The Peculiar Economy of the NBA: How Would We Act If Money Were Emptied Of Value?

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Not all of my readership follows the goings on professional basketball–I know this. I’m sort of OK with it. I’ve learned to accept you people and even toy with the idea that you should be allowed to marry and share all of the same civil rights the rest of us enjoy.

Still, I’m going to talk a little bit about basketball today, and you’re just going to have to try to tolerate it. Because this post might actually be less about basketball than it is about the legitimacy of the claim that there is a “master narrative” to culture and cultural productions that concerns itself with money. The Del Marxists with whom I went to graduate school were always all torqued up about this “master narrative” that operated on a higher plane than other, less important narratives–silly trifling concerns like race, gender, psychoanalytics, post-colonialism–and whipped them mercilessly into submission. That narrative in whose supremacy they unwaveringly believed, and into belief of which they tried endlessly to convert me.

A belief in the master narrative, in this case, suggests that all historical experience–everything, at its core, is “about” the exchange of goods and services, and humanity’s relationship to the market, seen through the lens of the market and constructed within the terms of the market. Despite what you may think, and despite how things appear.

What does this all have to do with basketball? Well, in light of the recent Lakers Championship and this week’s NBA Draft, I’ve been thinking about the economic system of the NBA and the peculiar means of assigning value it sometimes exhibits. Not only does it have a means of assessing value that, on occasion, operates outside of a traditional dollar exchange system, the complexities involved in balancing economic interests (of players, teams, and franchises) is an intriguingly complex chemistry that is ripe for analysis. Add in the larger than life characters it usually involves, and you’ve got a good blog post on your hands.

The Economics of A Quest for The Ring

First of all, let’s assume from the economic standpoint, an owner’s goal is for his team to win an NBA Championship, or at least to get deep into the playoffs. (This is not true in the case of the Clippers, whose management seems to want to run a franchise for the least amount of overhead possible and is therefore content with losing–barring some kind of fantastical trade luck and convergence of galactic powers–more or less, forever. But for most other teams I think it is the goal, or at least a goal.) Because teams that win tend to have more fans and, therefore, they generate more revenue, both in terms of tickets, concessions, tv telecast deals, and team-themed paraphernalia.

The thing is, though, winning in the NBA is expensive. Sure, there is an element of luck to it–there is a draft in which everyone (theoretically) has an even chance of getting a good pick, but this is a dicier thing that it appears. Not only do teams trade draft picks with each other in order to acquire players (or auction draft picks to free up more money to pay the players they already have), the fact is that you cannot bet on a first round draft pick adding value to your team. For one thing, players in the NBA usually take a few years to get used to things: even stars like Kobe and LeBron took a few years to really warm up, and most first-round draft picks turn out to be busts like Kwame Brown. By the time your first round draft pick is warmed up and becoming a star, it’s time to renegotiate his contract. And he’s going to want a lot more money this time around.

In order to win an NBA Championship, it is pretty much established that you have to have not just one, but two potential Hall of Fame inductees on your team at once. Kobe Bryant is probably the only Hall of Famer on this year’s Championship team, but there are a couple potentials on the Lakers there and some for-sure all stars, and since people have argued this was an off-year for the NBA as a whole, he managed to do it with only the help of an all-star, Pau Gasol, and two likely future all star, Trevor Ariza and Lamar Odom. Juxtapose that with Magic Johnson, who had Kareem Abdul Jabbar AND James Worthy on the 80s Lakers teams, or last year’s champions, the Celtics, who had Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett, and Paul Pierce, all three of whom will likely be in the Hall of Fame. Point is, it’s pretty freaking hard. That’s why LeBron couldn’t make it to the Finals–he got very far, but bottom line is even if you’re the King, basketball is a team sport and it is hard, very hard, to win an NBA Championship all by yourself.

Linotype by ncrawler23 at DeviantArt

Financially speaking, getting two or more Hall of Famers on your team at once is tricky. By the time a player becomes good enough to be considered a potential Hall of Fame inductee, he is no longer earning the rookie salary, and already commanding a ton of money from sponsors. To get two (or more) of them on one team, you have to either have a team owner willing to go over the salary cap (an action for which the NBA imposes a hefty fine, but no disciplinary action) to get two, or you have to have enough luck to get a good draft pick who shapes up quickly (LeBron or Kobe are examples), and already have a veteran on your team. Teams that have won championships like this are the early 90s Lakers, where Shaq was already at the height of his career when Kobe was acquired (with some expensive maneuvering) as a draft pick, and Phil Jackson was the coach. They won three championships. Then Shaq went to Miami, where he played with a very young Dwayne Wade, another lucky happenstance, and after insisting that the original coach be fired, and airlifting in a veteran Championship coach (Pat Riley) Shaq won his fourth championship, this one without Kobe, and set off to nightclubs to make videos about how Kobe couldn’t win a championship without him.

