Baseball isn’t the only professional sport that could go on a hiatus in the years to come. Charles Barkley envisions a lockout down the road — due to the NBA’s agent-driven superteams.
“I hear all these clowns on television talking about how it’s great that all these players are exerting their power,” the TNT analyst and Hall-of-Famer told reporters in Charlotte, according to the Washington Post.
“Workers ain’t never going to have power over their ownership. Ever. It might work for a couple guys here or there, but in the history of the world, no workers have ever overtaken the people who own a business. When these guys are sitting home locked out in a couple years, I want you to remember I told y’all that.”
This all began when LeBron James and Chris Bosh teamed up with Dwayne Wade with the Heat in 2010. Teams have been copying that model ever since with varying levels of success. Recently, the Warriors convinced Kevin Durant to join them, and now there is talk of Anthony Davis landing with James and the Lakers following his trade request. Jimmy Butler forced his way out of Minnesota, and is now part of a superteam with the 76ers.
“With the invention of the superteam, we’re going to raid the small markets and they’re going to become extinct,” Barkley said. “That’s not a good business model. The next couple of years, when we have to redo the [Collective Bargaining Agreement], the owners are going to say, ‘Okay, you guys all want to play together and we don’t have any competitive balance.’ Let’s see what’s going to happen.”
The current CBA runs through the 2023-24 season, though there is a mutual opt-out in July of 2023. The current agreement has a clause that allows teams to keep their stars, enabling them to pay them a “supermax contract.” But that has done nothing to change this superteam trend. And Barkley says agents are a major part of the problem. With Davis, for instance, Rich Paul represents both him and James, and looks to be steering him towards Los Angeles.
“If an agent is representing the same players and saying that my players have to play together, you don’t think that’s collusion or a conflict of interest? That’s ridiculous,” Barkley said. “If a player wants to get traded, I have no problem, I understand that. But we can’t have agents saying, ‘I represent this guy and he has to be traded to my team,’ that’s not fair.”
https://nypost.com/2019/02/15/charl...utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=SocialFlow
“I hear all these clowns on television talking about how it’s great that all these players are exerting their power,” the TNT analyst and Hall-of-Famer told reporters in Charlotte, according to the Washington Post.
“Workers ain’t never going to have power over their ownership. Ever. It might work for a couple guys here or there, but in the history of the world, no workers have ever overtaken the people who own a business. When these guys are sitting home locked out in a couple years, I want you to remember I told y’all that.”
This all began when LeBron James and Chris Bosh teamed up with Dwayne Wade with the Heat in 2010. Teams have been copying that model ever since with varying levels of success. Recently, the Warriors convinced Kevin Durant to join them, and now there is talk of Anthony Davis landing with James and the Lakers following his trade request. Jimmy Butler forced his way out of Minnesota, and is now part of a superteam with the 76ers.
“With the invention of the superteam, we’re going to raid the small markets and they’re going to become extinct,” Barkley said. “That’s not a good business model. The next couple of years, when we have to redo the [Collective Bargaining Agreement], the owners are going to say, ‘Okay, you guys all want to play together and we don’t have any competitive balance.’ Let’s see what’s going to happen.”
The current CBA runs through the 2023-24 season, though there is a mutual opt-out in July of 2023. The current agreement has a clause that allows teams to keep their stars, enabling them to pay them a “supermax contract.” But that has done nothing to change this superteam trend. And Barkley says agents are a major part of the problem. With Davis, for instance, Rich Paul represents both him and James, and looks to be steering him towards Los Angeles.
“If an agent is representing the same players and saying that my players have to play together, you don’t think that’s collusion or a conflict of interest? That’s ridiculous,” Barkley said. “If a player wants to get traded, I have no problem, I understand that. But we can’t have agents saying, ‘I represent this guy and he has to be traded to my team,’ that’s not fair.”
https://nypost.com/2019/02/15/charl...utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=SocialFlow
