The Sports Curmudgeon®

In Sunday’s Philadelphia Inquirer, Stephen A. Smith’s column focused on the trouble in Allen Iverson’s life – - not merely as a basketball player whose career is on the wane. Smith says that without an intervention, Allen Iverson’s difficulties with alcohol and gambling will ruin his life and that the divorce his wife seeks will hurt him seriously. While Allen Iverson has never tried to project a warm and cuddly persona, this is a sad situation one should not wish on anyone else. I recommend you read this column in its entirety.

Speaking indirectly of the Philadelphia 76ers, Mark Heisler of the LA Times reported a few weeks ago that the Sixers might be on track to lose $30M this year. If every team in the league were in that situation, the league would stand to lose $900M this year and not the measly $400M that David Stern mentioned during the All-Star Game weekend. Financially, the NBA is not in as good condition as the NHL; you certainly could not have made that statement with a straight face 10 years ago.

Allow me to nibble around the edges of that “revenue shortfall” for a moment and suggest to the NBA a couple of ways to cut down on obviously bloated expenditures. At the outset, let me say that I know these ideas will only cut costs by only a small amount. However, thinking in these kinds of ways might open up minds in ways to consider other cost containments:

1. Save electricity. Cut out the laser light shows and the “smoke enveloped” entrances by the teams.

2. Save more electricity. Cut down on the loud music and other nonsense during halftime and every timeout. Oh by the way, if you cut the loud music, you can also release the resident “disc jockey” and save a salary plus benefits there.

3. Trim the coaching staffs. The Washington Wizards have four assistant coaches. If you watch that team play a full game, you will come away scratching your head wondering what those four guys actually do for a living. By the way, the Knicks and Clippers have five assistants while the Bobcats have six. If teams cannot control themselves, the league needs to put a limit on the number of assistants per team – - say two.

Clearly, none of those cost savings will add up to $400M league-wide. What has to happen is to contain player salaries. However, the way the NBA has marketed itself over the past 25-30 years, the salaries of the top players are not the problem. The NBA markets its stars and it is the stars that bring people to the arenas and to the TV sets. Maybe the stars are overpaid in terms of the revenue they bring in but only by a little bit; the real problem lies in the salaries paid to the “second-tier” players.

The “second-tier” players make a whole lot of money and few if any people follow them sufficiently to warrant the expenditure on them. The current situation is one that the owners have brought on themselves in large measure because they sign these “second-tier” players to contracts that will not ever “pay for themselves”.

Consider a just four examples; if pressed, I could find a dozen more with less than 30 minutes of searching. In all of the cases I cite here, the players are good – or in some cases very good. Nevertheless, they are not players who generate revenue for their teams nearly equal to what they are making. They are “money-sinks”.

Elton Brand (76ers): A fine player whose contract runs through the end of the 2012/13 season. From the beginning of the 10/11 season until the end of the contract, he will earn $51.1M.

Emeka Okafor (Hornets): A fine player whose contract runs through the end of the 2013/14 season. From the beginning of 10/11 until the end of the contract, he will earn $52M.

Michael Redd (Bucks): A fine player whose contract ends at the end of next season. Next year he will earn $18.3M.

Jermaine ONeal (Heat): A fine player whose contract ends at the end of this season. This year he earned $22.995M.

Fans buy tickets to see or tune in to watch Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Chris Paul, Kevin Durant, Shaq, Dwayne Wade and players of that caliber. I really doubt that anyone is attracted to an NBA event because of any of these “second-tier” players listed above. Those are the salaries that need to be brought under control if fiscal sanity is to return to the NBA. We saw the “dot-com bubble” and the “housing bubble”; we saw what happens when they burst. The NBA is not on the verge of collapse just yet, but they are on an unsustainable path…

Dwight Perry had this item in the Seattle Times recently regarding a likely future basketball star:

“Ye Li, the 6-foot-2 wife of 7-6 Rockets center Yao Ming, is expecting the couple’s first child this summer.

“Doctors predict the girl will be born July 22, 23 and 24.”

There is a rumor out there that Mike Tyson could return to the boxing ring one more time to fight – - – wait for it – - – Evander Holyfield. Let me put that putative fight into perspective here.

I would rather sit in a ringside seat at a pro-rassling pay-per-view extravaganza than sit in the comfort of my home and watch another Tyson/Holyfield “struggle”.

Who might be on the undercard for that fight? Joe Louis versus Jack Dempsey?

Finally, let me close with two items from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald:

“The Honda Classic, ending Sunday in Palm Beach, began with a pro-am that included this foursome: Jack Nicklaus, Dan Marino, Super Bowl champ Drew Brees and Kenny G. Which indicates to me that Kenny G must have some compromising photos of the guy in charge of the pro-am pairings.”

“The 38th Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race has begun in Alaska. Never cared that much about it, but found myself liking it once I learned how much it annoys People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…