http://www.cbssports.com/nba/story/14168647/nba-owners-float-contraction-along-with-huge-pay-cuts
CBS story. They claim that contraction is on the table. Who knows if it will happen, but with the arena issues here and the Maloofs money issues - anything is possible.
Scare tactic at best. Even Stern said yesterday that they aren't really talking about it much.
What people seem to be forgetting is that you still need to make these owners financially whole. Even bad NBA teams in small markets can fetch $250 million. If you contract 4 teams, like all the talking heads are mentioning, that's a billion dollars. The league isn't going to buy them out from the money they bank roll. Not in a million years. That money is going to come from the remaining 26 owners.
On the positive side, the tv money is distributed among 26 teams instead of 30 so in the long run, you wind up making more money. What I mean is that if you have 26 owners buying out a billion dollars worth of contracted teams, you come up with a total of $38 million per owner. That's a lot of dough for a league already claiming to lose "$400 million".
Back to the tv money. There's around $960 million worth of money this year being divided up among the 30 teams. That's $32 million per team. If you divide it up among the hypothetical 26 owners, they would now be getting $36.8 million. That's an extra $4.8 million per owner.
So you now have $38 million you owe but an extra 4.8 million at your disposal to pay that off. In roughly 8 years, you get your money back and then from there on out, you have nothing but extra money on the back end. But seriously, in pro sports, what is an extra $4.8 million per season? Not to mention that 4 markets are now without teams and you have a situation where for the first time in the modern sports era, you have a contraction situation where you are basically admitting that you failed to a certain extent. Contraction means that you failed in 4 markets and we all know that Stern doesn't want that.
Forget it, it's not happening. Stern has said on many occasions before this negotiating scare tactic, that it won't happen on his watch and at the end of the day, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If they just follow my sig, they will save a TON more than $4.8 million a season minus $38 million. And since it doesn't involve a hard cap and the rest of the nonsense that the league is talking now, the players would be more inclined to go for it.
