agrees with you in all this is David Stern. I’m still waiting to see what he’ll do, but I just know that he hates what is happening and once the labor dispute isn’t the #1 thing on his mind I think he’ll put his stamp on this whole conversation.
I agree with everything in this post. It’s true, in the short term, owners look at the revenue sharing that losing teams get off the hugely rated Lakers-Celtics final, and they’re happy to profit even from a bad team. That’s how Pittsburgh and Cleveland teams make money in MLB, and it’s a nice living.
But parity would make the league even stronger and for a longer time. When you watch the NFL, every team can have a few players who are worth watching, and every team has a legitimate shot at the beginning of every season. And that snowballs into local fans having interest, and local players being of interest. In baseball, and lately in basketball, bad teams have little hope of getting good players. I’m scared of a hard cap, because what happens then to the homegrown talent? But I do think that superteams are not a good thing.
Sadly, the NBA has always been a league of superteams, as you only have 8 different teams winning a championship since 1980/Bird and Magic Era. (Lakers, Celts, 76ers, Heat, Spurs, Rockets, Pistons, and Bulls.) That means that 22 other cities have not experience an NBA parade since Jimmy Carter was President! Since 1980, MLB has had 18 different champions, the NFL has had 15 different champions, and the NHL has had 14 different champions.
Not that I agree, but David Stern wants ‘superstar teams’ for one reason: TV ratings. David Stern needs about 8-10 great teams with each one having a superstar he can sell each week on ESPN/TNT games. He could care less about the other 15-20 teams, he could care less if they are playing to empty buildings, they are just bottom feeders to him that help the league at the end of the season when the lottery and draft come.
I started watching the NBA in the early 80’s and it has always been a star driven league, and for a fan like you and me, it is eiether feast or famine. Either your team is watchable or unwatchable. In the late 90’s, when my 76ers had Iverson in his prime, it was fun to watch every night. For the past 7-8 years, they are UNWATCHABLE.
Nothing will change because as long as David Stern can get that big TV contract from TNT and ESPN/ABC, like he does til 2017, thats all he wants to keep the league going. My only hope is that Evan Turner becomes a star so my 76ers can go from unwatchable to watchable. Again, I don’t agree with, but it is the reality of the NBA.
First I think “superteams” is not really an appropriate description for a lot of these teams, big market teams seems like a more description. In that case, it is absolutely best for the league for the big market teams to succeed. Leagues need only give fans the image that small market teams can succeed, and would want them to stay competitive for a while but would ultimately want the big market teams to play at the end of the season in the championship games. The higher the ratings the higher the TV contracts they sign and these TV contracts continue to make up an increasing portion of the sports leagues’ revenue. Ultimately, the most important thing is money, and big market teams make more money for the league.
Watching the Generals getting beaten up by the Globetrotters is entertaining, once a decade.
Watching your team, which is the equivalent, get beaten up by the visiting team is not entertaining anymore.
I think the NBA is banking on fans from every city being like Heat fans. No loyalty or pride just there to watch the superstar.
This gets old fast and will be the death of the NBA and MLB.
I was glad Stern mentioned contraction to end this charade. I fear though, that they will get rid of the Cavs even though we have a loyal fan base and great owner.
I’m not sure I agree about your claims about what’s good for the league. Basically you’re saying that the Heat is/are a moneymaker now but in the long run the league would make more money drawing interest from all 32 NBA cities. Might be true, might not be.
What I do know is that I don’t care. You gesture in this direction with your “no right and wrong” section, but I think you understate the point. Why should we care about what’s good for the NBA? Why should we even bother talking to New York fans and getting their perspective? We know what WE want the NBA to look like, and we have a whole city of folks who agree with us. We don’t need vindication that our desires accord with those of the league, or ESPN, or New York fans. Our feelings about the Heat and Knicks conspiracy are real. We’re right. And I don’t care what anyone thinks.
Love Me Hate Me Say What you want About Me But all of the Boys and all of the girls are begging to If You Seek Amy đ
Since 1980 – number of different winners, by sport:
NBA = 7
MLB = 18
NFL = 15
NHL = 15
The NBA will slowly die if it cannot generate interest in more cities.