Announcement

Collapse

The Rules of Pacers Digest

Hello everyone,

Whether your are a long standing forum member or whether you have just registered today, it's a good idea to read and review the rules below so that you have a very good idea of what to expect when you come to Pacers Digest.

A quick note to new members: Your posts will not immediately show up when you make them. An administrator has to approve at least your first post before the forum software will later upgrade your account to the status of a fully-registered member. This usually happens within a couple of hours or so after your post(s) is/are approved, so you may need to be a little patient at first.

Why do we do this? So that it's more difficult for spammers (be they human or robot) to post, and so users who are banned cannot immediately re-register and start dousing people with verbal flames.

Below are the rules of Pacers Digest. After you have read them, you will have a very good sense of where we are coming from, what we expect, what we don't want to see, and how we react to things.

Rule #1

Pacers Digest is intended to be a place to discuss basketball without having to deal with the kinds of behaviors or attitudes that distract people from sticking with the discussion of the topics at hand. These unwanted distractions can come in many forms, and admittedly it can sometimes be tricky to pin down each and every kind that can rear its ugly head, but we feel that the following examples and explanations cover at least a good portion of that ground and should at least give people a pretty good idea of the kinds of things we actively discourage:

"Anyone who __________ is a liar / a fool / an idiot / a blind homer / has their head buried in the sand / a blind hater / doesn't know basketball / doesn't watch the games"

"People with intelligence will agree with me when I say that __________"

"Only stupid people think / believe / do ___________"

"I can't wait to hear something from PosterX when he/she sees that **insert a given incident or current event that will have probably upset or disappointed PosterX here**"

"He/she is just delusional"

"This thread is stupid / worthless / embarrassing"

"I'm going to take a moment to point and / laugh at PosterX / GroupOfPeopleY who thought / believed *insert though/belief here*"

"Remember when PosterX said OldCommentY that no longer looks good? "

In general, if a comment goes from purely on topic to something 'ad hominem' (personal jabs, personal shots, attacks, flames, however you want to call it, towards a person, or a group of people, or a given city/state/country of people), those are most likely going to be found intolerable.

We also dissuade passive aggressive behavior. This can be various things, but common examples include statements that are basically meant to imply someone is either stupid or otherwise incapable of holding a rational conversation. This can include (but is not limited to) laughing at someone's conclusions rather than offering an honest rebuttal, asking people what game they were watching, or another common problem is Poster X will say "that player isn't that bad" and then Poster Y will say something akin to "LOL you think that player is good". We're not going to tolerate those kinds of comments out of respect for the community at large and for the sake of trying to just have an honest conversation.

Now, does the above cover absolutely every single kind of distraction that is unwanted? Probably not, but you should by now have a good idea of the general types of things we will be discouraging. The above examples are meant to give you a good feel for / idea of what we're looking for. If something new or different than the above happens to come along and results in the same problem (that being, any other attitude or behavior that ultimately distracts from actually just discussing the topic at hand, or that is otherwise disrespectful to other posters), we can and we will take action to curb this as well, so please don't take this to mean that if you managed to technically avoid saying something exactly like one of the above examples that you are then somehow off the hook.

That all having been said, our goal is to do so in a generally kind and respectful way, and that doesn't mean the moment we see something we don't like that somebody is going to be suspended or banned, either. It just means that at the very least we will probably say something about it, quite possibly snipping out the distracting parts of the post in question while leaving alone the parts that are actually just discussing the topics, and in the event of a repeating or excessive problem, then we will start issuing infractions to try to further discourage further repeat problems, and if it just never seems to improve, then finally suspensions or bans will come into play. We would prefer it never went that far, and most of the time for most of our posters, it won't ever have to.

A slip up every once and a while is pretty normal, but, again, when it becomes repetitive or excessive, something will be done. Something occasional is probably going to be let go (within reason), but when it starts to become habitual or otherwise a pattern, odds are very good that we will step in.

There's always a small minority that like to push people's buttons and/or test their own boundaries with regards to the administrators, and in the case of someone acting like that, please be aware that this is not a court of law, but a private website run by people who are simply trying to do the right thing as they see it. If we feel that you are a special case that needs to be dealt with in an exceptional way because your behavior isn't explicitly mirroring one of our above examples of what we generally discourage, we can and we will take atypical action to prevent this from continuing if you are not cooperative with us.

