TEL AVIV, Israel — After a tiresome five-month negotiation process, there finally will be a new CBA that will ensure uninterrupted quality NBA basketball for at least the next six years.
Throughout the duration of the lockout, many fans and analysts have openly shared their dismay that the owners and players couldn’t come to a fair agreement quicker, without losing any games.
However, the collective bargaining process is a luxury unique to the NBA, and is something that allows the NBA to be the most successful basketball league in the world. With the CBA negotiations hopefully coming to a close this week, here are five system issues that the rest of the world could learn from the NBA.
An Established System For A Set Number Of Years
While the NBA has its collective bargaining agreement, leagues in Europe frequently change their system. Some leagues change how many games they have in a season and their playoff format practically every season. The absence of an established format for league play creates a great deal of confusion for fans, who annually need to do research to understand the format of not only their countries’ domestic leagues, but also the format of international competitions. Even the Euroleague is changing the format next season.
Even more frustrating than the competition format is the constant changing of the restrictions of foreign players. In many domestic leagues, the rules regarding how many foreigners are allowed to play on a team changes frequently. Some leagues will allow a few Americans, and a few Bosmans (non-domestic players from mostly European countries), but the actual number of players and how long they can be on the court can change on a year to year basis. This makes it extremely difficult for teams to build their roster with any long-term plan.
In the Israeli league last season, the rule, dubbed the Russian rule as it was taken from the Russian league, stated that a team could have five foreigners, but two Israelis were required to be on the court at all times. This season the rule was changed so that a team can dress four foreigners, but there were no restrictions as to how long they could be on the floor. If a team was built last season to have five guys whose roles were to play 20-something minutes a game, they would need to rebuild to get foreigners (Americans) who could effectively play over 30 minutes a game to compete under the league’s new rules.
Salary Cap and Luxury Tax
While teams like the Lakers and Mavericks frequently have payrolls more than double the size of the league’s most frugal teams, this discrepancy is nothing compared to what goes on in most European leagues. In Israel, Maccabi Tel-Aviv has a budget of approximately $25 million and Hapoel Jerusalem has a budget that is typically over $10 million, while most other Israeli teams typically have a budget between $1 and $2 million. Frequently in Israeli and Adriatic league play, Maccabi will have several players whose contracts are worth more than their opponents entire roster!
However, it may not be a great idea to institute a hard cap, as this would handicap some teams from building strong rosters for the Euroleague and Eurocup. A luxury tax system would help smaller budget teams loosen their belts a bit, or at the very least, lower their debts. In many leagues, three of the final four teams can be predicted before the season, and this could be a great step toward creating some competitive balance.
Restricted Free Agency
With the NBA adjusting its rules to allow smaller market teams to compete, European leagues need to take some necessary measures to help teams compete. In many leagues, the smaller teams serve solely as farm systems for the big clubs like Anadolu Efes, Armani Jeans Milano, Barcelona, Real Madrid, and CSKA Moscow. It frequently is frustrating for fans when their club develops a young player, only to see him scooped away by a bigger club. There are even some instances in which a team will hesitate to give minutes to a strong young player too early, as they fear if he shows too much potential he will instantly be snatched away by a big club.
While it would be unfair to deny players the right to seek out big contracts and better situations, it would be fair to give teams that do have the necessary funds a fair chance to keep their own guys.
If a player were to sign an offer sheet with another team in the same league, it would be fair to give their original team a chance to match the deal. While it wouldn’t be right to force a foreign player to stay in a country if he was uncomfortable, it would be fair to add restricted free agency to players remaining in the same league. However, if a player chose to play in a different country, his original team should still have the option to hold his rights as a restricted free agent if he decided to return, similar to the situation Wilson Chandler is in (he will spent the season in China, but the Nuggets will still hold his restricted free agent rights for when he returns to America).
Forcing Every Team To Honor Every Contract
While NBA players were arguing over percentage points of guaranteed salary, players overseas live with far less certainty. Not only is there no agreement guaranteeing a certain percentage of revenue to the players, but there sometimes is no guarantee a player will receive all the money owed to him in his contract. There are several teams who frequently make late payments and sometimes, if the team is playing poorly, will not pay players at all. Players sign guaranteed contracts, but sometimes in order to get everything the team promised in that contract a player needs to hire lawyers and go through a long legal process to recoup the salary.
Most teams do a good job of paying players on time, but there are some teams who frequently abuse the system and take advantage of players. Leagues need to come up with a better system that will ensure that players get every paycheck on time, and need to do a better job ensuring that teams that do not honor their contracts are sufficiently penalized. There are many players who have shown an immeasurable amount of character despite not receiving paychecks for several months. Anyone who puts in the time and effort deserves to be compensated accordingly for their work, in any profession.
