Tentative Agreement Reached to End NBA Lockout
After a marathon round of negotiations on Friday, the NBA owners and the NBA players tentatively reached an agreement for a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) that would enable the league to stage an abbreviated 66 game 2011-2012 NBA season and ensure labor peace for at least the next six years. The deal still must be formally approved by both the NBA's Board of Governors and the NBA Players Association (once the brief
NBA nuclear winter is formally ended with the players ending their shell game/legal shenanigans by reconstituting the briefly disbanded Players Association).
Until the agreement is formally ratified we will not know the specific structure of the season, including important details such as how many intraconference and interconference games each team will play and whether or not there will be a 2012 All-Star Game. It also is not yet possible to make definitive statements about the meaning/long-term implications of the new CBA but based on what has happened so far during the lockout and the published details about the proposed settlement it seems reasonable to conclude that the lockout largely followed the course
that I predicted it would back in February: it was long (the second longest work stoppage so far in NBA history) and it did not end until the players finally accepted the reality that the NBA's broken business model had to be fundamentally changed. It also appears that the temporary disbanding of the Players Association--which cost the players six more game checks and will result in a compressed season that may not include an All-Star Game--did not lead to any tangible gains for the players: barring the release of new information, it looks like the players essentially just agreed to the deal that the league offered them approximately two weeks ago; former NBA Players Association Executive Director Charles Grantham expressed some not so veiled criticism of Hunter/Players Association President Derek Fisher
last week: "Quite frankly, I've always taken a position that I thought the job of the union was to keep the players working, and that the amount of loss that would be represented here would be astronomical for those that play and the people who work in the system. I think at a certain point, it became emotional and it kind of got off the track, while they were close to a deal. They should've made one." The NBA players came dangerously close to losing a full season's worth of paychecks, which would have been catastrophic for them considering that an average career lasts less than five seasons; NHL owners sacrificed a full season to fix their league's economic model and the NBA players finally realized--perhaps at the last possible moment--that they were leading the NBA down that same path. Grantham declared, "Don't confuse resolve with good judgment. Hockey players had good resolve. No one can say how strong the kids were for standing up for what they believed in, but they made the wrong judgment. You've got to make the right judgment here. And once the fight is over, you get back to work and you live another day."
It has become fashionable to suggest that NBA Commissioner David Stern has lost his touch and should resign (a point of view expressed by, among others, Bill Simmons and Mike Lupica) but Commssioner Stern performed a delicate balancing act during the lockout, mediating between/among big market owners, small market owners and the various factions from the players' side (including star players, agents, lawyers, etc.). When Stern became the NBA's Commissioner the NBA Finals were shown on tape delay, far from being the global phenomenon that they currently are; the league had drug problems and image problems but under his leadership its popularity and revenue soared--and, contrary to the ignorant bleatings heard from various quarters during the lockout, the NBA has consistently led the way in terms of providing ownership opportunities, management jobs and coaching positions for minorities. Commissioner Stern's tenure has not been perfect or blemish-free but overall he has served the game well.
Here are some NBA questions/issues to monitor:
1) What is the specific nature of the revenue split (there has been talk of a 49-51 percent "band" based on total revenues) and will this new deal enable most NBA teams to make a profit?
2) How will the new CBA affect player movement both in the upcoming, abbreviated offseason free agency period and in the next few seasons?
3) Will the new CBA stabilize the league's rosters and allow for greater competitive balance while also giving players some opportunity to choose their own destinations--or will Dwight Howard, Chris Paul and possibly other stars flee small market teams in an attempt to emulate what LeBron James, Chris Bosh, Carmelo Anthony and Deron Williams did last year? It will not be very good for the league's overall health if small market teams ultimately have no realistic chance to retain the services of their superstars.
4) How will a compressed season with a shorter training camp and fewer days off between games affect the various teams that realistically have a chance to contend for the championship?
5) Which players will "compete" to become the Shawn Kemp Goodyear Blimp poster child of the 2011 lockout by showing up out of shape and registering on the Richter Scale as they waddle up and down the court lugging extra baggage?