Also please be aware that you will not be given a pass simply by claiming that you were 'only joking,' because quite honestly, when someone really is just joking, for one thing most people tend to pick up on the joke, including the person or group that is the target of the joke, and for another thing, in the event where an honest joke gets taken seriously and it upsets or angers someone, the person who is truly 'only joking' will quite commonly go out of his / her way to apologize and will try to mend fences. People who are dishonest about their statements being 'jokes' do not do so, and in turn that becomes a clear sign of what is really going on. It's nothing new.

In any case, quite frankly, the overall quality and health of the entire forum's community is more important than any one troublesome user will ever be, regardless of exactly how a problem is exhibiting itself, and if it comes down to us having to make a choice between you versus the greater health and happiness of the entire community, the community of this forum will win every time.

Lastly, there are also some posters, who are generally great contributors and do not otherwise cause any problems, who sometimes feel it's their place to provoke or to otherwise 'mess with' that small minority of people described in the last paragraph, and while we possibly might understand why you might feel you WANT to do something like that, the truth is we can't actually tolerate that kind of behavior from you any more than we can tolerate the behavior from them. So if we feel that you are trying to provoke those other posters into doing or saying something that will get themselves into trouble, then we will start to view you as a problem as well, because of the same reason as before: The overall health of the forum comes first, and trying to stir the pot with someone like that doesn't help, it just makes it worse. Some will simply disagree with this philosophy, but if so, then so be it because ultimately we have to do what we think is best so long as it's up to us.

If you see a problem that we haven't addressed, the best and most appropriate course for a forum member to take here is to look over to the left of the post in question. See underneath that poster's name, avatar, and other info, down where there's a little triangle with an exclamation point (!) in it? Click that. That allows you to report the post to the admins so we can definitely notice it and give it a look to see what we feel we should do about it. Beyond that, obviously it's human nature sometimes to want to speak up to the poster in question who has bothered you, but we would ask that you try to refrain from doing so because quite often what happens is two or more posters all start going back and forth about the original offending post, and suddenly the entire thread is off topic or otherwise derailed. So while the urge to police it yourself is understandable, it's best to just report it to us and let us handle it. Thank you!

All of the above is going to be subject to a case by case basis, but generally and broadly speaking, this should give everyone a pretty good idea of how things will typically / most often be handled.

Rule #2

If the actions of an administrator inspire you to make a comment, criticism, or express a concern about it, there is a wrong place and a couple of right places to do so.

The wrong place is to do so in the original thread in which the administrator took action. For example, if a post gets an infraction, or a post gets deleted, or a comment within a larger post gets clipped out, in a thread discussing Paul George, the wrong thing to do is to distract from the discussion of Paul George by adding your off topic thoughts on what the administrator did.

The right places to do so are:

A) Start a thread about the specific incident you want to talk about on the Feedback board. This way you are able to express yourself in an area that doesn't throw another thread off topic, and this way others can add their two cents as well if they wish, and additionally if there's something that needs to be said by the administrators, that is where they will respond to it.

B) Send a private message to the administrators, and they can respond to you that way.

If this is done the wrong way, those comments will be deleted, and if it's a repeating problem then it may also receive an infraction as well.

Rule #3

If a poster is bothering you, and an administrator has not or will not deal with that poster to the extent that you would prefer, you have a powerful tool at your disposal, one that has recently been upgraded and is now better than ever: The ability to ignore a user.

When you ignore a user, you will unfortunately still see some hints of their existence (nothing we can do about that), however, it does the following key things:

A) Any post they make will be completely invisible as you scroll through a thread.

B) The new addition to this feature: If someone QUOTES a user you are ignoring, you do not have to read who it was, or what that poster said, unless you go out of your way to click on a link to find out who it is and what they said.

To utilize this feature, from any page on Pacers Digest, scroll to the top of the page, look to the top right where it says 'Settings' and click that. From the settings page, look to the left side of the page where it says 'My Settings', and look down from there until you see 'Edit Ignore List' and click that. From here, it will say 'Add a Member to Your List...' Beneath that, click in the text box to the right of 'User Name', type in or copy & paste the username of the poster you are ignoring, and once their name is in the box, look over to the far right and click the 'Okay' button. All done!

Rule #4

Regarding infractions, currently they carry a value of one point each, and that point will expire in 31 days. If at any point a poster is carrying three points at the same time, that poster will be suspended until the oldest of the three points expires.

Rule #5

When you share or paste content or articles from another website, you must include the URL/link back to where you found it, who wrote it, and what website it's from. Said content will be removed if this doesn't happen.

