“The Summit”: Strategy, Fantasy & Reality

Here are three words I never want to hear in sequence again: Free. Agent. Summit.

It probably goes without saying that I’m referring to the fabled meeting of the minds first advertised by Dwyane Wade about a week ago—a not-so-secret session where the supposed best and brightest of the 2010 free agent class (James, Wade, and Joe Johnson) would hold court over what the future would hold for all of them when the Summer of Money officially begins on July 1.

First, Chris Bosh wasn’t mentioned as having a seat at the table. Then, a source made clear that the RuPaul of Big Men would be involved.

Then Amar’e—likely at the behest of his agent, the one and only Happy Walters—verified that he would be there. After all, how could a guy angling for a max contract be seen as outside of this particular circle? 

In his upcoming Larry King interview, LeBron confirmed King’s intuition that he was the “ringleader” of the group, and by logical extension, the key note speaker at the most important conference since the G8.

Meanwhile, sports pundits such as Mike Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser advocated for other “major” free agents, such as Carlos “Last Time I Was in This Situation I Stabbed a Blind Guy in the Back” Boozer, to join the talks as well.

Then Tuesday, Wade’s agent denied the “summit” was happening in any kind of formal way, likely because such a meeting would be perhaps the only clear-cut case of player collusion in league history.

My point is, there have already been hundreds of stories written on this thing by hundreds of sportswriters. Most of them, from what I can tell, are viewing it in the most grandiose possible terms. Phrases like “a meeting that will determine the future of the league” or “a redrawing of the NBA map” are being used regularly.

And even though I began this entire post thinking I couldn’t be any more tired of hearing about this thing, recapping all of that just took me to a whole new level of exhaustion.

So in the usual JMID attempt to cut through the smoke screen and see if there’s any actual fire, here’s a brief primer on why the “free agent summit” is the most overhyped, overestimated non-story of the 2010 offseason.

Point 1A) The core group of these guys (James, Wade, Bosh) are friends

Point 1B) All three are now repped by CAA

CBS Sports’s Ken Berger covered the agency story at length right after it happened. Definitely worth a read if you want more of the gory details.

The gist, though, is this: because of their friendship and the joint affiliation of their agents, the three players at the top of every team’s list were going to be working in tandem anyway. Whether this ultimately happened in a conference room at CAA or via a series of conference calls, it’s not going to change the outcome. James, Wade, and Bosh will plan their attack together.

Point 2) The expansion of the ‘summit’ to include more players is inconsequential

Free agency is a line of dominos that begins with LeBron and Wade, then goes to Bosh, and then trickles down to the rest of the available free agents. Until those first two decide where they want to play, the rest of the market is going to be a glacier. It’s only logical. Are the Clippers going to call ahead and offer Amar’e a max contract if LeBron is still in play? Are the Bulls going to hammer out a deal with Joe Johnson if Wade’s signature isn’t on a contract in Mickey Arison’s office? Uh, no. So the idea that even if this summit were to happen, these guys are going to sit around and carve up the NBA landscape like they’re playing a game of Risk is completely ignorant of how business works.

Even if this meeting were to happen in its most grandiose, inclusive form, what’s going to happen? Is Carlos Boozer going to dial up Donnie Walsh and say, “So the guys and I all talked, and we decided that you’re going to sign me.” Walsh’s reaction would be something on the order of, “Uh, thanks Carlos. But I already have a high-scoring, high-rebounding power forward who can’t play a lick of defense that I could re-sign for less. I’ll get back to you.”

Look, deal-making is a two-way street. It’s ludicrous to think that the owners and GMs of the league are going to just have the courses of their franchise dictated to them by a bunch of over-excited employees with nothing to do but daydream until July 1^st. 

This is even more true when you consider that…

Point 3A) The number of teams with max cap space is a known quantity

Point 3B) None of these guys is taking less than a max contract

For whatever reason, a collective of sports pundits still seem to buy that some subset of these players will decide to take less money to play on a veritable All-Star team. This seems to be the real fantasy of the people talking up “the summit.”

To those of you who believe it, please, just stop. It’s getting embarrassing.

Regardless of whether or not they deserve max contracts, every big-name free agent this summer has a max ego. They have all convinced themselves that they can go somewhere else and make that franchise a champion. Obviously, it’s not going to work out that way. But perception, after all, is reality.