6) The 50 game season that followed the 1998-99 lockout featured some very sluggish, almost unwatchable basketball and culminated with a San Antonio Spurs championship that Phil Jackson later quipped should be marked by an asterisk. It is reasonable to assume that the 2012 NBA season will have a higher injury rate and lower shooting percentages than normal due to the long layoff, short training camp and compressed schedule.
Labels: Billy Hunter, David Stern, Derek Fisher, NBA Lockout
posted by David Friedman @ 9:08 AM
Bill Tosheff: Champion for the "Pre-1965ers"
William Tosheff, generally known as Bill or "Tosh," earned recognition as the 1952 NBA co-Rookie of the Year, rubbed shoulders with Fidel Castro and Earnest Hemingway during a seven year minor league baseball career and served his country as a member of a B-17 bomber crew during World War II--but his enduring legacy is his tireless fight for the "Pre-1965ers," the early NBA players who built the league and then were shamefully cast aside by both the next generations of players and the league itself; Tosheff battled for decades until he won a multimillion dollar settlement that provided some aid and comfort to several dozen "Pre-1965ers." Tosheff
passed away in October 2011; neither his life nor his death received an appropriate amount of coverage and I think that it is critically important that Tosheff is remembered both for what he accomplished individually and also for what he accomplished on behalf of so many retired NBA players.
In 2009, I interviewed Tosheff and I am proud to reprint that two part series here:
Bill Tosheff: NBA Co-Rookie of the Year and Tireless Advocate for the "Pre-1965ers" (Part I)Bill Tosheff: NBA Co-Rookie of the Year and Tireless Advocate for the "Pre-1965ers" (Part II)Until his last days, Tosheff still worked tirelessly to correct NBA injustices; he felt that the NBA should provide retroactive payments to the "Pre-1965ers" who were covered by the 2005 agreement but had not received pensions from 1988-2005 and he insisted that the NBA should formally recognize the 1948-52 Rookies of the Year who were listed in the 1995 NBA Guide but then mysteriously erased from history the next year (Paul Hoffman in 1948, Howie Shannon in 1949, Alex Groza in 1950, Paul Arizin in 1951 and Bill Tosheff/Mel Hutchins in 1952). It would be a most fitting tribute to Tosheff's legacy if, after the NBA owners and players finish squabbling over how to divide roughly $4 billion amongst themselves, they agree to set aside a tiny portion of that cash to ease the final days of the remaining "Pre-1965ers"; it also would be fitting if the league and its media partners corrected a nearly two decades old injustice and restored the 1948-52 Rookies of the Year to the "official" listings of NBA award winners.
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Further Reading About Bill TosheffLegends of Basketball Tribute/Obituary for Bill TosheffAssociation for Professional Basketball Research (APBR) Documentation of the Plight of the Pre-Pension PlayersBill Tosheff's Minor League Baseball StatisticsLabels: Bill Tosheff, Ernest Hemingway, Fidel Castro, Indianapolis Olympians, NBA Rookie of the Year, Pre-1965ers
posted by David Friedman @ 1:28 AM
Erving Auction Nets Record $3.5 Million
SCP Auctions just sold
more than 100 items from Julius Erving's personal collection for a record $3.5 million. The most expensive single item was Erving's 1974 ABA championship ring, signifying the first of three titles Erving's teams won during his 16 year professional career; that ring sold for $460,741, reportedly the most money ever paid for a championship ring. SCP President David Kohler noted that championship rings generally sell for less than $25,000 and that he did not expect that Erving's rings would sell for more than $50,000 each (Erving's 1976 ABA championship ring sold for $195,396 and his 1983 NBA championship ring sold for $244,240, making it the second most expensive item in the auction).
The Associated Press
reported that the Philadelphia 76ers bought 10 lots containing a total of 18 items and that the team plans to publicly display the Erving memorabilia. New 76ers CEO Adam Aron added that he would like for Erving to rejoin the franchise in some as yet undetermined capacity. Erving played 11 seasons for the 76ers, making the All-Star team every year, earning seven All-NBA First or Second Team selections and playing a major role for the 1983 championship team that set a record by going 12-1 in the playoffs (the 2001 Lakers broke that mark by going 15-1).
