NHL is back!

Everything else
41

Jakub- The currency issue is a complete red herring, unless Canadian banks charge usurious conversion fees or something specific to Canadian law I’m unfamilar with.
Still, I seem to be missing the core idea. American clubs make money, Canadian clubs lose money, but if they cut the Canadian money losing clubs the league as a whole would be worse off? And I’d still like to hear Brett’s explanation how cutting 8 teams will make the NHL a regional league.

MarchHare- As I’ve gone over before, you guys misunderstand how the labor market sets wages. Free agent X is a mediocre center. Let’s say he creates $3 million dollars over a replacement level center. But big market idiot team signs him to a ridiculous $6 million a year deal.
A good center reaches free agency for a smart small market team. He creates $5 million a year over replacement. If he points to the clearly inferior player making $6 million, the owner will say “I don’t think so.” The owner will offer up to $4.9999999 million. The owner is not forced to pay him more than $6 million just cause, he is offered the choice between paying the player $7 million or letting him go to some idiot team offering $6.5M. The owner can and should say “no.” Does this make sense? Do you see how the loser in this arrangement is the big market team, not the small market team?

The owner can then sign correctly valued players or better yet play pre-free agency players who are almost always profitable.

Brett- Yeah, picking up Al Leiter and his 6 ERA was quite the coup for the Yankees. The Yankees are paying Leiter the minimum, the Marlins are paying almost his entire salary.
The Yankees dynasty didn’t sign a big ticket free agent until Giambi, they started winning with Jeter/Williams/Pettite/Posada/Riveria. All home grown. Are you sure it was 4 or 5 years ago you lost interest? Not 9 or 10?

We know in April who is going to win in October? Yeah, everybody saw the White Sox and Nationals coming. And I too am sick and tired of the Angels, Red Sox, Marlins, and Diamondbacks winning every single world series.
And man, why would anyone be a fan of the 45-47 Blue Jays or 47-45 Indians? They can’t compete with the 49-41 Yankees or 50-41 Red Sox. No chance!

42

Huh? Speaking of red herrings, I’d like to know where I ever mentioned currency disparity.

43

Ben - The Leiter comment was a slap at the Yankees. And you’re out of your fucking mind if you think the Jays, Indians, etc. have a shot. Sure, they’re 5-6 games out now, but the gap is only going to increase, as the big-buck teams add players before the trade deadline. But hey, wow! A couple of small-market clubs are around .500! I guess there’s no salary disparity in MLB at all! Also, yeah, a lot of people did see the White Sox coming, as a lot of the season preview mags picked them as real threat in the AL this year. Oh, and the White Sox are in Chicago, not exactly a small market, and have a $75 million payroll.

Back to hockey. Man, you really don’t have a clue where the NHL is concerned, do you? Cut the Canadian teams and you cut the league’s connection to its core fanbase. Without that, the NHL simply couldn’t survive. As for the regionalism thing, sheesh, look at a map. Kill all the money-losing teams and you’d have an NHL consisting of maybe 12 teams. You’d have New York, New Jersey, Toronto, Boston, Colorado, Chicago, Philly, Dallas, Detroit, and maybe Montreal and Vancouver as the only relatively solid franchises. Be pretty tough to pay players $9 million a year in a league with fewer teams and fans than Major League Soccer.

Xaroc - You don’t know what you’re talking about. Jagr was NOT making $11 million per season with Pittsburgh. He was on a $48 million, six-year deal when he was traded that was heavily back-loaded, so over the final years of the deal he was making around $9.5 million a season. That’s why the Pens got rid of him when they did.

Also, there’s a big difference between $48 million over six years and $77 million over seven (plus an option for year eight at the same money!), which is what the Capitals insanely gave Jagr after the trade. That deal was laughed at all over the place when it was signed. Superstar? Sure. But a petulant, whiny one who’s never won anything without Lemieux there to push him along. There wasn’t any market for the guy, at all.

Yet Leonsis in Washington still gave him that crazy deal. I don’t know anyone who thought that it made sense in 2001, that it would make the Caps a better team in any way. And sure enough, the Caps missed the playoffs, then got bounced in the first round, then Jagr was gone. If not for Sather in New York being just as stupid as Leonsis, the Caps would still be stuck with Jagr.

