One of the NBA’s all-time bad guys, former Clippers owner Donald Sterling, once infamously asked the question: “who makes the game?”
Sterling’s implication was that, as a billionaire who owned and financed the franchise, he made the NBA possible. In his megalomania, he believed that there would be no professional basketball without him, and that players should be grateful for the opportunity to play in his league.
Sterling, of course, was wrong. As most around the league now acknowledge after one of a decade of what NBA media have come to call “player empowerment,” the players are the ones that make the game. If the NBPA (National Basketball Players’ Association, the players’ union) and NBA chose to split, the NBPA would be able to run a more successful league because they would have the star power that fans tune in for. While most fans are team loyalists, they ultimately watch the league because of the high talent level. Fill in the Clippers’ roster with replacement semi-pro players, playing against other semi-pro replacement players, and give me the opportunity to watch a new team with NBA-quality pros, and I’d be watching the new team. Most would.
Today, reports began to surface that NBA players are having doubts about the league’s proposed 22-team “Restart” plan that would place players in a “bubble” at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports complex at DisneyWorld in Orlando, Florida. While reporting on the topic is scarce and vague, it’s important for us to remember that NBA players are not a monolith. As with any other group of ~500 colleagues, they do not think and act as one.
The truth is, there are a number of valid reasons to be concerned with the league’s plan, and it’s likely that many of them are represented across a spectrum of players–reportedly numbering in the 200s–who are participating in scheduled calls to raise concerns and attempt to reach consensus on if the season should be restarted and what the conditions of such a restart should be.
For some players, concerns may exist surrounding the safety of the Restart taking place in Florida, where officials have been notoriously negligent of public health throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The state is one of several, including California, that has seen a recent increase in new cases amidst premature reopening processes. The United States is also in an unstable political moment, where a historic wave of civil rights protests have persisted in recent weeks to protest police brutality and the murder of Black civilians by officers. In a predominantly-Black league with predominantly-white ownership, players are rightfully concerned of the optics of being sequestered in a resort to perform on television and entertain the masses while racial injustice and economic collapse consume the nation.
Additionally, players have expressed concern with the restrictions placed upon them in the “bubble,” which would mean isolation from teams’ arrivals (planned for July 7th-9th) until the end of the first round of the playoffs near the end of August. This means no time with partners for players who are married or in relationships, and no time with children for those who are fathers. It also means that normal social outlets, such as time with friends or dating, would be entirely cut off.
Some of these concerns seem like small prices to pay. At a time when many Americans are out of work and unable to pay their bills, players are likely to face a lot of blowback for any complaints regarding their accommodations and social restrictions while they earn millions to live at a resort and play basketball. But from an individual player’s perspective, it might not make sense to deal with the inconvenience of the bubble when the average player already has millions of dollars in their bank accounts and millions more guaranteed as part of their contract for future seasons. Regardless of the justification–whether it’s for a player to spend summertime with their kids or simply someone who wants to maintain their social life–it’s perfectly reasonable for someone to decide that a personal sacrifice isn’t worth the money when money is no longer a concern. It is also noble for players to be willing to forego income in order to participate–and in many cases act as leaders–in local and national movements fighting for justice. Across the league and country, NBA players have been an inspiring presence at resent protests.
The choice to cancel the season, however, would have immense financial ramifications. The cost of foregoing the remainder of the season is not simply 8 games’ pay and playoff bonuses. The NBA’s salary cap is set to ensure a roughly equal share of BRI (basketball-related income) between owners and players. The league’s proposed Restart would push 22 of their 30 teams over the 70-game threshold, which is crucial for local television revenue (most teams receive their full payment for 70 or more games, while they get pro-rated payment for fewer than 70 games, so the difference between 69 and 70 games is 69/82nds vs 82/82nds). Additionally, the playoffs could bring in roughly $900 million in television revenue, even without ticket, concession, and merchandise revenue at the arenas.
That means that canceling the season would result in a hit of well over a billion dollars to BRI, and the players would have to bear half of that burden. While player contracts for the current season are mostly safe, future player earnings would be impacted majorly. Such a significant BRI shortfall would enable the league to drastically reduce the salary cap and luxury tax thresholds, giving teams less money to spend on player salaries as well as reducing the value of cap-tied contracts such as maximum salary deals or the mid-level exception.
The cost to players would likely be more severe than just that, though. The collective bargaining agreement between the league and players’ union allows the league to terminate the agreement for “force majeure” events, which would include the cancellation of the season due to COVID-19. Generally, CBA negotiations go best for players when the league is thriving, as players can demonstrate that teams are making large profits and argue for a larger share of that revenue. However, in the current economic climate, where the league has lost significant revenue due to the pandemic and stands to potentially have another (relatively) low revenue season in 2020-21 due to the looming threats of reduced ticket sales and a possibly shortened season, the players would likely lose significant ground in such a renegotiation.
It is impossible to fully project the ramifications of such a move, particularly for someone like myself who is not an economist and does not have access to the precise numbers. However, it is likely that we would be measuring the collective loss to player income over the next decade in the billions of dollars.
For that reason, I have always been fairly confident–even before the league announced their 22-team plan– that we would see the 2020 NBA Playoffs at some point this summer. The financial incentive to play the games is so great for all parties involved (primarily the league, the players, and Disney) that the smaller details always seemed likely to work themselves out. They still do.
However, the players have the right to not play if they don’t want to. It should not matter what their reasoning is. Of course, NBA fans want the season to resume because we like consuming the league’s product. But it is important to remember that we are not entitled to NBA players’ labor, and if the conditions under which that labor would be performed are such that the players collectively determine it is not worth the pay they would receive, they should not just “deal with it” so that we will have something to watch on TV in August. The players are financially-secure human beings who get to decide for themselves what their priorities are, and those priorities deserve to be respected.
The important thing, at the center of this discussion, is that the players are given collective agency within their labor union to decide how they would like to move forward. It is the responsibility of the league, as well as union leadership, to present the players with a detailed, completed plan for the “bubble” environment as well as a detailed forecast of the financial ramifications of cancelation. Then, the players can consider the full circumstances of the Restart, in the current context of the Black Lives Matter movement, their fight for racial justice, and concerns over optics, to reach a collective decision on how to move forward.
The league–and even the union–cannot make the Restart happen without that decision. The players have all of the power in this situation, because they make the game.
Disclosure: Beyond my interest in the league returning as a basketball and Clippers fan, I have a personal economic interest in the league returning as the owner of this website, which would have drastically increased traffic and revenue if games resumed.
