Quick hits from the NBA.

Penny Hardaway wants to make another comeback.

Toddler dies in 20ft fall after Laker game. Parents were taking pictures as their child climbed over a safety barrier and fell. The toddler was still moving after the fall, but passed away shortly after.

Allen Iverson is broke and battling serious alcohol and gambling problems.

Raptors draft pick Ed Davis headed to D-League for "physical and conditioning evaluation".

Billy Hunter 99% sure there will be a lockout next year.

Who in the world is billy hunter

Long John! wrote:

Who in the world is billy hunter

Billy Hunter is the executive director of the National Basketball Association players' union.

Basically he's the eyes, ears and mouth that David Stern and the owners have to talk to in order to get a deal hammered out between the player and the owners for there to be an NBA season next year.

Nick C wrote:

Long John! wrote:

Who in the world is billy hunter

Billy Hunter is the executive director of the National Basketball Association players' union.

Basically he's the eyes, ears and mouth that David Stern and the owners have to talk to in order to get a deal hammered out between the player and the owners for there to be an NBA season next year.

Ohhh...
SHIT!!!!!

Long John! wrote:

Nick C wrote:

Long John! wrote:

Who in the world is billy hunter

Billy Hunter is the executive director of the National Basketball Association players' union.

Basically he's the eyes, ears and mouth that David Stern and the owners have to talk to in order to get a deal hammered out between the player and the owners for there to be an NBA season next year.

Ohhh...
SHIT!!!!!

How is this news so unpopular..shit..

Hopefully Billy is just trying to scare the owners?

Poor Toddler...

Why do the NBA front office have to ruin everything
kill Stern and all the bosses... they just ruined a perfectly good league
in the past 5-10 years :@

What's a lockout?

No NBA basketball for a wholeseason..so it is what it sounds like.

I hope there's not a lockout in that period but it will be just plain and simple said

Good owners need to speak up and protect their players or their just as greedy and selfish as the rest of the league. I saw somewhere that Buss is for revenue sharing, but haven't seen anything on his take on player givebacks.

That's where this will end. When good owners decide to speak out against poor owners' stupidity and greed.

A lockout can be for part of the season ala 1999.

And...

Penny Hardaway?

Penny Hardaway wants to make another comeback.
Well, I guess he wants to play for Miami like some other senior citizen players?

Toddler dies in 20ft fall after Laker game. Parents were taking pictures as their child climbed over a safety barrier and fell. The toddler was still moving after the fall, but passed away shortly after.
Very unfortunate.

Allen Iverson is broke and battling serious alcohol and gambling problems.
Very tragic.

Raptors draft pick Ed Davis headed to D-League for "physical and conditioning evaluation".
It's not as bad as Hasheem Thabeet going to the D League last year.

Billy Hunter 99% sure there will be a lockout next year.
We kind of know it's gonna happen anyway since the players still want a soft cap and that isn't happening.... But the league will be in better financial hands and there should be a lot more parity in the NBA AFTER the new CBA is made.

The soft cap sucks. I'd like to see a hard cap in the NBA and it would make the league more competitive with more parity as thewiz06 answered. The cap the NBA has now is a joke. The NFL is the only pro sports league of the 3 major sports with a good cap sysytem(until the CBA expired this year)

Unfortunately there probably won't be an NBA season and there will be a lockout. It will suck since I want to see some basketball next year but it seems like it's inevitable.

That would blow to have no NBA and NFL in the same year

King Of NJ wrote:

The soft cap sucks. I'd like to see a hard cap in the NBA and it would make the league more competitive with more parity as thewiz06 answered. The cap the NBA has now is a joke. The NFL is the only pro sports league of the 3 major sports with a good cap sysytem(until the CBA expired this year)

Unfortunately there probably won't be an NBA season and there will be a lockout. It will suck since I want to see some basketball next year but it seems like it's inevitable.

That would blow to have no NBA and NFL in the same year

i used to think a hard cap would benefit both the mlb and the nba, but that's before I learned about revenue sharing. in baseball, the best teams that make the most money give up a tremendous share of their revenue, which is part of the reason everybody agreed about no hard cap. what's going on there, though, is that the poorer teams are pocketing money to make in instant profit rather than using that money to build a better team. that's a big issue in the mlb ownership circle right now. in the nba, there are a bunch of owners pushing for larger revenue sharing, but owners like jerry buss and mark cuban, and holt in san antonio are seeing the issues with revenue sharing in the mlb. they want insurance that the money they give up is going to go back into the league to make the product and the competition better. many people are seeing increased revenue sharing as an alternative to trying to cut player salaries, but some still see it as an addition. either way, though, if there's more revenue sharing, there will certainly be no hard cap, and I think the league is better that way. It still rewards the teams who are doing well and willing to spend, but it also doesn't hurt the teams that play in a smaller market. I like that plan a lot in comparison to the hard cap, where it just limits teams abilities to keep great players if they acquire a good amount of them.