So, sorry, but the Jagr and Holik deals can both be slotted in the same “Stupid, Really Fucking Stupid” file alongside Yashin, Guerin, Tkachuk, Weight, and Lapointe (who only got his huge deal from Jacobs in Boston because of a dumbass feud between him and Detroit owner Mike Illitch).

44

Ben - The Leiter comment was a slap at the Yankees. And you’re out of your fucking mind if you think the Jays, Indians, etc. have a shot. Sure, they’re 5-6 games out now, but the gap is only going to increase, as the big-buck teams add players before the trade deadline. But hey, wow! A couple of small-market clubs are around .500! I guess there’s no salary disparity in MLB at all! Also, yeah, a lot of people did see the White Sox coming, as a lot of the season preview mags picked them as real threat in the AL this year. Oh, and the White Sox are in Chicago, not exactly a small market, and have a $75 million payroll.

Back to hockey. Man, you really don’t have a clue where the NHL is concerned, do you? Cut the Canadian teams and you cut the league’s connection to its core fanbase. Without that, the NHL simply couldn’t survive. As for the regionalism thing, sheesh, look at a map. Kill all the money-losing teams and you’d have an NHL consisting of maybe 12 teams. You’d have New York, New Jersey, Toronto, Boston, Colorado, Chicago, Philly, Dallas, Detroit, and maybe Montreal and Vancouver as the only relatively solid franchises. Be pretty tough to pay players $9 million a year in a league with fewer teams and fans than Major League Soccer.

Xaroc - You don’t know what you’re talking about. Jagr was NOT making $11 million per season with Pittsburgh. He was on a $48 million, six-year deal when he was traded that was heavily back-loaded, so over the final years of the deal he was making around $9.5 million a season. That’s why the Pens got rid of him when they did.

Also, there’s a big difference between $48 million over six years and $77 million over seven (plus an option for year eight at the same money!), which is what the Capitals insanely gave Jagr after the trade. That deal was laughed at all over the place when it was signed. Superstar? Sure. But a petulant, whiny one who’s never won anything without Lemieux there to push him along. There wasn’t any market for the guy, at all.

Yet Leonsis in Washington still gave him that crazy deal. I don’t know anyone who thought that it made sense in 2001, that it would make the Caps a better team in any way. And sure enough, the Caps missed the playoffs, then got bounced in the first round, then Jagr was gone. If not for Sather in New York being just as stupid as Leonsis, the Caps would still be stuck with Jagr.

So, sorry, but the Jagr and Holik deals can both be slotted in the same “Stupid, Really Fucking Stupid” file alongside Yashin, Guerin, Tkachuk, Weight, and Lapointe (who only got his huge deal from Jacobs in Boston because of a dumbass feud between him and Detroit owner Mike Illitch).

45

It’s a given that if you only pay top dollar for top players then you’re fine.

The problem comes from the fact that:

1.) There are only so many top players (how many elite players are there in hockey? 10 to 16?)
2.) My idea of a top player is different from your idea of a top player.

And what do you do when the top players are locked up? You get in trouble, you get in bidding wars, you get caught up trying to show fans that you’re playing to win, etc.

I always wondered how hockey teams could afford to pay the contracts for some of the players. I guess that’s not a problem anymore.

Bottom line is that the NHL needed to have this period of reckoning. Just like the NBA, NFL, and MLB, there was a shakedown where the power is firmly placed in the hands of the owners, the players, or both leagues look at each other and realize the need to work as partners.

In the NFL, the owners control that league, the players are really just along for the ride. In what league could someone like “Mr. Patriot” Troy Brown get cut, have his existing contract for $5million dollars voided, resign with the Patriots for $1million dollars, and have the transaction considered business as usual? Meanwhile Terrell Owens is the devil for asking that Philadelphia bump up his deal because he had a great season. Philadelphia management to Terrell Owens; “Honor your contract, you signed it.”

In MLB, the players are firmly in control.

Surprisingly, the NBA looks like the one league that works as a partnership between the owners and the players. Both sides have worked together to try and make the product better and to try and ensure that both sides make money. The compromise on high school players entering the draft is a good example. The league wanted 20, the players didn’t want a change from 18. Both sides agreed on 19.

After the dust settles, I hope the NHL will resemble the NBA, but I have a feeling that it’ll be closer to the NFL. Have the long knives come out for NHLPA management yet?

