Time For NBA to Opt Out of Opt-Outs

In baseball, if a team is struggling they can always throw money at the problem. If the team's highest paid pitcher is out for the season recovering from Tommy John surgery, they get themselves another one.

It doesn't guarantee success, but at least it offers the chance.

In football, a team can turn it's fortunes around in a year with a couple of good drafts and the addition of two or three key free agents. That's the luxury that comes with NFL owners not having to give out guaranteed contracts.

But in professional basketball, because of it's guaranteed contracts and salary cap, every year there are way too many teams that find themselves stuck in situations that can take years for them to recover from.

In most instances the culprit is a bad contract. It seems like every team has at least one contract that's outrageous and each of them seems to have at least another year on it after this one.

Did you know the Sixers are still paying Aaron McKie and Chris Webber? Even though Webber was bought out and McKie was released via the luxury tax amnesty rule, those two guys still account for $26 million of the Sixers $56 million cap. (Note: I've scored as many points this season as the two of them have combined.)

Do you know who the league's second highest paid player is? I could give you 10 guesses and I bet you still wouldn't get it—it's Michael Finley. He's getting close to $19 million from the Mavs and another $3 million from the Spurs.

The problem with the way the NBA is set up is that you've got a handful of teams that are perennial contenders while the rest of the league just waits for contracts to expire. Many of the teams that are waiting for contracts to expire end up using their mid-level exemption each offseason because they're over the cap and it's the only chip they have to use.

What ends up happening is the team ends up with no significant cap space once the bad contract expires because they spent $6 million every offseason with their mid-level exemption.

The Spurs are the only team you can make a case for not having one overpaid player on it's roster. It's not that the Spurs haven't signed players to bad contracts because they have. They gave Rasho Nesterovic and Malik Rose six-year deals for $42 million each. In both instances the Spurs were able to trade the player away for much better contracts.

While the Spurs are great at discarding horrible contracts, the Knicks are the NBA's best when it comes to trading for horrible deals—Stephon Marbury, Steve Francis, Jalen Rose, and Maurice Taylor are just four of them.

You can't blame the players, though. You can boo them but you can't blame them. Athletes are worth whatever an owner is willing to pay them. It's the same with everything—actors, chocolate bars, designer clothing, etc.

The easiest way for NBA owners to change the current system is by eliminating player options because they're lose-lose propositions.

If the player performs to his ability and has a chance to opt out then he's all but guaranteed to do it and try to get a better deal. If he underperforms and has a chance to opt out then he won't do it because he knows he won't make as much money if he does.

Most teams can't afford to lose a player that's good enough to opt out so they end up giving too many years and too much money--even though they know there'll be a direct correllation between salary increase and production decrease over the duration of the contract (see O'Neal, Shaquille).

The only time it's good for an owner is when a good player opts out because it means that he has an asset under contract for at least a few years that he knows will make him money.

A team like the Rockets, for example, knows that having Yao under contract for the next three years equals 'x amount of revenue' because of his built-in fan base in China.

But how many Yao Mings are there in the NBA? How many guys in the NBA are actual revenue producers? The easiest way to determine the popularity of a player is by looking at road attendance.

The top three teams in the NBA in road attendance this year, in order,  are the Celtics, Lakers and Nuggets. It's easy to say that the Celtics are a draw because of their history and enormous fan base but last year the team was 15th in road attendance. I wonder if the additions of Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen have something to do with it. Hmmm...

The Lakers were third last year in road attendance and are second this year. Did anyone really believe that the Lakers were going to trade Kobe Bryant for Luol Deng? I love Deng but I don't know anyone outside of Durham or Sudan that would buy a ticket just to see Deng play. Meanwhile, there are people out there who buy tickets just so they can boo Kobe.

The point being that some players, like Yao and Allen Iverson, are worth more to the owner than they are to the teams--but they are the exception and not the rule.

It's even worse with an underachieving player because the team is stuck having to overpay for a declining performance and there's nothing they can do about it.

