Bad sports, good sports: Heat trade shows what’s wrong with the NBA

Posted on June 28th, 2010 by Alan Spoll

Something is wrong with the NBA. There was a time when I really enjoyed watching professional basketball. The Sixers last won the NBA championship when I was a teenager, and they have had many bad teams over the years since then, but that didn’t stop me from watching. At some point in time, though, the league lost its way. The best evidence I can give you of this is a trade that occurred on Tuesday between the Miami Heat and the Oklahoma City Thunder, just before the NBA Draft. The Heat traded the 18th pick in the first round of the draft, along with Daequon Cook, their first round pick in the 2007 draft, to the Thunder in exchange for the 32nd pick in this year’s draft. You read that correctly. They moved down fourteen spots in the first round and threw in Cook while they were at it. They got nothing else in return, other than a few million dollars in salary cap space. How absurd.

There are several rules that have contributed to the situation that caused a trade like this to occur. The salary cap is certainly one of them, but I believe the cap itself is a good thing. The real problems come from the fact that teams have so little maneuverability due to the huge contracts that are regularly signed in the NBA. Once these guaranteed contracts are signed, if a player does not pan out, the team is stuck. Trade rules require a team to get back salaries that are within a reasonable percentage of the salaries they are sending away. The only way to get rid of an underperforming player or a player who just does not fit the team’s system is usually to take someone else’s overpaid problem off of that team’s hands. Decent players are regularly traded for some other team’s dreck simply because the dreck in question is in the last year of his contract, so the money will quickly come off of the cap. I have actually seen retired players being traded several years after they retired due to salary cap intricacies. This is one hell of a way to run a league.

Miami’s purpose in the trade was twofold. This year’s free agent class is one of the best ever. Players like Lebron James, Chris Bosh, Miami’s own Dwyane Wade, and several others have teams all over the league drooling. The Heat have a bunch of space available under the cap, but are trying to set themselves up to be able to sign more than one of these superstars. They got Cook’s salary out of the way and also put themselves into a position where they didn’t have to guarantee any money to a draft pick. If they do not manage to sign any of the marquee free agents, they will have done themselves a serious injustice, but they were clearly willing to take the chance.

Honestly, even apart from this ridiculousness, the NBA has become a weak product. I find college basketball far more enjoyable, where teams still play like teams and you have a real chance of seeing a mid-range jumper, as opposed to a constant succession of dunks and three-point attempts. I watched very few games this season, including the playoffs. Until the rules change and trades like this no longer happen, I am unlikely to dedicate much of my time to professional basketball.

Bad sports, continued:

2) Off-season injuries are often entertaining, don’t you think? Steve Smith, a star wide receiver for the Carolina Panthers, broke his arm playing in a flag football game. It has not yet been determined if the Panthers will penalize him monetarily for possibly violating the terms of his contract.

3) Some people take the term “bad sports” very literally. Victor Hanescu, a tennis player from Romania, made quite a scene at Wimbledon on Friday. He claimed that some spectators had been insulting him, and he spat at them during the fifth set. He was given a code violation, after which he seemed to intentionally lose the next game, and then he quit and walked off the court. Awesome.

Good sports:

1) Edwin Jackson, a pitcher for the Arizona Diamondbacks, threw a no-hitter on Friday, a great accomplishment, even if it was a bit of an unconventional no-no. He walked eight batters and managed to throw almost 150 pitches, but he allowed no hits and the Diamondbacks beat the Tampa Bay Rays, 1-0.

2) For the 4th consecutive time, the World Cup has managed to occur with zero doping violations. That’s refreshing, particularly for international competition.

3) There was some good tennis at Wimbledon this week as well. John Isner of the U.S. and Nicolas Mahut of France played the longest match in professional tennis history. Believe it or not, it was played over three days, and totaled over eleven hours in length. In the end, Isner won the fifth set tiebreaker 70-68 to win the match.

Bad Sports, Good Sports appears every Monday

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Alan Spoll

Alan Spoll is a software quality assurance director from the suburbs of Philadelphia where he lives with his wonderful wife and children. He has spent his entire life as a passionate fan of the Eagles, Phillies, Sixers, Flyers, and Penn State. Recent Phillies success aside, you will understand his natural negativity. Follow me on Twitter - @DocAlan02