An example:

If I copy and paste an article from the Indianapolis Star website, I would post something like this:

http://www.linktothearticlegoeshere.com/article
Title of the Article
Author's Name
Indianapolis Star

Rule #6

We cannot tolerate illegal videos on Pacers Digest. This means do not share any links to them, do not mention any websites that host them or link to them, do not describe how to find them in any way, and do not ask about them. Posts doing anything of the sort will be removed, the offenders will be contacted privately, and if the problem becomes habitual, you will be suspended, and if it still persists, you will probably be banned.

The legal means of watching or listening to NBA games are NBA League Pass Broadband (for US, or for International; both cost money) and NBA Audio League Pass (which is free). Look for them on NBA.com.

Rule #7

Provocative statements in a signature, or as an avatar, or as the 'tagline' beneath a poster's username (where it says 'Member' or 'Administrator' by default, if it is not altered) are an unwanted distraction that will more than likely be removed on sight. There can be shades of gray to this, but in general this could be something political or religious that is likely going to provoke or upset people, or otherwise something that is mean-spirited at the expense of a poster, a group of people, or a population.

It may or may not go without saying, but this goes for threads and posts as well, particularly when it's not made on the off-topic board (Market Square).

We do make exceptions if we feel the content is both innocuous and unlikely to cause social problems on the forum (such as wishing someone a Merry Christmas or a Happy Easter), and we also also make exceptions if such topics come up with regards to a sports figure (such as the Lance Stephenson situation bringing up discussions of domestic abuse and the law, or when Jason Collins came out as gay and how that lead to some discussion about gay rights).

However, once the discussion seems to be more/mostly about the political issues instead of the sports figure or his specific situation, the thread is usually closed.

Rule #8

We prefer self-restraint and/or modesty when making jokes or off topic comments in a sports discussion thread. They can be fun, but sometimes they derail or distract from a topic, and we don't want to see that happen. If we feel it is a problem, we will either delete or move those posts from the thread.

Rule #9

Generally speaking, we try to be a "PG-13" rated board, and we don't want to see sexual content or similarly suggestive content. Vulgarity is a more muddled issue, though again we prefer things to lean more towards "PG-13" than "R". If we feel things have gone too far, we will step in.

Rule #10

We like small signatures, not big signatures. The bigger the signature, the more likely it is an annoying or distracting signature.

Rule #11

Do not advertise anything without talking about it with the administrators first. This includes advertising with your signature, with your avatar, through private messaging, and/or by making a thread or post.
See more
See less

A good article on competitive balance

Collapse
X
Collapse
 
  • Page of 2
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts
Previous 1 2 template Next
  • #1

    A good article on competitive balance

    http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/pos...titive-balance

    NBA owners and players are in New York fighting about money.

    And, maybe, one other thing.

    More than 90 days into the lockout, and more than a year into talks about the next collective bargaining agreement, the union and the league still can't agree whether or not they're fighting over competitive balance.

    The league says they want to change how the NBA operates, to give fans in all 30 NBA markets hope at the outset of every season. The league says now is a rare chance to fix a system in which teams are fairly well locked into categories of contenders and non-contenders, and that a team's payroll tells you a hell of a lot about how well that team's going to perform. The league's insistence on a hard cap, or a luxury tax so stiff it might function like one, has been arguably the talks' biggest sticking point.

    The union says the entire effort is sleight of hand. The union says that the league's talk about competitive balance, and making the game more exciting for fans, is merely an attempt to put a friendly face on the league's latest scheme to reach into players' pockets.

    FACT: The NBA has terrible competitive balance

    Neither side disputes this. There are obvious and strong numbers to support the idea that other major American sports have more teams contending, and more close games, than the NBA. Respected economists made a clever measure of a league's competitive balance, called Noll-Scully. By this measure, the NBA finishes last of the big four sports just about every year, and recently completed the least competitive decade of any major American sport in the last century, with a Noll-Scully score approaching 3. The NFL, meanwhile, has a score over the same period of 1.5. Needless to say, lower is better.

    In the NBA the gap between the good teams and the bad teams is wide. Very wide. When you tune in for a midseason contest between the Lakers and Kings, you have a strong idea who's going to win.

    And, making this news extra hard to swallow for fans in those unlucky markets is evidence that in the NBA it's rare for bad teams to become good. One way to test this is to see how a team's wins this year work to predict their wins next year. The answer in the NBA is a lot. If you want to know where your team will finish in the standings next year, where they finished this year is a strong predictor. That's not nearly as true in other sports.

