Someone's Favorite

In a perfect world, all of you would read The Baseline all day long. But I recognize there are differences. So how about taking a look at the following FD-friendly posts:

-Sleep-deprived column on how messy complex salaries have gotten and what it means for fans.

-Death of the mini-max dream.

-Is it time to redefine tampering?

-Why Nike should want the public to know that LeBron got dunked on.

Through Flesh and Of Soil

After having spent much of the morning trying to convince people that Shaq-to-Cavs would suck, I've given up and decided to seek refugee in the realm of abstractions. Who among us loves not to spend a good twenty minutes in a crowded coffee shop pondering the nature of time in today's NBA?

I'll keep this brief, but think about it: Only a few years ago, time barely existed in the Association. Market value for players was relative, and set each summer. GM's threw out huge deals, rarely considering how they'd hog-tie the team down the road. Max extensions created the illusion of franchise guys, though it was never quite clear who feted whom. Then came the mini-max, which urged teams to win now, and at the same time, opened the door for players to be free of a huge deal sooner rather than later (who knows, we might yet see that side of the coin). 2010 had everyone thinking about cap space two years down the road. And now, with money dearer than ever, suddenly dumping Brad Miller's contract—which expires in 2010—is worth it just for one year of savings.

No one trend brought about this shift. And who knows if it will continue once 2010 passes, or the economy recovers somewhat. Still, there's no mistaking that time is now urgently, anxiously present, part of the fabric of this league, in a way it hasn't been before. Perhaps it's overcompensation, but how blind, weird, and weightless things were before. I think it's a good thing.

Now talk about rumors.

At Least He Gets a Page

It's raining Josh Smith interviews; here's mine.

I trust that all of you are capable of expressing outrage at Iguodala's contract, and guessing that Smith's probably none too happy right now—especially since the Sixers briefly courted him, and around the league, he's held in higher esteem than Iggy. So instead, let's focus on the highly speculative theory that I probably should've just asked Smith about while I had him on the phone: With the Hawks semi-legitimate, it all of a sudden matters that he's from Atlanta. This is no longer a team that plays in a vacuum, deflects sentiment, and thwarts all attempts at civic appeal—which, with basketball in that city, was kind of a firework just waiting to ignite.

At least for now, it's a real basketball team, one that would be heartened to wake up and find a native son as their star of the future. Not that this virtual homecoming makes up for Iguodala's extra $2.5 million a year (plus incentives), but it's got to count for something. And it's not like Smith got to experience any of it during his rookie deal—at least not until the final year. Plus, with Randolph Morris on board, they're just a Dwight Howard away from resurrecting that feared AAU frontline the Recluse once saw playing at a tournament opposite the J.R. Smith Show. Again, that local history, meaningful roots thing that, while it can backfire, is also novel and empowering in the right hands. Weird—and probably frustrating for Smith—that it could all have lain fallow for so long.

Incidentally, Johnson/Horford/Smith is a solid nucleus in a way that the SF brigade of the past never was, which in some weird way makes Childress's departure a step toward credibility. Don't get me wrong, Childress could've started any number of places, but Smith and Horford should make for enough athletic defense and rebounding. A smooth shooter like Marvin should be by now does make a certain amount of sense, albeit in as conventional a way as possible. How funny indeed, that one of this site's patron saints now inhabits a promising line-up that has tried both apositionality (pre-Horford) and redundancy (late last year), and arrived where it is today.

Gin For All Relatives

I don't think LeBron will go to Europe. Even after the $50 million. And even after the revelation that part ownership could be an option. But as Ballerblogger observes, "If the NBA's collective bargaining agreement allowed it, you can bet that James would negotiate an ownership percentage in the Cavs, or the soon-to-be Brooklyn Nets, or the New York Knicks."

Maybe the NBA would be willing to go without a superstar (or two) for a year (or two). It would be a rotating vacation plan, with players drawn overseas for a variety of reasons—in addition to the money of course. Kobe as the internationalist, Bron the businessman, Melo, in a bizarre version of staying real, going where his game fits best. What fascinates me, though, is that this could bring about a change in the CBA to make stars richer—and empower them—without destroying the salary cap system.

