Obviously, the release and subsequent denial of the story that Bron told Ariza he’d be in Cleveland past 2010 has stoked a lot of talk in the sports media today. Primarily I’m seeing a lot of chatter about how LeBron’s continued, careful efforts to disguise his intentions next summer are now coming back to bite the Cavs in the ass as they try to ink free agents.
I’m not disputing the truth of this to some extent. But I think it’s important to keep in mind that in the overwhelming majority of free agency decisions, money is, has always been, and will always be the primary factor. And the undeniable reality is that despite all the talk prior to the start of free agency about how the Cavs were going to be buyers in this summer’s market, they only have the MLE and bi-annual exception to work with. This gives them more cap space than a lot of teams, but less than a few others who were in the market for the top guys. And when you really get down to brass tacks, it only takes one other team with a fatter check to persuade someone away.
Let’s look at a few examples. Putting aside Charlie V’s questionable ability to finish at the rim, consensus from most traditional analysts pegged him as exactly the type of player that the Cavs should sign in free agency. Villanueva himself dropped several hints that he understood he would be a great fit, and that he would be very interested in coming to Cleveland to play with Shaq and Bron. However, when it came to the moment of truth, what happened? Charlie flew immediately to Detroit on July 1 and verbally agreed to an estimated $8M / yr contract with the Pistons. In other words, a contract that offered him ~$2.2M (or roughly 38%) more per year than the Cavs could have offered. From an objective standpoint, it’s hard to argue with that decision.
Shortly thereafter, Ron Artest and Trevor Ariza verbally agreed to deals with other teams that offered the same money as the Cavs. From sources close to Artest, we heard that his desire to play in LA (where he’s had a summer home for several years) was so great that he would only have been swayed to go elsewhere if there was a significant salary difference. Obviously, since the Cavs could only offer the MLE, there wasn’t. Consequently, Artest agreed to be a Laker.
Meanwhile, Ariza’s flight to Houston was based on the fact that he was only getting offers at the MLE. In other words, as with Artest, the Cavs were offering the same money as their competitor. But as Mike mentioned in an earlier post, this is where the severe Ohio income tax comes into play. After taxes, Ariza’s contract was actually worth at least hundreds of thousands of dollars more in Texas than in NE Ohio. So even though the money SEEMED to be the same, it really wasn’t.
On the flip side, a few hundred thousand dollars is a much smaller margin than what Villanueva was looking at in a Cavs / Pistons decision. So the choice isn’t as clear-cut. But if Ariza were to say that a few hundred thousand dollars was meaningless to him, he had to look at other factors. If you get past money, most guys are going to look at playing time and the percentage of plays that will be run for them. Ultimately, Ariza chose to go with the team that was offering a guaranteed starting job and a promise that he would be a focal point of the offense, rather than the team where the coach was openly telling him that he would have to fight to be a starter.
Now, I for one would’ve loved it if Ariza’s next priority after ‘salary’ had been ‘who gives me the best chance to win a title next year.’ No one in the league is going to argue that the 2009 Rockets are in a better position to win than the 2009 Cavs — not with Yao Ming set to miss at least half the upcoming season and Artest gone to a Western Conference rival. But obviously, that’s not the way he weighed the decision. And for a guy who’s only 24 and feels he had a break-out season for an NBA champion last year, I can understand that. He might’ve thought differently if the Lakers had lost to Da-wight and friends in the Finals, but they didn’t. So we’ll never know.
However, I’m willing to bet that if the Cavs had simply been in a position to offer Ariza an average yearly salary of $7-8M a year, Dan Gilbert would be the one signing his checks for the next several seasons.
The point that I’m trying to make isn’t that NBA players are greedy people with jacked-up priorities. It’s that free agency was created based on players’ desire to let the market dictate their salary based on their performance. In the old model, a team owned a player’s rights perpetually, and though new contracts were signed every few years and raises were given, they were minuscule raises because there was literally no competition from other franchises for any player’s services. (If you don’t know the story of free agency’s birth, look up Curt Flood, and it’ll lead you through the whole saga as it played out in the MLB - really interesting stuff, and I mean that sincerely. My favorite subplot involves the Owners Association being successfully sued for collusion in the late ’80s, primarily thanks to the lack of activity surrounding Carlton Fisk.)
As we Clevelanders agonize over the players we weren’t able to lure in free agency this summer, we can point the finger in a lot of different directions. LeBron’s unwillingness to commit to an extension is certainly a factor. I have no doubt that if he had been saying beyond a shadow of a doubt for the past 3 years that he was staying here, people like Villanueva and Ariza might have thought somewhat differently about who to sign with. But it doesn’t mean that they ultimately would’ve changed their minds.
Instead, the overriding problem is that the Cavs haven’t been in a position to outspend any of the franchises they’re competing against for the top players. And in the few instances where they’ve been able to match dollar for dollar, there have been other factors not having anything to do with LeBron that have likely tipped the scales.
In other words, as much as we’d all like to believe that once you’re making millions of dollars, a few million here or there shouln’t play that large a role in decision-making…there are degrees. And this summer, the margin has simply been too drastic for the Cavs to overcome, regardless of LeBron’s continued dance around what jersey he’ll be wearing in October 2010. The bottom line has been, literally, the bottom line.
-T
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