Relaxed Restrictions On Foreign Players
This may be very American to say, but it is unjust how every league in Europe has rules that limit foreigners, and by foreigners I mean Americans, to between one and four spots on the roster. While I understand that many countries have these restrictions in order to promote the growth of domestic players, I think that can be accomplished without limiting jobs for players based on their nationality. Furthermore, these restrictions artificially inflate the value of domestic players over superior foreign players, as teams need enough strong domestic players to fill out their rotation. During the NBA lockout, several NBA players who signed abroad made less money than solid starters in some leagues, as these restrictions inflate the value of homegrown players.
If a team wants a player and a player wants to play, why should there be rules preventing that from happening based on the players nationality? The Toronto Raptors suited up six foreigners last season, how come nobody complained that they weren’t leaving enough room for North Americans? How come it wasn’t mentioned once during CBA negotiations that the NBA needs to make rules preventing Europeans from occupying the limited number of roster spots? Because it would be stupid, that’s why.
While the world has caught up significantly to the U.S. in basketball over the last decade, the depth of the talent pool in the U.S. far surpasses every other country to the point where leagues make rules to prevent American players from dominating the job market. The rest of the world is making rules to get their players on the court, instead of taking on the challenge of developing their youth players to grow to the point where teams would willingly sign local players instead of Americans. After all the progress the world has made in the last decade, why take the easy way out to build up your own players?
While the NBA is far from a perfect league, it sets the standard for having a fair and structured system that allows teams to operate with certainty of the future. While it is unrealistic for other leagues to be like the NBA, European leagues should take a hard look at the CBA and learn a thing or two about improving their own league.
AJ Mitnick is an American currently living in Israel and working for Maccabi Rishon Lezion of the Israeli Basketball Super League. A recent graduate of IDC Herzliya, Mitnick also maintains a basketball blog, http://mindlessdribble.net, and is pursuing a professional basketball coaching license from the Wingate Institute in Israel.
The NBA is the single biggest joke pro sports league on the planet. Copying it in any way at all would make the Euroleague managers complete morons.
Other than honor the contract, I find the rest of these rule changes to be dumb.
This idea that you need to make everything Americanized so everyone can compete is just dumb and is a mentality that rewards failure and punishes success. Plus, you’re watering down the league. I’d rather have a bunch of super teams than a league that has equal balance (which isn’t even possible anyways).
If you implement a hard cap or a soft cap in the NBA, there will still only be 5-6 teams that have a legit chance of winning the title. I support the more free market approach where you may have only 5-6 super teams that can compete for the title, but the talent of those teams would be far superior than what we currently have. It would make for a more entertaining product for me.
Imagine an NBA championship with 9-10 all stars on the court playing hard with something on the line. Wouldn’t that be better than last year’s game with only 4 all-star players? It’s something you rarely ever see except for a US Olympic team practice.
Man the bottom line is all these euro leagues sucks, the only reason why ya got some attention this summer was because of the lockout, if you wanna watch some real basketball tune in to the NBA. Lets go Knicks! #thelockoutisover #wedontcareabouteurobasketball
Haha! V.amusing article. Thanks! Just imagine say, a spanish team of yanks playing say, a turkish team of yanks. Would anyone watch? Nope. Would it kill the sport here? Yep!
Why do you assume that teams would automatically only sign Americans just because thats the rules? Do you think Real Madrid would go ahead and dress 10 Americans if they were allowed…..of course not! I am not suggesting that teams HAVE to sign Americans, I’m merely saying that there shouldn’t be rules preventing them from doing so. Since most teams are publicly funded, the decision makers will obviously still lean towards signing local talent.
As i’ve stated in other replies, it is just a way to control bad management. It happened when Bosman law was applied. Every team on earth started adding foreign players, with being foreign players to only reason to land them.
Benny is right, affection to teams as the lowest in history when no restrictions where applied. Due to restrictions? No, of cours. Due to bad management.
NBA owners put restrictions too, to prevent from themselves. Has it sense? Neither.
Can’t agree with your article Mr Mitnick. I’ll tell you why, without even mentioning we have no lockouts here in Europe (oh, sorry, i already did…)
ESTABLISHED SYSTEM
You should be right in some aspect here, moslty about the foreign player rules, but you should understand one thing: Domestic Basketball Associations do that to protect their national teams. Many leagues (i’m leaving aside the most powerful ones) would have rosters full of, p.e., third line americans. That would kill their national leagues.
It’s far more complex, despite fewer changing would be nice, I agree.