You can see a complete list of the items and their final prices
here (after arriving at the SCP website, click on the links for the November 2011 auction).
Labels: Julius Erving
posted by David Friedman @ 1:39 PM
When the Garden was Eden: A Nostalgic Trip Through the Golden Age of New York Hoops
New York professional sports experienced a golden age from the late 1960s through the mid-1970s, with the Jets, Mets, Nets and Knicks each winning at least one league title. Joe Namath's Jets and Tom Seaver's Mets are fondly remembered to this day even though they were each basically one year wonders. Julius Erving's Nets won ABA championships in 1974 and 1976 but they never quite captured the imagination of New York, let alone the rest of the country; Erving eventually became recognized as an all-time great but his years in New York are still shrouded in obscurity because the Nets specifically and their league in general did not receive much national media coverage.
The Knicks were the crown jewel of that brief golden age of New York sports. The Knicks not only won the 1970 and 1973 NBA championships but they reached the Division (later Conference) Finals six straight years while having a memorable rivalry with the Baltimore Bullets that produced many classic individual battles, including
Dave DeBusschere versus Gus Johnson and
Walt Frazier versus Earl Monroe (the Knicks later acquired Monroe, pairing him with Frazier to form
the "Rolls Royce" backcourt). The early 1970s Knicks featured five of the NBA's 50 Greatest Players (Dave DeBusschere, Walt Frazier, Jerry Lucas, Earl Monroe and Willis Reed).
The Knicks have not won an NBA championship since 1973 and--even if
the lockout "nuclear winter" ends soon--it is exceedingly unlikely that the Knicks will win the NBA championship in the near future. Memories, nostalgia and hope are all that sustain Knicks' fans today; whether or not the hope is well founded is a subject for another day but plenty of wonderful memories and nostalgic glimpses back to the golden age can be found in Harvey Araton's
When the Garden was Eden: Clyde, the Captain, Dollar Bill, and the Glory Days of the New York Knicks. Araton rooted for the Knicks as a teenager and he has covered the New York sports scene for more than three decades, starting just after the golden age ended.
Araton begins his story with a brief prologue that poignantly contrasts the beautiful, teamwork-oriented game played by the 1970s Knicks with the disjointed and lifeless efforts of the 2010 Knicks, a patchwork group of players assembled not to win but to serve as placeholders until the franchise made its ultimately fruitless run at wooing LeBron James, who later infamously
decided to take his talents to South Beach--a narcissistic and solipsistic phrase that represents the antithesis of how the golden age Knicks thought about and played basketball: when Monroe joined the Knicks he did not take his talents to Madison Square Garden in a self-aggrandizing manner but rather sacrificed individual glory to achieve team success. Monroe made a choice that would be almost unthinkable for a modern superstar: he willingly sacrificed his numbers (and even, for a time, his starting role) for a chance to win a title. Monroe took it as a challenge to prove that he could fit in with the Knicks' team concept, while far too many modern superstars would only view such a situation as a disrespectful challenge to their egos (and their paychecks). Frazier--now a Knicks' broadcaster--confided to Araton that, although he tries to keep his feelings in check as he provides commentary about the bumbling Knicks, "Man, sometimes it's like watching a different sport."
Araton does not limit himself to describing the details of the Knicks' glory days but instead takes a leisurely stroll through the nooks and crannies of Knicks' history, exploring diverse topics ranging from Willis Reed's Louisiana roots to the reason that Madison Square Garden is known as the "Mecca" of basketball (Araton reports that the "Mecca" designation for a New York sports venue originated with the Shriners' Mecca Temple, an old boxing arena). Much of this territory has been explored before both in first person accounts by the participants as well as recollections by various sports writers but Araton's account is neither a straight history of the team nor strictly a personal memoir; Araton writes in the first person and interjects himself--appropriately, not excessively--into the narrative, creating a text that is both intimate and informative.