Step back for a second, factor in his invention of the three-year max deal, and all of a sudden LeBron not only the most supernatural figure since MJ, but one whose singificance involves an entirely different order of innovation. Because, let's be honest, "the next MJ" was only ever so much about on-court style. LeBron plays nothing like Jordan; the issue has been finding a player whose off-court stature didn't just seem like a reasonable facsimile of the man himself.



When I wrote about the eschatology of 2010, it was partly based on LeBron's aura on the court, but also how large he loomed in the league's economics. But I don't think I did enough to emphasize how intentional that economic impact was.

James may be messianic in that vague, "Basketball Jesus" sense (in retrospect, doesn't Ray Allen's acting job seem more about LeBron than anything Ray ever was?), or in the ways he alters the formal parameters of the game. Increasingly, though, I've begun to think of him as that kind of figure when it comes to the business of basketball. Hired his boys when everyone said it was stupid. The mini-max. And now Europe, which could be about money—or it could be about altering domestic revenue streams for athletes. Whose to say this couldn't become the model for many, or all, players, not just LeBron or Kobe? That's how Vitamin Water so easily recruited all those celebs; it's not unsustainable in the way that cap-less mayhem—here or abroad—is. And the best part is, it's at once uber-capitalistic and vaguely socialist.

It's funny that, as we're all busy trashing Bron for his lack of balls on the world stage, he's showing he's nothing less than a reformer when it comes to NBA labor practices. Thinking outside of the box and willing to go right at the CBA. That may be a rose-colored, overly generous version of things, but the potential's certainly there. And for LeBron to lead, all that has to happen is for others to follow.

Downhill Moses

This Josh Childress thing is, above all else, absolutely fucking hilarious. It's an embarrassment to the NBA—after all, you've got a lottery pick whose has developed his talent despite an adverse situation, ready to take on the league, threatening out of sheer frustration to pack it up and take his game overseas.

Brandon Jennings wants to change the system. Foreigners can return to the FIBA environment. Plain and simple, Childress belongs in the NBA. He just doesn't think of the Hawks as a valid NBA team, so much so that he's willing to make all sorts of personal and professional adjustments if it means finding some sort of credible situation.

I don't want to get all quasi-political here, but a player like Childress belongs in the NBA. That's the real threat international leagues pose: Not as a bigger draw in these troubled economic times, or as a reactionary barrier against Stern's plans for a worldwide brand. Far more gravely, they can actually erode the NBA as we know it. Letting players do what we fans have always wanted to do—i.e., completely disrespect organizations—and from there, take away from the base we pretty much count on inhabiting the NBA. As much as Jennings will be the glamor story, if Childress goes, and performs well, and enjoys himself, all of a sudden we might have another NBA/ABA situation on our hands.

And if Stern is wise, which he is, that's the situation he'll look back to. Over here, we still regard non-American teams as second-tier; unlike the ABA, international play is seen as both inferior and superior, deficient in pure ability but more akin to some people's vision of pure basketball. At the very least, it's different, and in theory, the Euro invasion was supposed to bring some of its ethos into the decaying league. That didn't quite work out, and the fact that it preceded this opposition on horizon kind of fucks up the ABA parallel.



At this point, the only smart interpretation is that overseas player can augment the NBA's identity, not overtake it. The other option is that it eats away at the league's core, further compromising it without exactly exporting it intact. The solutions? The safe play would be for Stern to somehow intervene and stem this hypothetical flow of talent to overseas. Make sure the Hawks let Childress go and maybe reconsider that age limit (because not everyone who heads there out of high school will be Brandon Jennings). Then again, these could be the first steps, or falling dominoes, toward a unified international league.

Stern wants a worldwide NBA franchise brand, and we can quibble over whether a merger of sorts would be a contradiction or compromise. It partly goes back to this tricky notion of the NBA's "identity." No longer is it as simple as a too-black game needing some whitening and fundamentals. Unlike the ABA's showmanship and creativity, it's not clear at this point what the international game does to enhance the NBA.

Then again, if the NBA itself starts to dissipate, then combining the two might be an exercise in pragmatism, not archetypes and keywords.