SALARY CAP
No way. Countries do have finantial laws to prevent teams over debting their budgets. Problem? They never apply them.
Cap is not possible as TV, tickets… revenues are quite different between teams. As you say, only few teams in a league have big budgets. That gives you a league where top 3 teams in a domestic league have, p.e., 60 million € in budget. And the other 13 overall payroll is 26 million €!!!! How you set a cap? You share a budget/income/tax for 60+26=86 between 16 teams? +-6 million per team? That league will be automatic destroyed.
Also, top 3 teams will leave the league and create an “euro nba” between top teams in europe. We do have EL for that.
If an nba small market can’t compete, imagine an european small market, with a 3.000 stadium capacity…
You also forget, for competitive balance, that in Europe teams win their right to play EL almost year by year. And that bottom teams in domestic leagues go down to second division (maybe what NBDL shoud be in America). Teams in Europe can’t tank. Half of the NBA regular games are crap. Every game and minute in Europe is competitive. Can’t say that from NBA.
RESTRICTED FREE AGENCY
It already exists in leagues like Spain. You can match contracts offered to young guns ending their contracts. It has sometimes gone bad, as teams offer frontloaded deals, in order to kill matching teams budget, forcing them to asset an agreement.
Teams also get “formation compensations” when young players grown in a team leave the club.
HONORING CONTRACTS
I’d be agree mostly with the hole point, but i must say contracts are harder for players here foro players who don’t attend practices (practice? where talking about practice?). And it happens more often than in the NBA. American players who don’t practice, go back to states for a week without saying anything… Some of the players that get unhonored is for that reason, other don’t though.
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I’d say your article has good intentions, but lacks some cultural and system evolution issues that could change your prespective.
I can’t say which one is the best system. All I can say, is that Euro system will not work in the USA, neither NBA system would work in Europe.
Isaac Gómez
Barcelona
Isaac Gomez: I would like to remark a couple of questions at your post. I agree with AJ Mittnick in nearly the whole article but perhaps he should mention that all the measures he is proposing could be done for an hipothetycal Global Basket European Association.
1. ESTABLISHED SYSTEM. You talk about “protecting the national teams”. Ok, AJ has put as an example the league from Israel. But you can check on our ACB Spanish league and could find some teams like Gran Canaria, Blusens,Joventud,GBB…which are filled with players that can not be selected to play for our national squad. And when you talk about “rosters full of third line Americans” you are recognizing that those kind of players are better than national players.
2. SALARY CAP. In this point I agree with you. As the competition is hold at this time it would be impossible to stablished this salary restrictions. But it would be possible in a global league which could include, let,s say Barca-CSKA-Milano-PAO-Maccabi-Madrid-Caja Laboral-Siena-OLY-Rytas-Nancy-Partizan….And it is not true (in my opinion) that in ACB all the games are vere competitive. Look at the scoreboard when Madrid or Barca play at home and you can check that a lot of games are decided even in the 1º quarter.
3. RESTRICTED FREE AGENTS SYSTEM. At this point is where I agree the most with AJ, and can not share your opinion. You talk about “formative compensation”. But that does not solve some circunstances we are watching in our own league. Take a look at Real Madrid signing Singler to replace Rudy. They are using their rich position against a poor team like Lucentum. Or the rumors that Caja Laboral are pursuing Augustine and Ivanov (as they did last year with Batista and his signing from Fuenlabrada). Or Regal eyeing Ayon(they did last year with Ingles from Granada…).I think we would have a more competitive league with this kind of restrictions.
4. HONORING CONTRACTS. It is something that might be solved because there are a lot of players who are very professionals and do not receive their salaries. Something that we also can see in soccer. Regarding players with unprofessional behavings(as JR Smith in China) there should be a regulation which could prevent them to be paid their incomes.
Regarding clubs which do not pay their players, they should be punished and not be allowed to compete at a league they can not afford the spends it takes.
AJ Minnick: it is very interesting reading someone who always is trying to compare NBA versus FIBA basket. Specially when you write for an “NBA oriented web page”. Thanks.
Glad to have replies and to be able to argue in a nice way 🙂 I love pages where people don’t take their disagreement to personal issues.
1. ESTABLISHED SYSTEM
Rules are not the same for every country, as each country’s has its own particular situation. For example, in Spain your roster must have 4 national players. Other countries, mostly with lower level leagues, have softer restrictions.
Are spanish players worst than “third line americans”? I’d say they are even better than most “second line americans” (forgive me for the terms). World champions, silver medal at the olimpics…
The most benefit from these restrictions are for young players. Would have Pau Gasol debut with FC Barcelona at age 18, in a non-restricted league? Would Ricky Rubio had played the load of minutes he got at age 15, if Joventut could have had an american backup pointguard? Navarro, Rudy Fernandez, Victor Claver…. the list is very long.