I don’t think that any player mentioned in connection to the summit has the self-awareness or the priorities to say, “What I really care the most about is winning. I can’t do it with just a bunch of role players, so I’m going to voluntarily turn down a max deal being offered to me by my existing team so I can jump ship to not only be a sidekick to one of these other guys, but be PAID like a sidekick to do it.” At least, not when we’re talking about a delta of tens of millions of dollars.

Don’t believe me? To review, here are the teams that are projected to be able to offer max contracts, along with the number of such contracts they can offer:

MIA: 2

NYK: 2

NJ: 1

CHI: 1

LAC: 1

WASH: 1

MIN: 1

OKC: 1

SAC: 1

Total: 11

TIER 1, a.k.a. Players who justifiably “deserve” the max:  LeBron, Wade, Bosh

Total Tier 1 players: 3

TIER 2, a.k.a. Players who *think* they deserve the max:  Joe Johnson, Amar’e, Boozer, Dirk, Rudy Gay, David Lee

Total Tier 2 players: 6

In short, even if you combine both of those two tiers, there’s too much money coming from too many sources for any of them to seriously consider turning it down in order to load up on one team. And that’s using a break-down that doesn’t even include the teams that can use the Bird Exception to re-sign their own free agent. So not only could Amar’e get a max contract from, say, Miami, he could get a BIGGER max contract to stay in Phoenix and play with Nash and a bunch of other guys that just got him to Western Conference Finals.

The bottom line is that unless you’re talking about the ’92 Olympics, the Dream Team concept is fiction.

Of course, if this huge meeting were to happen, some of these guys might be able to convince themselves in the moment that they’re willing to sacrifice, willing to try to be great. But then there’s this problem…

Point 4) When they leave the room, all bets are off

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the emotion of  a moment, in camaraderie, in talking about what ifs. But no contracts are being signed in that room. Which means that “the summit” has to adjourn, and everyone in on it has to go home.

This is the place where grand ambitions have a tendency to fade away—not in the moment among others, but in the quiet with your own thoughts.  

These players are all grown men. Most of them have families, some of them large families. They have a lifestyle they’ve grown accustomed to. They know the world’s economy is fucked up, and they know the NBA’s new collective bargaining agreement is going to make this offseason potentially the last enormously profitable one (for players) in the history of the sport. 

It’s one thing for these guys to say while they’re in the room with their boys, “Yeah, screw it. I’m gonna be bold. I’m a man. I’ll take less money so we can play together on one of the great teams of all time.”

It’s entirely another for those same guys to go home and say it to their wives, the mothers of their children, and their agents—who, let’s not forget, are paid based on a percentage of what their clients make.

How many wives are going to say, “Great, baby, you take that pay cut to be 2^nd or 3^rd in command! The kids and I are really looking forward to uprooting ourselves and starting over in a completely new part of the country so we can cut back.”? 

How many agents are going to say, “Absolutely, killer. I would love for you to garnish my own wages so that you can maybe get a couple of trophies for team achievement that mean nothing to my life. Please, by all means, take the mid-level exception and reduce your own stats in the process so you can cripple your next contract too.”

In short, the summit is a grand idea. But even if it were to actually happen, it’s still a fantasy land. Reality hits when the players leave that room. And reality takes the wheel in most financial decisions.

As I think about it now, some part of me wishes that this summit would happen—but only if the players were to stick to the promises they made each other in that room. I wish that some of them would sacrifice money for a chance at greatness, a chance at a dream they’ve all had since they were kids. Part of me wishes that they would defy what’s in their best monetary interest in order to create something truly special, truly memorable, truly inspirational. As a fan, that would mean something to me. It would mean more to me as grown man chasing after my own dreams. I expect it would mean even more to thousands of kids on blacktop courts in worn-out shoes hoping for a better tomorrow.

And the rest of me knows it will never happen.  And in the end, it’s not the media blitz over “the summit” that upsets me. It’s knowing that even if the summit happened, the outcome would be no different.

To paraphrase a great philosopher on another topic, “Summit or do not summit. Both are equally worthless.”

I only wish some of these guys would prove me wrong.

-T.