If it makes you feel any better, go ahead and blame the lawyers for the fact that for NBA players, Toronto has become Milwaukee with hotter, exotic women and restaurants.
Hey – happy trade deadline day, Raptors fans! Seriously: with a salary cap that requires a degree in quantum physics to understand – which has teams moving rubbish contracts around like some kind of game of Old Maid, and has general managers such as the Toronto Raptors Bryan Colangelo reduced to trumpeting the size of their "trade exceptions," even while they stand by the wall like some Phil Kessel, pawing the floor anxiously waiting for one of the cool kids to call them over – it's no surprise the NBA is now the league that became too cute by half.
The more convoluted the salary cap and structure of contracts, the more agents become involved in the process. The more agents become involved in the process? The more power goes to the players. The more behind-the-scenes manoeuvring takes place.
So no wonder the sight of LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and the next belle of the ball – Chris Paul – cutting up during all-star weekend got tongues wagging. All of them are represented by Leon Rose of Creative Artists Agency – the same agency that employs Henry Thomas, who is the agent for Bosh and Dwyane Wade. And unlike Michael Jordan or Larry Bird or Magic Johnson or their ilk – who'd have slapped you upside the head if you'd suggested they called up one of their rivals to cajole them into joining them for a shot at the title – these guys are shameless in their collusion.
(I mean, really: you can carp about how tough it is for the poor Raptors or the Minnesota Timberwolves or Cleveland Cavaliers to get out from under, but when James and Bosh both take less money to join Wade with the Miami Heat than they might otherwise get elsewhere – conservative estimates are they left $50-million on the table to go to the Heat – what can you do?)
Already, the chattering classes are forecasting that Anthony's orchestration of his trade to the New York Knicks will become some kind of siren call during labour negotiations – that coupled with the Bosh and James defection to Miami, it will be the impetus for small-market teams to stand up and demand a hard salary cap or maybe even the use of a "franchise-player" designation, where much like an NFL team a player carrying that tag would not be allowed to talk to another team but is guaranteed a salary that is at least the average of the top five players at his position.
Commissioner David Stern needs to become a genius once again, because his league is already the most predictable in North American professional sports.
All four major pro leagues have different playoff formats but they all have one thing in common: two teams make it to the end and then one team wins. (Only the NHL has the caveat that one of the teams cannot be from Toronto.) Major League Baseball has no salary cap, yet since 2000, 15 different teams have made the World Series. There have been nine different winners. The NFL – the model of competitive balance – has had 16 different finalists during that time … and the same number of different championship teams as baseball. The NHL (which now has a salary cap) has had eight different champions during that time and 12 different finalists.
As for the NBA? No other league has been as predictable. There have been 10 different finalists since 2000 – and five different champions. The Los Angeles Lakers have won back-to-back titles twice. So much for the way the salary cap is held out as the staple of bar-room discussion by far too many fans as the cure-all for what ails their sport.
Some people see the very notion of a salary cap as providing hope, but as the NBA has shown, the hope is often false. The geeks are still often left standing alone, consoling themselves with James Johnson.