You could say that’s up to management. That national players must win their spot. But what HAS happened, in bball and also with football when Bosman law applied first, is that management just buy outside missing local talent, just because they think that foreign players are just better and its victims are not stablished national players. Young guns get blown.
Don’t know if you are keen on football (soccer), remember when Van Gaal arrived to Barcelona? He bought a roster full of dutchmen. Was it good for Barça…? Arsenal, Milan, Man City… Having no restrictions when adding players, does not mean you are gonna get better squads. History tells you that. I’m not imagining it. I’m just remembering it, it has already happened!
I’m not able to say if aplying those restrictions are good or not. I’m just trying to explain what kind of oposition those changes would recieve.
2. SALARY CAP/CONTRACTS
Problem is politics. No politic leader, such as Majors, Presidents,.. will make a team dissapear or force them to a lower division by applying law. The team their voters support. The team that photograph’s themselves with politicians when they win some title. This ain’t happening.
Once teams are forced to honor contracts and unable to spend more than what they earn, the cap and honoring contracts issues are over.
Of course not all games are competitive. Maybe I didn’t say what i thought. What I was trying to say is that when an NBA team is down by 20, it usually put their hands down. Of course is not that simple, in NBA you play more games, more distance… Gyms are not the same too. Any building in nba has a “stantard” of quality, safeness… Try to play in a 3.000 gym in Turkey or Greece… That quite gives “small/poor” teams some kind of leverage. I’ll bet my hands it is easier for a top NBA team to win in New Jersey or Minnesota, than for a TOP Euro team to win in one of those gyms i described.
I’m not creating this point, I’ve read it several times in this website (which i’m glad of), talking about how euro seasons are shorter and every match “means” more.
That NBA is more entertainment-focused and that FIBA is more competition-focused is a fact. That does not mean one way is better than the other, or that both ways are not entertaining or competitive.
3. FREE AGENT RESTRICTIONS
You talk about Rudy, well, he was a restricted free agent when coming back to Spain. Madrid had to make a deal with Joventut to land him. Singler? Despite he is a bad example, sorry, as he would have tried to come back to NBA if Madrid does reach to him, he was no Free Agent.
Lucentum recieved its buyout clause. Same happened with Ingles. Do you think Singler would have signed with Lucentum without low buyout clauses? Answer is no, my guess.
The big problem with players in Europe is to protect your young players from NBA! Not from other European teams who pay a trade for them. NBA teams are just allowed to pay an small amount. Change that, and Small Market Euro teams will get the kind of money you are talking about…
Where are you from shinchan, by the way? 🙂
There was a lockout in the Greek league at the beginning of the season due to an insufficient TV rights deal, it just got no media coverage due to the NBA lockout.
-If players aren’t good enough to compete against “third tier Americans” then they probably aren’t good enough to suit up for a national team. Why gift wrap players playing time, when making them earn it should make them better in the national team IMHO.
– I say in the article that a cap would only work with a luxury tax system. They shouldn’t stop the top teams from spending, rather it would make the smaller teams able to compete.
– When it comes to contracts in Europe, teams break the rules, bend the rules or use politics to get what they want. If a big team wants a guy, they get him.
Thanks for checking the article, always great to get constructive feedback!
Hello AJ, glad for your reply.
I wouldn’t compare Greece with NBA lockout. How long did Greek “lockout” last? 2 weeks? In a country in full caos, controlled by Euro and World economic organizations. With riots every week. Comparing it with a league in its top popularity, breaking tv shares, that has a lockout every time CBA expires. There’s no way for comparison in my modest opinion.
– Problem is bad management. They protect from themselves. (Does it sound familiar to NBA owners?) One of the problems is that when you open restrictions, crap foreigners substitute crap locals. But coming back to owners, do restrictions prevent bad managing? Unfortunetly, we all know that answer. I’m not saying I’m agree with restrictions. I try to explain the points of those who support them.
– So tax helps small teams compete. I’ll agree when I see that in the NBA… (I’m partly joking here) Make all teams honor existing laws, forcing them to balance their budgets, and all player salaries will go down, allowing small teams to compete financially.
– Big teams everywhere get big fishes when they want to. Carmelo? Pau Gasol? Shaq? Chris Paul? It will always happen. Big fishes will always land in big markets or winner teams… For teams breaking rules, I already stated my opinion in previous point. Hard law to them and everything else will be fixed…
Thanks for apreciating opinion, hope mine is not ofensive and to keep interest in your page, which is one the better channels for us, euros, to follow our beloved game in the states.