46

MarchHare- As I’ve gone over before, you guys misunderstand how the labor market sets wages. Free agent X is a mediocre center. Let’s say he creates $3 million dollars over a replacement level center. But big market idiot team signs him to a ridiculous $6 million a year deal.
A good center reaches free agency for a smart small market team. He creates $5 million a year over replacement. If he points to the clearly inferior player making $6 million, the owner will say “I don’t think so.” The owner will offer up to $4.9999999 million. The owner is not forced to pay him more than $6 million just cause, he is offered the choice between paying the player $7 million or letting him go to some idiot team offering $6.5M. The owner can and should say “no.” Does this make sense? Do you see how the loser in this arrangement is the big market team, not the small market team?

You’re being serious, aren’t you?

The loser in that scenario most certainly is the small-market team. They spent years developing a player who has become a bonafide superstar and a fan favourite. When his contract expires, his agent points to deals signed by rich clubs like the Red Wings and Rangers and says, “My client is a much better player than Player X in New York, but he’s only making half as much. This isn’t right. Pony up the dough.” The small-market team then has two choices, like you said: pay the ridiculous salary, or lose their star to a team that will. And contrary to your suggestion, most small-market teams don’t pay the ridiculous salary. For decades teams have constantly seen their best players signed to huge free-agency contracts by the likes of the Rangers, Wings, Avs, and Leafs, because those teams can pay the big bucks. It’s no way to run a competitive sports league when 85% of the teams can’t afford to be competitive.

So I guess in your fantasy land you’d like an NHL where only those teams can be competitive and fans of every other club must be content watching their best players constantly leave for lucrative deals, right? There will always be rich clubs whose owners don’t have to respect a budget, and those clubs are the ones who set contract standards.

A salary cap ensures that good scouting, coaching, and player development will win championships, not outspending your opponents. And as a fan, I firmly believe that’s the way it should be.

47

Sorry Bret but no. The difference between $9.5 million and $11 million is microscopic compared with the difference between whatever Holik was making before he signed that deal for $9 million a year. Holik’s deal is the pinnacle of stupidity, Jagr’s was slightly excessive but at least for a player with a history of scoring a ton. Not even close.

– Xaroc

48

The Devil Rays aren’t the best example for the reason that the owners actively want the team to fail - maybe a bit strong, they definitely don’t give a shit about the team on a whole. They won’t sign big contracts or financially entice players to come because they don’t want to.

Speaking of TB, the Lightning probably would have been a money-making franchise last year had the season gone through, despite the odd location and disparity in Florida for anything but football and maybe two basketball teams (the Heat and the Gators); the Stanley Cup does amazing things to your core fanbase the following years. While the Stars were popular in Dallas the day they moved from Minnesota, they really didn’t get really popular until they won the Cup.

— Alan

49

Speaking of TB, the Lightning probably would have been a money-making franchise last year had the season gone through

Maybe…we’ll have to see how the situation in TB plays out, but Lecavalier, Khabiboulin, and St. Louis are all free agents at the moment. I’m not sure if Tampa can afford to keep all of them.

50

Jakub- Sorry, misattributed. Marchhare said the thing about currency rates.

Brett- The Leiter comment was a slap at the Yankees? Any team could’ve picked up Leiter, the Marlins were going to cut him. What kind of slap was that?
I do follow baseball and the White Sox were expected to maybe contend with the Twins and Indians. I bet 3rd place was their most commonly predicted finish. Oh, and their payroll? 13th in the league.
We’ve been hearing this “small market teams can’t compete” garbage since the late 80s and the Twins and Athletics keep winning, the Indians and Rangers had contending teams that collapsed but now they’ve been rebuilt, the Marlins have won 2 WSs with entirely different teams, etc.

What sort of odds will you give me on the field for the AL wild card? You get New York and Boston, I get every other team in the AL. If you’re right, easy win for you.

MarchHare- Yes. The small market team losing? They spent years developing a player while paying him a fraction of his market wage. They are the huge winner here. From here on out, the player will be paid near market wage no matter who employs him.
“Losing”(it’s not really losing him. Once he reaches free agency he no longer belongs to a team) a player is not an absolute bad thing. It’s better to have no player than an overpaid player, even an overpaid good player. Hockey players are a fungible commodity.
Contract standards aren’t set, unless you believe the hockey owners have been colluding with each other to hold down player salaries and certain owners have been cheating on the cartel, which causes other teams to cheat.