Red Holzman played for the Rochester Royals' 1951 NBA championship team before serving the Knicks as a scout and a front office executive--but he made his biggest mark as a Hall of Fame coach, compiling a 696-604 record in 18 seasons on the bench while leading the Knicks to the franchise's only two championships. Holzman's daughter Gail granted Araton exclusive access to Holzman's old scouting reports, the only proviso being that Araton not directly mention any critical comments that Holzman made about various players; Araton explains that Gail, like her father, was "unwilling under any conditions to publicly share anything that might be construed as negative...Her father would not have approved." One gem from those files is Holzman's comment after seeing Cazzie Russell's Michigan Wolverines defeat Bill Bradley's Princeton Tigers on a last second jumper by Russell: "Guts to take the last shot." The willingness to take a clutch shot is not something that can be quantified but, as Araton puts it, Holzman knew that a championship team cannot be built around guys who are "conscientious objectors" when the game is on the line.
Holzman's teams achieved a rare harmonious balance: the roster was stacked with Hall of Fame talent but each great player kept his ego in check and the group worked together to achieve a collective goal without fussing over who would receive the credit and the glory. Sure, Frazier may have griped at times that he, not Reed, should have been awarded the 1970 Finals MVP, and Monroe no doubt wonders what his individual career numbers would have looked like had he finished his career as a Bullet; such thoughts are only natural but they never interfered with the team's performance on the court and they pale in comparison to the ego explosions that have undermined so many other squads that contained multiple superstars.
Not surprisingly, the book's longest chapter focuses on game seven of the 1970 NBA Finals--known to most casual basketball fans as the Willis Reed game but remembered by students of basketball history as the game in which Walt Frazier produced one of the greatest clutch performances ever (36 points, 19 assists, seven rebounds) as the Knicks defeated the L.A. Lakers 113-99. Araton deftly weaves together his personal impressions of that 1970 Knicks team with the thoughts and recollections of various players, broadcasters (most notably Marv Albert) and fans (including Spike Lee, who attended game seven at Madison Square Garden as a 13 year old).
Although the Knicks' victory is commonly viewed as the triumph of an underdog over the star-studded trio of Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West--an impression that Araton neither aggressively propagates nor definitively rejects--in the interest of historical accuracy I will briefly share
the nuanced description of that series that I wrote a few years ago:It is true that by the conclusion of the 1970 playoffs West (3708 points, 30.9 points per game) Baylor (3623 points, 27.0 points per game), and Chamberlain (2990 points, 25.8 points per game) were the three leading scorers in NBA playoff history. That is impressive and unprecedented, but it also reflects the fact that all three players were past their primes. Baylor's chronically bad knees would soon force him to retire and, as noted above, Chamberlain had not completely recovered from his early season knee injury. West still had plenty of great games left, but his body was also battered and bruised from so many years of battling deep into the playoffs. The Knicks were hardly an underdog team without a chance; there is a reason that they had homecourt advantage for game seven. None of these facts diminish Reed's courage, Frazier's clutch game seven performance and the overall greatness of the 1970 New York Knicks. Quite the opposite: the 1970 Knicks should be remembered as a great team, not as an underdog.Placing that matchup in proper historical context does not diminish the unquestioned impact that the Knicks' victory had on the franchise, the city and pro sports history; the images of Willis Reed walking out of the tunnel prior to the game and then hitting his first two jumpers are an indelible part of American popular culture. Hall of Fame forward Bill Bradley, a Rhodes Scholar before becoming a Knick and a U.S. Senator after his Knicks' career ended, told Araton why the Knicks' 1970 championship resonated so deeply at that time and still has a special place in fans' hearts decades later:
In life, it's very difficult to get to the mountaintop, because one day leads to another day and leads to another day. There are small wins and losses in the process. You win an election or lose an election. You can close a deal or not close a deal. But in sports, what you can do as a team, and with your fans feeling part of it, is show what's possible for human beings to achieve if they work together, if they care about each other. Winning the title gave resolution to people who didn't have much resolution in their lives, at a time when resolution was something they really needed.The Knicks lost to the Bullets in seven games in the 1971 Eastern Conference Finals and then fell in five games to the Lakers in the 1972 NBA Finals. By 1973, Reed was not just temporarily hobbled but rather permanently limited by an accumulation of ailments; he was two years removed from his final All-Star selection and a shadow of his former self, averaging just 11.0 ppg and 8.6 rpg. Frazier was at the top of his game and he was clearly the Knicks' best player. The Boston Celtics cruised to the NBA's best record (68-14) but after a shoulder injury restricted John Havlicek the Knicks took out the Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals to earn their third NBA Finals appearance in four seasons, the final chapter in their trilogy of battles against the Lakers. The Knicks defeated the Lakers in five games but, as Reed mentioned to Araton, it sometimes seems like people do not even remember that the Knicks won a second title; the 1970 team has been elevated to legendary status, while the 1973 squad has receded somewhat into the mist.
