Minnesota Sports Forum

I think the NBA is eventually in for a rude awakening. The new era of constant player movement makes it REALLY hard for a casual fan (especially kids) to get invested in a franchise. My son is 14, and has always been a Wolves fan. We have many autographed photos up in his room. Rubio (gone), Love (gone), Pek Smash (gone), Wiggins (wish he was gone), Towns (still here....for maybe another couple seasons), couple other guys, can't recall who. He plays basketball constantly, but hasn't really been engaged in watching the Wolves for the past 2 years.....simply because he isn't able to build a relationship with anyone anymore. This is important. If you remember the life altering sports moments from when you were a kid, it was due to a player, or team of players you loved. Now, meh....I am with my son....I don't much care.

While Free agency is fun for a couple days, this whole new cycle of players playing for perhaps 4-6 teams throughout their life as an NBA player is NOT good for the game, IMO. Remember when Clyde the Glide went from Portland to Houston? HUGE deal. Now, Durant, Lebron, etc change teams on a whim, and this is the norm.

Additionally, the way contracts are set up, with marginal players getting $15-$20MM, it is near impossible to get a franchise from good to great, let alone from bad to great. GSW are recent example, but again, the only reason they were able to build what they did was due almost entirely to Curry's earlier contract (and the fact that that paultry contract was tied to one of the top players ever to play the game). As shown in this current market, even guys with severe injury risk (or missing entire seasons) are getting max deals. $200MM for Lillard...very good player, but that franchise is as good as dead if their end goal was a championship. No way to get better....they are stuck.

I don't know....just seems the NBA is missing the boat a bit. Maybe I am in the minority here.

I think designing a system to keep players where they are for as long as possible is a bad system (NFL franchise tags are bad, restricted free agency is bad and often leads to guys getting paid more than they are worth because reasonable deals get matched). It always blows up as guys are trapped and can't get out from oppressive billionaire owners. It's just a bad look in sports. Durant played for the Thunder for almost a decade. People don't like AD leaving, but he played for New Orleans for 7 years. When you give that much time to one team you should be allowed to get out when it doesn't go well. This will be Towns' 5th year already for us. How much longer do these guys need to play for the team that drafted them before it's reasonable they get a chance to leave? They don't get to pick where they get drafted so that seems reasonable to give them some power to leave from a team they are forced to play for for 7-9 years. That seems like a fair trade.

You basically get a 1st round pick for 7-9 years if they are good enough to bring back on major deals. Is that not long enough? The bigger issue if you want to fix it to some degree is change the dumb veteran statuses. That's really what is causing a lot of this because guys get through years 7-9 off their second contract and it is financially better for them to just get to year 10 before they do a long term deal so they can get a bigger contract. That's what led to one and one's. Change the veteran status and you may see more guys signing that second extension than a one and one that puts more pressure on everyone to win now or else they leave. Reducing player movement isn't good for sports because you just have a bunch of whiny millionaires that you end up siding with when they don't have options to leave.

As I've written many times... the 365/24/7 rumor mongering NBA is off-putting for me. More and more player movement is insanely popular either by (1) casual fans who love it, and/or (2) a media who needs/loves something to write about every day of the year.

Granted, it's not the way I grew up. Or many of you. We grew up following beloved characters, often from our hometown team. Guys like Hrbek or Puckett or Broten or even Garnett. They were the faces of the franchise.

Now... they're brands upon themselves. Kevin Durant plays for Kevin Durant. LeBron for LeBron. Et al. Fans of the players will follow them from place to place. In part, because it's infinitely easier to do so. Social media/modern technology makes the world a lot smaller. How were you going to follow Kirby Puckett if you lived in Oakland back in 1993? The newspaper? Now, these players are right there, accessible, to tens of millions of people. We can watch them from anywhere at any time.

The proverbial paradigm has shifted. Sports aren't regional entities anymore. They're global brands and icons. Because I grew up really really really digging life as a provincial rube... I don't like the new model. But again... who cares. I'm not the target audience.

Our kids are the target audience. And they've been raised in an era of saturated media and online accessibility and... player movement. So it is what it is.

The rub? Is that giving the truest fans the best experience? Personally, I say no. I think fans are marginalized more and more... and more... at every turn. But until we stand up for anything, why should anything change. This is where I'm in the minority... the league is thriving. People LOVE this gossip crap... often even MORE than the on-court stuff. Even the NBA Finals, the ultimate goal for every team, takes a backseat to the drama of where Durant/kyrie/james/et al will sign.

After all, only 2 teams can make the Finals. But every team has a chance to land that next big free agent or disgruntled superstar (at least theoretically).