A salary cap ensures that good scouting, coaching, and player development will win championships? The NBA has a cap and the worst competitive imbalance of any major sport.

51

I hate how everyone points to the A’s as a small market team made good. They’ve never had a chance at winning a World Series, because they can’t keep their best players around long enough. Getting bounced in the first round four years in a row doesn’t make you a true contender.

“Losing”(it’s not really losing him. Once he reaches free agency he no longer belongs to a team) a player is not an absolute bad thing.

Ask the Magic if they feel like they lost Shaq. Or the Pirates if they feel like they lost Barry Bonds. I think it’s definitely is a loss if you can’t resign a great player that you developed.

A salary cap ensures that good scouting, coaching, and player development will win championships? The NBA has a cap and the worst competitive imbalance of any major sport.

The “competitive imbalance” in the NBA has nothing to do with the salary cap and everything to do with the nature of the game. Few teams win a championship because the team with the best player in the league usually wins it. So that limits the number of contenders, since only a handful of teams actually have a player that can be considered the best in the league. The salary cap is helping the league since it keeps teams like Dallas and New York from signing all the great players. Instead they waste their money on marginal players, since the restricted free agency rules allow the other teams to keep their franchise players.

52

MarchHare- Yes. The small market team losing? They spent years developing a player while paying him a fraction of his market wage. They are the huge winner here. From here on out, the player will be paid near market wage no matter who employs him.
“Losing”(it’s not really losing him. Once he reaches free agency he no longer belongs to a team) a player is not an absolute bad thing. It’s better to have no player than an overpaid player, even an overpaid good player. Hockey players are a fungible commodity.
Contract standards aren’t set, unless you believe the hockey owners have been colluding with each other to hold down player salaries and certain owners have been cheating on the cartel, which causes other teams to cheat.

You really don’t get it, do you?

Having one of your free agents sign to another team – especially a conference rival – is a loss to the team, compounded even more if that player was your marquee individual, the guy that fans come out to see.

Take a look at the following example:

Suppose a small market team (let’s say Minnesota) wins the jackpot and gets to draft phenom Sidney Crosby in the upcoming draft. Crosby is the best prospect the NHL has seen in over a decade, but he’s not going to be a superstar overnight. So the Wild have to spend four or five years developing him until he reaches the point of being an elite NHL player. Then, once he reaches his prime, they might get a year or two service out of him (and by now he’s out of his rookie contract and is playing for big bucks, despite your assertion that he won’t be making market value) until he becomes a free agent. In an uncapped league, Minnesota can either re-sign him to a huge deal and pay the rest of their team league minimum (which is not a winning formula) or see him leave for a big market like Detroit, Toronto, or New York just as he’s reaching his full potential. That’s the way the NHL has been working for years. Try being a fan of a small-market franchise and watching year after year as the young prospects that were matured playing for your team price themselves out of town just as they reach their prime.

The NBA has a cap and the worst competitive imbalance of any major sport.

I think baseball fans might have something to say about that…

53

christopher- The As won 90+ games a year. They are an outside contender again this year. I bet they are just kicking themselves at not keeping Giambi, though.
If you’d like to allege that small market teams are at a first round of the playoffs specific disadvantage, go right ahead and make your case, but the Athletics were a very good team for a pretty long time. Just because something didn’t happen doesn’t mean it couldn’t have happened, the As had a very real chance of winning the WS. And there are still the Twins, who haven’t had quite as much success as the Athletics but they’ve still won a great many games on a low payroll.
Have the Yankees been true contenders the last couple of years?

The Magic can feel like they lost whoever they want. I’m an Indians fan, I’m going to pretend like my team lost Carlos Beltran.
The NBA setup discourages player movement(which, if you’d care to think about, hurts competitive balance. Great teams don’t get broken up). The individual cap on player salary makes it very difficult for a team to build itself into a contender. Since players get the same amount of money from every team except their own, things like state income tax, contendership, and size of the market. The Cavaliers will never be able to sign a star free agent unless they become a championship contender. Why take $11 million in Cleveland when you can get $11 million in LA or Miami?

54

MarchHare- I’m getting pretty tired of being the only person using actual examples. I’m a baseball fan, show me how imbalanced it is. Use actual numbers if possible.