Explain to me, how, with a hard cap, that the Lakers, Celtics, Magic, Mavericks, or any team looking for a title is going to keep a championship team together (even if those players weren't great until they got to that team). Even the Bulls, when D-Rose's rookie contract ends. They're going to be paying 4 salaries over 10 million a year with Deng, Noah, Boozer, and Derrick. Plus the other medium-ish contracts they have for role players? They wouldn't be under the hard cap either. You guys would have to pick a player and decide you couldn't keep him. Like say if the Bulls chose to try to get rid of Luol's contract, so they could resign Rose for the money he wanted and deserved. Other teams would see that they couldn't offer Rose what they wanted, and not even touch the idea of a trade for Deng, in the hopes that the Bulls could not find a way to keep Rose without going over the hard cap. That's a legit situation that could happen to any team with a hard cap in the NBA. If that happened to my team, say if we still had Lee, Monta, Curry, and somebody else, I'd be pissed. I think a fan of any team would be. So the revenue sharing definitely seems the way to go if they can get it guaranteed to be invested back into the teams to improve league parity.

Yo Adrien! wrote:

King Of NJ wrote:

The soft cap sucks. I'd like to see a hard cap in the NBA and it would make the league more competitive with more parity as thewiz06 answered. The cap the NBA has now is a joke. The NFL is the only pro sports league of the 3 major sports with a good cap sysytem(until the CBA expired this year)

Unfortunately there probably won't be an NBA season and there will be a lockout. It will suck since I want to see some basketball next year but it seems like it's inevitable.

That would blow to have no NBA and NFL in the same year

i used to think a hard cap would benefit both the mlb and the nba, but that's before I learned about revenue sharing. in baseball, the best teams that make the most money give up a tremendous share of their revenue, which is part of the reason everybody agreed about no hard cap. what's going on there, though, is that the poorer teams are pocketing money to make in instant profit rather than using that money to build a better team. that's a big issue in the mlb ownership circle right now. in the nba, there are a bunch of owners pushing for larger revenue sharing, but owners like jerry buss and mark cuban, and holt in san antonio are seeing the issues with revenue sharing in the mlb. they want insurance that the money they give up is going to go back into the league to make the product and the competition better. many people are seeing increased revenue sharing as an alternative to trying to cut player salaries, but some still see it as an addition. either way, though, if there's more revenue sharing, there will certainly be no hard cap, and I think the league is better that way. It still rewards the teams who are doing well and willing to spend, but it also doesn't hurt the teams that play in a smaller market. I like that plan a lot in comparison to the hard cap, where it just limits teams abilities to keep great players if they acquire a good amount of them.

Explain to me, how, with a hard cap, that the Lakers, Celtics, Magic, Mavericks, or any team looking for a title is going to keep a championship team together (even if those players weren't great until they got to that team). Even the Bulls, when D-Rose's rookie contract ends. They're going to be paying 4 salaries over 10 million a year with Deng, Noah, Boozer, and Derrick. Plus the other medium-ish contracts they have for role players? They wouldn't be under the hard cap either. You guys would have to pick a player and decide you couldn't keep him. Like say if the Bulls chose to try to get rid of Luol's contract, so they could resign Rose for the money he wanted and deserved. Other teams would see that they couldn't offer Rose what they wanted, and not even touch the idea of a trade for Deng, in the hopes that the Bulls could not find a way to keep Rose without going over the hard cap. That's a legit situation that could happen to any team with a hard cap in the NBA. If that happened to my team, say if we still had Lee, Monta, Curry, and somebody else, I'd be pissed. I think a fan of any team would be. So the revenue sharing definitely seems the way to go if they can get it guaranteed to be invested back into the teams to improve league parity.

The thing is that those teams who win championships will have to adjust salaries such as possibly lower some players' incomes in order to keep other players who were previously underpaid under a situation where there is a hard cap.

The league whose financial structure is closest to what the NBA wants to be like is the NHL. There is a hard cap of $59.4 million, but there is also a minimum salary cap/salary floor of about $43 million or so. This hard cap has been in place since 2005-2006. I don't know any other league that has a salary floor per se.

In the NHL since the 2005-2006 season, out of 30 teams, 29 teams have made the playoffs at least once. The Florida Panthers are the lone have not. Only three teams, the Detroit Red Wings, San Jose Sharks and the New Jersey Devils have made the playoffs every year since 2005-2006. Five different teams have won the Stanley Cup Finals. 11 teams made at least the conference finals at least once since 2006. We have also seen 6 seeds, 7 seeds and 8 seeds in the Conference Finals in each of these years except 2007. An 8 seed (Edmonton in 2006) and a 7 seed (Philly in 2010) have made the Stanley Cup Finals. Pittsburgh won the cup in 2009 as a 4 seed.

The team with the best regular season record since 2005-6 in the NHL gets the President's Trophy, which is certainly a great honor. However teams that have won the President's Trophy since 2005-2006 have only won the Stanley Cup ONCE with Detroit winning the Cup in 2008. Three Presidents Trophy teams in the last five years lost in the 1st round of the playoffs: Detroit in 2006, San Jose in 2009, and Washington in 2010.

The NBA doesn't have this degree of parity by any means. True, 28 of 30 NBA teams have made the playoffs since the 2005-2006 season, but there are no low seeds consistently making the Finals and conference finals to the degree the NHL has. I think this parity makes the game more exciting, but over the long haul, some NHL teams will be able to continue to remain perennial contenders regardless of their place in the playoffs.