The frenzied two-week maelstrom that is NBA free agency has come to an end, save for the last few stragglers and fringe rotation players. Surprisingly enough, the biggest domino of all was one of the last to fall. It lacked the overwrought fanfare of The Decision or even a ghostwritten open letter in Sports Illustrated, but on Thursday, LeBron James finally returned to the Cleveland Cavaliers on a two-year, $47m contract.
The delay in question wasn’t an indication that he ever planned to leave Cleveland. Rather, it speaks to the fact that James is the one free agent who has enough agency to actually be considered “free”
As was the case last summer, James has the option to once again opt out in 2016 just as the NBA salary cap jumps from $70m to $90m. And that’s just the beginning.
“If he wants to keep the good times rolling with one-and-one contracts, James could then opt to once again hit the market in 2017 when the cap’s expected to hit an unprecedented $108m, which would push James’ ‘17-’18 max salary up to a whopping $35.5m,” Dan Devine wrote at Yahoo! Sports. “That would be the highest single-season player salary in NBA history, topping Michael Jordan’s $33m deal to play for the Chicago Bulls during the 1997-98 season. And so on, and so on.”
This isn’t just about James being compensated at a rate that begins to approach his on-court contributions. He’s dead set on getting the whole Eastern Conference title-winning band back together.
In the days prior to his signing, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst reported that James was stalling to nudge the Cavs to sign Tristan Thompson to a long-term deal. James seems equally invested in reenlisting mercurial shooting guard JR Smith and sparkplug Matthew Dellavedova. That’s after commandeering a cabana to whisper a few sweet nothings in Kevin Love’s ear, and you can only assume that he had a hand in bringing back Mo Williams, a teammate from James’ previous stint in Cleveland.
Given that the Cavs had the best record in the NBA in the second half of last season, all of these moves make sense, basketball-wise. But when all is said and done, including luxury tax payments, this year’s model might end up costing owner Dan Gilbert an eye-watering $200m.
There’s no need to fret over Gilbert’s finances, not when the value of the Cavs franchise doubled to somewhere in the neighborhood of a cool billion the moment James was added to the roster. We’re gawking at the numbers because LeBron is the one player in the league with enough power to subvert the false, artificially-imposed non-choice that the other 99% of NBA athletes have to face at some point in their careers: whether to seek out compensation that’s in line with their abilities or to sacrifice millions such that a franchise can build a contender.
LeBron, by dint of his unique abilities and the massive power that he wields within the franchise, can do both.
Which brings us to the San Antonio Spurs. So far this offseason, Tim Duncan, possibly the greatest power forward in league history, returned for a mere $5m, they re-upped Manu Ginobili on a minuscule deal, sold Danny Green and David West on the virtues of leaving tens of millions of dollars on the table, and even Kawhi Leonard’s max extension should prove to be a bargain in the years to come.
All this penny pinching carved out a large enough chunk of precious cap space such that they were able to add the top available free agent, All-Star LaMarcus Aldridge. That’s all well and good, especially for the Spurs. The problem here is that Duncan’s (and Green’s and West’s and Leonard’s and Ginobili’s) decision to sign a below-value contract are viewed as moral and/or ethical actions.
The painful contradiction is that yes, Duncan et al are selfless, team players, and true professionals. To be clear, I don’t want to rob Duncan or any athlete of his or her agency. There are motives at play beyond profit and taking less money to stick with the league’s best-run franchise is certainly a valid life choice to make.
But that sacrifice shouldn’t be seen as necessarily virtuous, especially when the hosannas of praise also imply the converse - that an NBA player, a worker seeking fair return for his services, who accepts the highest offer is greedy, selfish or worse.
“It’s the popular thing to do,” Kobe Bryant told ESPN last November. “The player takes less, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think it’s a big coup for the owners to put players in situations where public perception puts pressure on them to take less money. Because if you don’t, then you get criticized for it.”
Management, however, is never subject to this kind of ethical inquisition with regard to their contract decisions. You’ll never see it suggested that inking a player for pennies on the dollar is dishonorable or a disservice, or that the Spurs’ offseason cost-cutting is just as “selfish” behavior as that of any maxed-out star.
They’ve brilliantly framed the manipulation of a system – the collective bargaining agreement – that artificially suppresses wages and incentivizes screwing over labor as a greater good. It works because fans have a vested interest in a front office’s ability to act in a manner that is adversarial to labor, and don’t really give a fig if NBA stars, even in this bullish basketball market, remain royally underpaid .
For what it’s worth, Michelle Roberts, the new National Basketball Players Association executive director, seems to be girding up to fight this very battle.
“I don’t know of any space other than the world of sports where there’s this notion that we will artificially deflate what someone’s able to make just because,” she said in an interview with ESPN’s Pablo Torre. “It’s incredibly un-American. My DNA is offended by it ... I can’t understand why the [players’ association] would be interested in suppressing salaries at the top if we know that as salaries at the top have grown, so have salaries at the bottom.
“If that’s the case, I contend that there is no reason in the world why the union should embrace salary caps or any effort to place a barrier on the amount of money that marquee players can make.”
You could certainly argue that removing the cap and BRI-split altogether would mean a serious shift of power to the large market teams, and an NBA whose spending patterns would more closely resemble the English Premier League.
Avoiding tumult that might arise – franchises going kaput, or trundling from city to city in search of a ripe market to exploit, a massive talent gulf arising between the rich and poor teams, and an even wider economic disparity the salaries for the LeBrons of the NBA world and the bulk of the rank and file – might in the long term be worth sacrificing an unknown amount of individual earnings.
In that case, if we are going to view the NBA as a whole like a feudal lord providing safety and security from the suiting-up-for-the-Rhode-Island-Quahogs-alongside-Nate-Robinson chaos that’s perched just outside the manor walls, then at a minimum, the least they can do is more equitably share the wealth with those whose labor built the house to begin with.
But that’s not going to happen as long as fans buy into the false morality play that still surrounds free agency. As long as that’s the case, for all of the time and energy spent fussing over offseason winners and losers, there’s really only one party that comes out on top: the owners, because they’re playing a rigged game.