It’s not a loss to the team because the moment his contract was up he wasn’t the team’s to lose. Here, let’s go back to the basics:
You allege that a handfulof crazy owners are driving up salaries league wide. I’m telling you that’s not how the world works. Now you’re on a slightly different tack. If resigning Crosby was a profitable decision for the Wild, they should do it. If the marginal revenue of a player differs so drastically between Detroit and Minnesota that Minnesota cannot profitable pay market rates for NHL players, they should fold. Owning an NHL franchise is not a divine right to make money.

Oh, and my assertion that they play for under market wages? “Big bucks” doesn’t mean market wage. You have to let go of the jealousy for a couple of seconds and realize that you can be underpaid while making a lot of money.

Think, for god’s sake you guys need to devote some mental energy to what you are actually saying. The NHL owners deserve, morally deserve, to make money. That’s where you are going. Their own bad business decisions should not negatively impact their finances.

Can you guys just try to move this argument out of the NHL and into, I dunno, retail. Boxy Store overprices their products, builds too many stores in bad locations, etc, etc. They propose the solution to this problem is not closing stores or cleaning up the sales floor, but that they need to pay their cashiers $8/hr instead of $11/hr. If the cashiers strike, are they wrong? After the union gets broken and they accept $7/hr wages, are you applauding those greedy motherfuckers getting what they deserve?

55

MarchHare- I’m getting pretty tired of being the only person using actual examples. I’m a baseball fan, show me how imbalanced it is. Use actual numbers if possible.

Sure.

How many teams from the AL East have qualified for the playoffs since the cancelled 1994 season? (Answer: only two; New York and Boston).

If you’re a fan of Baltimore, Toronto, or Tampa Bay, every Spring marks the beginning of a new season where you can watch your favourite team lose any opportunity to win the pennant to either the Yankees or Red Sox who dominate the league in payroll.

The Orioles have a chance of making it this year, but that’s still not much of an improvement; three teams making it into the post season from the AL East in eleven years doesn’t speak well of baseball’s competitive balance.

It’s not a loss to the team because the moment his contract was up he wasn’t the team’s to lose. Here, let’s go back to the basics:
You allege that a handfulof crazy owners are driving up salaries league wide. I’m telling you that’s not how the world works. Now you’re on a slightly different tack. If resigning Crosby was a profitable decision for the Wild, they should do it. If the marginal revenue of a player differs so drastically between Detroit and Minnesota that Minnesota cannot profitable pay market rates for NHL players, they should fold. Owning an NHL franchise is not a divine right to make money.

Ah! This explains everything! We’ve been speaking different languages. When I claimed that a small-market team couldn’t afford to be competitive, I meant in the sporting sense; that is, competitive in their attempt to win the Stanley Cup. It would appear you’re speaking in a business sense: competitive as a money-making endeavour.

As a fan of the game, I’ll stick with my interpretation.

And if a league that only has five or six teams because the rest succumbed to capitalist Darwinism suits you, we have nothing further to discuss on this matter.

Can you guys just try to move this argument out of the NHL and into, I dunno, retail. Boxy Store overprices their products, builds too many stores in bad locations, etc, etc. They propose the solution to this problem is not closing stores or cleaning up the sales floor, but that they need to pay their cashiers $8/hr instead of $11/hr. If the cashiers strike, are they wrong?

Unions have repeatedly taken pay cuts to keep job security. Are you saying that your retail workers’ union would be better served if half of them lost their jobs but the other half could keep working at their previous salary?

56

MarchHare- Did I hallucinate 1996 and 1997?
Also, Tampa Bay hasn’t been around the entire time. So your point is that Toronto hasn’t made the playoffs since 1993, a year in which they won the World Series? This is what’s known as cherrypicking endpoints.
Baseball isn’t like hockey or basketball, it doesn’t let half the league into the playoffs. The AL West has had all 4 teams, the AL Central has had 3. That’s 10 of the 14 AL teams, and of the 4 that haven’t made it one hasn’t been around the entire time. MLB is a zero sum game, everyone can’t win every year.

Re: Folding the Wild
Is there a stone tablet that sets the current number of NHL teams as the only possible number? If teams cannot compete, why shouldn’t they fold? A salary cap at $42 million or whatever isn’t going to save Minnesota if their marginal revenue per win is so significantly lower than Detroit’s that they cannot profitably bid for athletes. You people are rooting for the owners to steal money(that is what artificially depressing market wages is, stealing) from players. It’s insane how pliable people are, the media manages to encourage jealousy against millionare players but not billionare owners.