Look at the contract of Pacers' center, Jermaine O'Neal. He's making close to $20 million this year and has an option in his contract for the next two years at a combined $44 million.

He's clearly breaking down, as evidenced by the recent news that he's considering sitting out the rest of the season to heal his injured knee. Does anyone really believe he's going to opt out?

It's the same story with the other O'Neal except that guy still sells tickets. The Heat led the NBA in road attendance last year and they're in 11th place this year, despite being the worst team in the Eastern Conference. 

So what can be done? 

It isn't realistic to think the player's union would ever agree to abolishing player options. So the NBA needs to come up with some sort of compromise and present it when it's time to draw up the next collective bargaining agreement.

Here's one solution:

Teams should have the right to buy out any player that doesn't opt out when he has the chance to--and the team should be able to relieve their cap of that player's salary.

For example, the Pacers could still part ways with Jermaine O'Neal this off-season even though the option is his. The Pacers would still be responsible for paying O'Neal the remainder of the contract but his salary wouldn't count against the cap.  The Pacers would then have to pay O'Neal his money within five years, with accrued interest after the third year. The Pacers would also be able to deduct the amount of money in O'Neal's next contract.

Teams should only be allowed to do this once every two years so that it doesn't give too much of an advantage to teams like the Knicks that can better afford to do it.  

The player would not be allowed to re-sign with that team after being bought-out to avoid any funny business.

This isn't the same thing as a buy-out. A buy-out allows the player to become a free agent but the terms of his deal still count against the team's salary cap for the duration of that contract (see Webber, Chris or Francis, Steve). I'm talking about a solution where the player still gets paid but the team still has the freedom to make themselves better.

It's time to stop punishing teams and their fans because there are so many players that aren't worth what they're being paid. Allowing teams the opportunity to get out of bad contracts still punishes the team by making them pay a portion of the contracts.

There should also be a tax on this, similar to the luxury tax, that rewards the fiscally responsible teams that haven't taken advantage of the rule.

Everything that David Stern has done with the NBA in recent years was done to discourage the type of player movement that's been seen in baseball and football. Stern has done everything he can to give teams advantages in keeping their rosters together:

1) Rules were put in place that allow teams to sign their young players to extensions a year before those players can hit the open market.

2) Teams can offer their own players one more year and more money than the maximum amount other teams can offer them.

3) If those teams decide not to offer the player an extension then the player becomes a restricted free agent and the teams is allowed to match any deal offered to that player by another team.

4) Any trades between two teams over the cap need to have salaries that are within 125% plus $100,000 of each other, so trades are made increasingly difficult.

But that rationale has backfired. What Stern thought was a way to build fan loyalty has turned into a way to build fan animosity. If the team is bad and the players are bad then the fans become hostile because they want to see change.

If those contracts are deemed unmovable then the player isn't going anywhere and the fans become even more angry--just look at the Knicks.

Stern thinks that fans don't want to be loyal to teams that have revolving doors when it comes to personnel. He thinks that fans won't be willing to buy a player's jersey if that player will be in a new city every couple of years.

Clearly that logic doesn't apply to the relationships between teams and fans that are dysfunctional.

Player options were meant to be incentives for players to earn themselves better contracts and instead they've become loopholes that players are using to milk an undeserving $40 million from an owner.

Obviously the system is flawed. There are only three teams in the NBA that are under the salary cap and the team with the most cap space of the three, the Charlotte Bobcats, is only about $3 million under.

How are teams supposed to get better when the average amount teams are allowed to spend per player under the cap is $3.7 million?

David Stern needs to loosen his kung fu grip on player movement. It's time that NBA owners are given another option besides trading their bad contracts for worse contracts or waiting for those bad contracts to expire.

There are ways to tweak the system without increasing the salary cap or asking players to give back money. If Stern's main objective is to present a product that fans can get excited about then he needs to change the rules that make it so difficult for that product to get better.