Certain teams are willing to go over the salary cap and others are more reticent, both of which factors are influenced by the environment in which the team plays. The Lakers have always been a team willing to spend more money on players, probably in part because Los Angeles is a basketball town, and a Lakers town in particular. The revenue will be there for teams that win, and it will pay off to give the city Championships. Boston is similar. Cleveland is different: sure, they have LeBron James, whom they acquired as a draft pick and whom they will pay to keep, but they are always at risk of losing LeBron for a number of factors: for one thing, Cleveland is not as appealing to a star athlete as might be New York, LA, or even Boston, and for another, LeBron might want to seek another team that is willing to spend money to give him a better supporting cast. Cleveland, quite frankly, doesn’t have the money that some other franchises do. So how do they keep LeBron? How do they convince him to stay in Cleveland, when there are so many other, more powerful forces, encouraging him to go elsewhere?

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Shaquille O’Neil and the Economy of the Already Rich and Powerful

Enter Shaq. Just as I was falling asleep last night, Mr. Right-Click informed me that Shaquille O’Neil had been traded to the Cleveland Cavaliers, which is an interesting trade for several reasons, most notably: 1) whether the addition of Shaq will in fact help the Cavs get closer to an NBA Championship, and 2) what exactly will happen when you put Shaq on the same team with LeBron James, the NBA’s reigning MVP. Will they squabble, as Shaq did with Kobe Bryant, then a rising star, on the Lakers’ championship team of the early naught years? Or is Shaq far enough along in his career to let LeBron take center stage? Are Shaq’s talents going to mix well with LeBron’s point forward position and play-making superstardom? Or will Shaq just clog up the middle and foul out early in the third quarter? Will an older, wiser Shaq at least deign to give LeBron a high-five after a dish off assist? We in the world of basketball fandom are waiting with baited breath for October to arrive with the answers to these hypotheticals.

Shaq is past his prime, but he is definitely a hall of famer and he can still win (he shared the All Star MVP trophy this year with Kobe). He’s too old to be considered the top dog anymore, but he can still play a significant supporting role in a manner that most NBA players will never be able to do. Shaq does not have a choice about where he’s traded, but if you can get him enthusiastic about where he’s going–If you get Shaq excited about playing for Cleveland, you might just have a shot at a Championship ring. And you sell both players–LeBron and Shaq–on the deal by the promise of that ring. You keep LeBron in Cleveland by promising to get Shaq and, with him, a shot at a title. You get Shaq to come to Cleveland by dangling a ring in front of him, which–and this is the crux of my point–is the only thing that has value to NBA players of a certain breed anymore. All NBA players are rich by the standards of the popular imagination: they all drive nice cars and can afford nice homes. The really big stars are multi-millionaires from endorsement deals alone, so their NBA salary is more a means of ranking up against each other than anything else. Kobe’s day-to-day life, even with his wife’s $600 shirts being ruined by their maid, will not be affected much if the Lakers don’t pay him a lot. But a player’s salary does mean something in terms of street cred, and so getting a player to take less is highly unlikely.

Unless you give him a shot at a championship. Because that is the ultimate thing that every NBA Player wants: having achieved everything in terms of material comfort and public acclaim, an NBA Superstar never wants to retire without a Championship ring. Nobody wants to be Charles Barkley, one of history’s greatest players but always maligned for never winning a ring. And after they get one ring, they want another, or another under different circumstances. Can they win one without Shaq? Can they win one with a different coach? Shaq has four rings, and he wants another. So he’s willing to go to Cleveland, exchanged for two crappy players that would embarrass someone earlier on in their career, because there’s a shot at a ring in it for him. Money no longer has meaning for Shaq. It is all about accomplishment.

And this is true for all of the rest of the players, too. This is why the Playoffs are always the best basketball games you see in the year, in spite of the fact that players are not paid for playing in the post-season. You would think, since players are paid the same salary whether their team makes the playoffs or not, there would be instances of players wanting to quit or sit out during the playoffs. Just get a month or two off. But no–they not only play for free, while the team makes money off them, but they play their hardest. Because that win is the only prized currency in the exchange system of the premiere athlete: the thing that everyone wants but only some can get.

Now, the marxists will tell you that this is just another form of commodity fetishism, where the commodity comes to stand in for the relationship between people. In the sense that players, fans, and pundits refer to winning a championship (an achievement) in the terms of the physical symbol used to represent it (the ring), they have a point there. Or do they? Because you cannot buy a ring, can you? You cannot probably even literally buy a Championship ring, since most players would never part with theirs–though perhaps it’s good that Charles Barkley never won one, now that I think of it, since he might have had to pawn it to pay off his gambling debts. And even if you could buy the ring, you could never buy the achievement–it would be like trying to buy somebody’s college education from them, and so therefore meaningless.

The question is: if we remove money from the equation, how do we as a society assign value? Through competing with each other? Having something that someone else does not have, or having more of something? Bragging rights? Is this something inherent to humanity, or a uniquely American trait? When a player wants to win, does he want it for himself or for his team?

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