Come Together

There have been a lot of free agent signings in the NBA this week.  Locally, we were glad to see DeMar DeRozan is resigning with the Raptors.  That's good both because the team is retaining a talented and popular player, and because of all the American sports pundits who were absolutely sure he was signing with the Lakers.  So now Stephen A. Smith and Colin Cowherd look like idiots.  I mean, even more than usual.

But the biggest news is that the best player available, Kevin Durant, has signed with the almost-champions, Golden State Warriors.  Yes, the team that went 73-9 just added one of the best players. Of course, this brings to mind the situation six years ago when LeBron James and Chris Bosh joined their contemporary Dwyane Wade in Miami.  That created a superteam that went to the finals all four years it was together, winning twice.

So the big question is, how the hell does this keep happening?  The NBA, like most North American sports leagues, has a salary cap (a maximum payroll each team must observe) so it shouldn't be possible for a team to assemble multiple superstars, even if they have both the desire and resources to pay them.

Over at SB Nation, they have a good explanation. The basic idea is that the NBA also has a maximum individual salary.  I know other leagues have that rule as well, but in the NBA it's surprisingly low, especially considering how few players there are on a basketball team.  So a team can sign one of the top players in the game, and still have money left over to sign another of the top players in the game. That little wrinkle in the rules also explains the other big story this week, which is the huge amount of money thrown at seemingly mediocre players.  With a limit on how much can be spent on stars, there's lots left over to spend on not-so-famous players.

So it appears there will be a continuing phenomena of star players grouping together to go after a championship. What will the effect be?  A lot of fans are unhappy - I find myself in the strange situation where I might have to cheer for Lebron next year. Though media seems a lot happier.  Of course, that's the journalism philosophy that anything that generates news is good, even if the news is bad.  So this is the sports equivalent of journalists who love reporting on Donald Trump. I'm not so sure this will be good for sports media.  They're thinking a rematch of Warriors and Durant vs.  LeBron et al will be a good story. That may be true, but the fact that we already know the teams in next year's finals is not a good story.

Further, there's the question of devaluing championships.  It's hard to look at the achievement the same way when players come together specifically to win easy.  It's already clear that LeBron's ring from Cleveland means far more than both his rings from Miami.  Some players career's seem incomplete if they haven't won it all and only have individual accomplishments, but will that really be true now? If Durant and Bosh win their only titles by tagging along with stacked teams, is that really something they hold over, say, Karl Malone and Charles Barkley, who never won.  The Malones and Barkleys of the future may just be thought of as players who never bothered to join one of the superteams.