L.A. Lakers owner Jerry Buss' daughter Jeanie, the pants in Phil Jackson's long-term romance, talked to the Wall Street Journal about the NBA's ongoing labor struggle. When the issue of league contraction came up, she said the NBA should be open to contraction, or the vaporization of a couple teams and fan bases.
Lakers’ Royal Family Stumps For NBA Contraction, Its Own Continued Wealth
Far be it from me to beat a dead horse that was probably never living in the first place. (Contraction is really a league bargaining ploy in contentious collective bargaining negotiations. Nothing more.) But the bogeyman deserves its due in this case, so long as the NBA’s true royal family openly suggests literally eating the poor.
The call for contraction stems from the fact that not all NBA teams currently turn a profit. Some, in fact, lose quite a bit of money. Others make a lot of money. You'll be unsurprised to learn that the teams that owners like Buss would like to kill (or would at least consider killing) are the teams who lose quite a bit of money. These teams happen to exist outside the major media markets, in places like Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Memphis and Sacramento. (Note: it's not clear that the Bucks lose much money, and the Grizzlies and Kings have actually turned small profits in recent years.)
All NBA owners want all NBA teams to be profitable. That not only helps build the brand, but it boosts TV revenue at the league level (more excellent teams to highlight on an increasing number of nights) and it spreads the gospel of the NBA into outposts the league’s coastal powers might never reach. David Stern has had two geographic pushes during his long tenure as commissioner: into the breadbasket of America, and into the international market. Those came with good reason: Stern wanted to tap underutilized markets.
Now, Buss says that perhaps those markets have been overwhelmed. Meanwhile, thanks to the NBA’s complete lack of meaningful revenue sharing, the rich teams get richer while these perhaps overwhelmed markets dive further into the abyss. TrueHoop’s Henry Abbott, a few weeks ago, stumped for the Holy Grail of NBA finance solutions: get a billionaire willing to spend what it takes to win for every franchise. He’s right, that would fix it all. But isn’t that in itself a terribly sad commentary on the state of the league’s current structure? That you need spenders without conscience for everyone in order to provide a level playing field?
There's a better way, and that's to set the rules so that everyone -- cash-rich major markets and sober small markets like -- play by the same rules. The soft salary cap and relatively weak luxury tax have served to expand the league's quality gap. The Lakers, for example, pay the tax just about every single year. L.A. has the league's highest payroll this season, coming off two straight championships. How can teams in smaller markets compete? The Lakers can afford a payroll twice that of the Kings ... because based on pure geography the Lakers can charge more for local TV rights and tickets, none of which is shared among the league's teams, unlike other major American team sports. The Lakers are playing a different game than the Kings. The Celtics and Bucks aren't even in the same league.
So when Jeanie Buss says “contract teams,” she’s saying “protect our ability to buy a shot at the championship.” That’s the dirty little secret of this whole labor struggle. The big-money owners who cry about salaries while going $20 million into the luxury tax? They don’t actually want the system to change. They are perfectly content buying wins and watching lesser teams remain uncompetitive. It just wouldn’t be prudent to say so publicly.
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