Carmelo Anthony to NY: Why Superstars To Superteams Is a Negative for the NBA

Carmelo Anthony, the most hyped and seemingly singly talked about superstar of the last six months, got his cake and will be eating it too, in New York.

Melo muscled his way to his beloved Knickerbockers, once again bringing relevance and possibly competitiveness to the terrible team in New York.  A team that hasn't made the playoffs this millennium, as he teams up with another great scorer Amar'e Stoudemire.

The Knicks were forced to trade away their starting point guard Raymond Felton, along with other skilled players that were helping New York win this year.  Even with Carmelo, no one should really consider this team a threat in the Eastern Conference that's composed of the Celtics, Heat, Bulls and Magic.

That is, unless they land a true point guard, especially if it turns out to be fellow superstar Chris Paul in 2012 as many have rumored already.

But with Melo fleeing the Mile High City to take a bite out of the Big Apple, it creates another team in Denver that is devoid a superstar.

Look at this, with Anthony gone from Denver, it makes four teams in the last year that have lost their superstar, the key player that fans and media from outside markets associates with each franchise.

Along with Anthony, LeBron James left Cleveland, Chris Bosh took off from Toronto and Stoudemire flew from Phoenix to New York.

Four small market teams are now left without an identifying athlete, a reason alone to put down big bucks and put butts in seats.

In an economic climate as uncertain as the NBA's currently is, with the lockout looming and the league and players still miles apart from meeting in the middle on how to share the revenue, teams like the Nuggets, Cavaliers, Raptors and Suns could be lost forever.

Yes, the NBA has discussed contraction of some teams, and while it's not an absolutely imminent proposition, the teams that struggle the most to make money will be considered by Commissioner David Stern to be closed down.

Of course, some small market squads have prospered in the past, like the San Antonio Spurs, who put together a great team with one superstar (Tim Duncan), two “stars” (Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili) and surrounded them with an amazing mix of unselfish role players.

But even though they should be thought of as a model franchise for other teams to aspire to be, Stern admitted that even the Spurs have become “unprofitable” in this NBA with the current CBA.

From David Aldridge's piece today, “They're losing money this year," Stern said. "That's what Peter (Holt, Spurs owner) has told the players. That's what the books show. They are such a team. They are a model. And they are moving, in order to compete, they are moving, they have moved, into unprofitability with revenues. They were unprofitable last year; they will be unprofitable this year.”

If a team like the Spurs, one of the prototypical American sports franchises with its four championships in the last dozen years, can't stay afloat, what are Denver's chances? Or perhaps even more importantly, what are the chances teams in Cleveland, Toronto, Portland, Memphis, Charlotte, Sacramento and other small markets can survive?

Are we looking at a doomsday scenario in which the 30-team NBA is cut to 20, or even 15 teams?

OK, it may not be that serious at this moment in time, but contraction is a serious action Stern and the NBA are already considering.

And beyond a financial issue, the superstars becoming super friends and creating superteams is anti-competitive, it creates and even further competitive imbalance to a league that's been top-heavy with talent for years.

Since 1980, there have only been eight teams to win the NBA Championship, others like the Nuggets, have never even made it to an NBA Finals.

Over that same time, 15 different teams have won the NFL's Super Bowl, 19 teams have taken home the World Series title. Like the NBA, those leagues have enjoyed their dynasties over the last three decades, but there are many other small-market teams to win as well.

The teams to win in the NBA? The Lakers, Celtics, 76ers, Bulls, Pistons, Rockets and Spurs. All but the Spurs reside in a massive market.

It was already a pipe dream of fans in Denver and other smaller markets for their team to one day realize what it means to have the NBA's best team reside in their city, with superstars starting to go exclusively to the coasts and their big markets, the chances of a small-market team taking a title are now slimmer than the vanishing operating costs said teams have to work with.

And superteams are even more damaging to the NBA because in this player-centric league that Stern constructed in the 1990s with Michael Jordan. Players are now realizing they are not just above their wiser coaches (Jerry Sloan stepped down after 23 years as head coach of the Jazz earlier this month) but they hold more power than even the teams they play for.

This assemblage of superstar talent has been put together by CAA, one of the most powerful sports management agencies in America, and they represent not only Anthony, but James, Wade, Bosh, Paul and many other stars as well.

CAA is pulling the strings, taking the brunt of criticisms from front office executives when their players force teams into ultimatum situations, putting their star talent together and damning the rest of the league in the process.

So now, as CAA pulls together nearly all the marketable monsters that are the most recognizable stars in the Association, the players themselves realize they are above the law.

At least for now.

The new CBA that Stern and the NBPA is currently negotiating will likely have some sort of franchise tag (like the NFL currently operates under) included, although as Aldridge reports, “The league's Four Pillars for a new deal—a hard cap, shorter contracts, fewer guaranteed years in those contracts, almost no exceptions—are all non-starters to the Players' Association.”

At some point, even the NBPA is going to have to understand that the level of power now being afforded to players has grown too great.

It's one thing when powerful coaches with incredibly long tenures have gotten to the point where they would rather give up than work with ego-maniacal 20-somethings that make five times as much money as they do (players can refuse to listen to coaching because owners are more likely to stick with a star player than a coach).

But the players' power plays in the last year have gone way too far when the players can dictate not only what they will do on the court, but also force front office executives and owners to trade them to one particular team or else.

Of course, this problem of player power has spiraled out of control since the days of Jordan and the star-centric NBA began some 20 years ago, and the solution(s) to this convoluted problem are complex indeed.

A franchise tag would help, but it's not a solve-all—the hierarchy of power must remain (1) owner/front office (2) coach (3) player for the NBA to survive, but currently, the players holds the power and owners and coaches are left to react.

And really, this is a perfect time for players to come to power, just as a new CBA is being written up, because it gives the Association and owners the chance to check the players before they wreck the league.

Rich Kurtzman is a freelance journalist actively seeking a career in journalism. Along with being the CSU Rams Examiner, Kurtzman is a Denver Nuggets, Denver Broncos and NBA Featured Columnist for bleacherreport.com, the Colorado/Utah Regional Correspondent for stadiumjourney.com and a weekly contributor to milehighhoops.com.

Rich also heads up PR for K-Biz and Beezy, a Colorado-based rap group.

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