New NBA CBA Causes More Anger and Resentment Among Owners and Players Than Old

Despite more than a year of negotiations, threats of "nuclear winter" and compromises, the NBA owners are as divided on the most important issues as they have ever been. Nothing underscores this point more than the Rorschach drawing created by the failed Laker trade for Chris Paul followed by a successful trade for Paul by the Clippers. The trade was voided using the league’s newfound veto power created by the league’s ownership of the Hornets.

It opened up the window to the festering sores among owners regarding competition between small market teams and the large market, media-supported teams for five-star players and future championships. In the middle 60s, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle tackled this problem when there were only a dozen teams in the NFL.

Sharing media revenues was a key part of the AFL-NFL merger and proved to be the cornerstone of the growing league. As a result, small market teams such as the Packers, Saints, Bucs, Raiders, Steelers and the Ravens have won Super Bowls.

The last small-market team to win an NBA title was the Spurs. Before that, you have to go back to the 1971 Milwaukee Bucks led by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

The new CBA was intended to curb rising salaries, control player movement from small-market teams to large-market teams and create a one-time amnesty clause to rid themselves of at least one bloated salary that resulted from the old collective bargaining agreement (CBA). Despite Commissioner Stern’s threats of million dollar fines, the owners still squabbled behind the scenes and gave away their respective positions without ever breaking Stern’s gag order.

It was the small-market teams, led by Michael Jordan, Dan Gilbert (still simmering over the LeBron move to South Beach) and several others hiding behind their Blackberries that sabotaged the Lakers-Hornets-Rockets trade. The large-market teams such as the Knicks, Lakers, Bulls and Heat (who have accounted for more than 23 championships) could have negotiated an end to the lockout in five minutes. Salaries don’t affect them as much because of high media revenues, and they already dominate the competitive balance in the league.

Today’s small-market owners should be careful what they wished for. They got a harsher cap, but not the hard cap they wanted. As a result, it took the large market owners a millisecond to determine how to get around the new rules. Cap-breaking salaries are now limited to franchise players, but controlling player movement among these players was an illusion.

When Spurs power forward Tim Duncan pointed out that, "Nobody's happy," he was referring to the new CBA, which in many ways is so similar to the old one that it left everyone to ponder what the five-month lockout was all about.

Miami guard Dwyane Wade said, "I don't see it helping right now. Maybe in a few years we'll all look back and see why this lockout happened. But right now it's not showing its face at all...The competitive balance thing was a pie-in-the-sky. We knew that was impossible, in a sense, especially when you've got players willing to take less money to be happy."

The league had lost control of its superstars before the CBA could be signed. Any loyalty the league may have had with players disappeared once the owners started exercising the newfound "amnesty clause" which permits each team to jettison one player’s contract. The anger and resentment generated by the "amnesty" clause will only fuel more movement, not less.

Agents for Paul and Howard, trying to force trades before their clients’ free agency next year, quickly discovered that the new CBA offers no guaranteed mechanism to stop them. The simple act of accepting less money, like James, Wade and Bosh did going to Miami, quickly erased the controls small market teams had hoped for when they held out for five months hoping to get a hard cap.

Former coach and ABC/ESPN analyst Jeff Van Gundy correctly noted that, "...the lockout didn't even help these teams. It wasn't anything about competitive balance."

He went on to say, "It's one thing to have a summer and fall of strife due to labor negotiations. It's another to be seen as an organization that's in disarray once you settle that."

To throw gasoline on the fire of unrest in the league, the effort to get games on TV for Christmas Day meant free agency opened the same day as training camps. This forced many teams to report with barely enough players for a starting five while their transactions awaited approval by the league office.

Both Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen of the Celtics complained and were drowned out by media criticism. They are right. Expect sloppy play with little defense and a large number of turnovers for the first month or so, especially from teams like the Hornets, Clippers and Lakers, whose rosters have been carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Making the already tenuous relationship between owners and management even worse, the botched Lakers-Hornets-Rockets trade raised litigation clouds of collusion. The new CBA has a clause preventing owner collusion for the first time. Even a blind man could see that the small market owners did not want the Lakers to obtain Chris Paul and drop their salary cap by almost $40 million. And, it is clear that the small market owners will try everything possible to stop "Superman" from going to the Lakers.

If the original trade had been approved, the Lakers would not pay as much luxury tax and, at the worst, the Lakers were positioned to trade for or sign Dwight Howard. Owners were immediately threatened by the possibility that the Lakers would field a team with Kobe, CP3 and Howard either this year or in 2012-13. This caused several owners from Dan Gilbert to Mark Cuban to flex their muscles and exercise their power to push Stern to void the trade.

A week later, when a lesser trade between the Clippers and Hornets was proposed, the league approved it without hesitation. Most experts agree that the Lakers-Hornets-Rockets trade was better for New Orleans than the Clipper trade. The pearl in the trade was the Timberwolves' first-round draft pick. But I don’t see a college player that looks like he will be a superstar in the NBA within the next three years. The league preferred to see Chris Paul languish with the Clippers than give the Lakers a chance to win another NBA title soon.

And where did the voided trade leave Houston, who is trying to replace Yao Ming? In player limbo, having neither improved their roster nor improved their relationship with the players who were part of the trade. How is Houston going to rally around management after the failed trade?

Worse yet, how does the NBA expect fans to rally around the Rockets team after the league shafted them by voiding the trade? Attendance will probably be down resulting in a lost year for the Rockets with no end in sight. It will take some time for the wounds to heal in that community.

The season hasn’t started, and players are angry with management, small-market teams are unhappy with large-market teams, and now, some owners will look for their opportunity to retaliate against each other. Professional sports owners typically have long memories for anyone who slights them and are prone to keep feuds going for a long time. Just ask the Lakers, Boston and the Mavericks about feuds. Or, ask Phil Jackson and Mark Cuban.

There is no longer peace and tranquility in the NBA. Only time will tell if these wounds can be healed. Stay tuned to "As the NBA Turns," a sports soap opera if there ever was one.