The flipside of Bradley's poetic rendering of what the 1970s Knicks mean to their fans is that the camaraderie the players felt for one another did not necessarily extend to how the franchise treated them as their respective careers wound down: the Knicks banished Frazier to Cleveland, fired Reed after barely more than one season as Holzman's successor and informed Monroe of the end of his tenure with the team via a newspaper article written by none other than Araton himself. The Celtics and Lakers historically have taken care of their great players--bringing them back as coaches, scouts or front office members--but that is not always the case with other NBA teams (Julius Erving, who usually measures his public words quite carefully, noted during his Farewell Tour that this tribute was an exception for the Philadelphia 76ers and that many of his former teammates had just been unceremoniously cut or had drifted away without much fanfare or recognition from the team). Monroe told Araton, "The history of what's been here: that should be what every organization is about. If you don't honor your history, then how can you plot your future? If you history has been clouded, it sends a bad message. You haven't won the championship in almost 40 years; karma-wise, that may be the reason why. I mean, how long did it take to retire Dick Barnett's number?" Barnett, the third leading scorer on the 1970 championship team behind only Reed and Frazier, played the last nine seasons of his 14 year career with the Knicks and made the All-Star team as a Knick just prior to the beginning of the Knicks' golden age.
Ironically, a role player for those Knicks teams eventually won five of his record 11 championships coaching the Lakers; Phil Jackson sat out the 1970 season because of a back injury and he averaged just 8.1 ppg for the 1973 NBA champions but his later success in Chicago and L.A. can very much be traced back to his time in New York, specifically the mentoring he received from Holzman; Jackson's description of Holzman's demeanor indicates the genesis of Jackson's laid-back coaching style: "Kind words when they were needed, but mostly a matter-of-fact guy. It was the middle of the road--not too high, not too low." Jackson told Araton that Holzman offered Jackson some simple advice about coaching winning basketball: "It's not rocket science. It's see the ball on defense, hit the open man on offense." Araton commented, "Zen philosophy stripped away, Jackson was much like Holzman: he allowed his players to succeed through self-discovery."
When the Garden was Eden mostly hits the right notes, though the concluding passages comparing the character traits of various golden age Knicks to President Obama are a bit discordant; America is a country consisting of roughly 40% Democrats, 40% Republicans and 20% swing voters, so an extended love letter dedicated to one side of the political spectrum is sure to seem odd--if not completely misplaced--to at least nearly half of the readership of the book (it could also be safely argued that the Knicks' place in history is a lot more secure than President Obama's, as the reputations of politicians are apt to rise or fall very swiftly). Despite the odd ending,
When the Garden was Eden makes a positive impression overall: it is an easy and enjoyable book to read, a heartfelt and personal portrait of the golden age Knicks.
Labels: Dave DeBusschere, Earl Monroe, Harvey Araton, Jerry Lucas, New York Knicks, Phil Jackson, Walt Frazier, Willis Reed
posted by David Friedman @ 7:55 PM