I’m not arguing whether it’s smart for the business or smart for the retail worker’s union, I’m speaking of morality. If the cashiers strike and lose, are they greedy motherfuckers who get what’s coming to them after their union gets broken? Labor gets outleveraged by capital every day, but generally there aren’t yokels cheering on the modern-day Pinkertons.

57

Of course, baseball used to be the sport where nearly everybody didn’t even get into the playoffs, wildcards didn’t exist, and you had 2 divisions a league with 7 teams in each division. Trying to fight your way through all that was hell every year.

— Alan

58

You found one example of a guy they shouldn’t have kept, as opposed to the laundry list of good players that they lost.

If you’d like to allege that small market teams are at a first round of the playoffs specific disadvantage, go right ahead and make your case, but the Athletics were a very good team for a pretty long time. Just because something didn’t happen doesn’t mean it couldn’t have happened, the As had a very real chance of winning the WS. And there are still the Twins, who haven’t had quite as much success as the Athletics but they’ve still won a great many games on a low payroll.

My case is that if the A’s were injury proof like the Yankees they could have gotten over Jermaine Dye’s injury and advanced further in the playoffs. But to do that they would have needed a bigger payroll.

Have the Yankees been true contenders the last couple of years?

Well, they were in the World Series in 2001 and 2003. And the ALCS in 2004. But other than that, no.

The Magic can feel like they lost whoever they want. I’m an Indians fan, I’m going to pretend like my team lost Carlos Beltran.

I’m not sure how that applies, since the Magic drafted Shaq and had him on their team (and were contenders with him) but the Indians never had Beltran.

The NBA setup discourages player movement(which, if you’d care to think about, hurts competitive balance. Great teams don’t get broken up). The individual cap on player salary makes it very difficult for a team to build itself into a contender.

Again, it’s not the salary cap that makes it difficult to be a contender. It’s the fact that great players aren’t easy to find.

Since players get the same amount of money from every team except their own, things like state income tax, contendership, and size of the market. The Cavaliers will never be able to sign a star free agent unless they become a championship contender. Why take $11 million in Cleveland when you can get $11 million in LA or Miami?

Then why did Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Larry Hughes sign there this summer? It’s because Cleveland had cap space this summer, while LA and Miami did not. As a free agent in the NBA, you’re limited to teams that have cap space if you want to leave your team. Unless you can pull off a sign and trade, but then your current team has to agree to it, and a lot of the better teams don’t have the pieces to offer in such a deal. It’s actually a nice system that keeps the better teams from hoarding all the talent.

59

You guys using the NBA as an example of the right way to do things really ought to quit because all anyone in the press could say about the playoffs and finals last year was that they all sucked. Viewership was way down and the league is having a lot of trouble getting people interested in the game.

The most likely reason for this is because nobody has a team that’s all that much better than anyone else’s. Plus with the talent all spread out, it’s easy to guard the other team’s best player and not get hurt by the rest of the team. The way the NBA works now, scoring is way down and the game is suffering because of it.

–Dave

60

christopher- Don’t you think it’s insanely, blatantly dishonest to draw the line for contendership at LCS appearance, the level just above the highest the A’s have reached? It’s an arguable line, but I don’t think you can put it above “making the playoffs.”
Laundry list? They lost Giambi and Tejada. So, uh, that’s one guy who is playing up to his contract and one guy who has been a bust. And Crosby at minimum salary is a better deal than Tejada at $12 million.
“Injury proof”? The A’s came within a Giambi slide or Long wearing sunglasses or Tejada not making a mental mistake from advancing.

The NBA:
The Magic had him on their team, but once he became a free agent he was on no team. You can’t lose what you don’t have, and once people are free agents you have to pay market wages which isn’t remotely as good for the team. The advantage of developing players is the years of below market wages you get to pay them. Once they become free agents, the profit of a player becomes quite small. If the issue is small market teams losing money complaining about their inability to acquire breakeven players seems to deeply miss the point.
Illgauskas and Hughes are not star free agents. They can sign some free agents, mostly because they lucked into having Lebron. But the Cavaliers will never be able to compete for a McGrady or Duncan level free agent.
If it’s just a wonderful system and you competive imbalance guys are such big fans of cherry picking endpoints, would you guys care to comment on that system producing 5 different champions since 1987? Though if I go back to 1980, we add one. 6 champions in the past quarter century.