    Consider that over the last quarter century in the NBA, a measly eight teams have won titles. In baseball that's true of 17 teams, for the NHL and NFL the number is 13. If there were lots of turnover among the elite, this simply wouldn't be so. The NBA is also last in terms of how many teams have made the Finals or conference finals, and, according to the NBA, now is the time to close the gap between the strong and the weak.

    THEORY: That lack of competitive balance costs the NBA and its players money

    We used to live in a world where the most important NBA revenues came from those attending in person. In the wired global future, however, there's almost infinite potential for the NBA to grow the televised game. The key growth audience is watching on screens -- on TVs, mobile phones, or computers -- and increasingly in places like Brazil or China.

    What matters here is that while Laker fans may be content to buy a ticket to see their team roll to big victories. But fans watching on national or international TV don't have the same team allegiances. They want great entertainment -- better than whatever's happening a click away. As a television product, basketball needs to be exciting from the opening tip to the final buzzer.

    In recent NBA marketing research, even fans rooting strongly for one team identified closely fought games as their top priority in choosing what to watch. There has also been evidence from the NBA and European soccer research that as games turn into blowouts, people at home are quick to change the channel. There is value to the NBA and its advertisers in simply keeping more games close. That will keep more people watching for longer, which will mean better TV ratings, which, the theory goes, will lead to more national and international revenues for the league to share with players.

    THEORY: That competitive imbalance is because some teams are really rich

    Some teams in the NBA are really bad, and many of those have low salaries. Meanwhile, other teams are really good, and many of them have high salaries. It's not perfectly true -- the Knicks famously had massive payrolls and few wins. This last season the Bulls and Thunder were among the league's elite in all but salaries.

    But by and large, the playoff teams spend a lot, and the lottery teams spend little.

    Economists differ on this. Some find that the current NBA salary is a meaningful predictor of wins. Others say it is only a weak predictor, and point to the likes of the Bulls and Thunder who won a ton with small salaries.

    To the extent salaries do determine wins, however, there's a chicken-and-egg question. Do winning teams have high payrolls because they are good, or are they good because they have high payrolls?

    Consider the Cavaliers before LeBron James. They knew they were bad. The key decision-makers are on the record. They made an organizational decision to shed payroll every which way they could. It was not a case of competing as hard as they could. The strategy was to preserve draft picks and payroll for a time when they had a star to build around.

    This is the standard playbook for turning around an NBA team, and it's as good a strategy as any.

    When that same "poor" team got James, however, the money story changed completely and they soon came to be a very high payroll team.

    So were they good in those later years because they spent more? Or did they spend more because they were good?

    If they had spent more without getting a player like James, would the league have been better off? Or would the Cavaliers have been spending more for role players, to little effect?

    Title teams essentially always have stars, and there are not 30 stars. There is no way to spread money around the NBA to get every team a player to build around.

    "Payroll is significant and there is a correlation [with winning]," says deputy commissioner Adam Silver. "It’s not a perfect correlation and that’s a point [union president] Derek Fisher has made many times; and we don’t mean to take away anything from his multiple championships. But, it’s a critical issue. And a GM that’s given $100 million to spend as opposed to a GM or owner who’s given $50 million to spend is at a huge competitive advantage and that’s something we want to fix in this deal."

    The Lakers, points out David Stern, spend "well over $100 million on the payroll and Sacramento at 45, that’s not an acceptable alternative for us. That can’t be the outcome that we agree to."

    FACT: A hard cap or stiff luxury tax would change ... something

    The NBA is ardently pushing for either a hard cap or a luxury tax so stiff it would function like one.

    One way or another, teams like the Lakers and Mavericks will almost certainly have to shed salaries in the next CBA. Players like Brendan Haywood, Caron Butler, J.J. Barea, Metta World Peace and Lamar Odom could be redistributed, one way or another.

    The great thing that money buys you in the NBA is not so much more talent, but a greater ability to weather front office mistakes. Mark Cuban "missed" on Brendan Haywood, but it hardly doomed Dallas. Thanks to his deep pockets, he got to try again when Tyson Chandler came available.

    A hard cap or something like it would limit Cuban's ability to spend his way out of bad decisions, which will make things more tense for fans of rich teams like the Mavericks.

    THEORY: More equal spending would mean more equal winning

    But would cutting the Lakers and Mavericks salaries down to size really increase the likelihood the Kings or Timberwolves could win a championship?

    The NBA says yes. They are working with internal numbers showing that if you want to win one more games per season, the recipe is to spend an additional 3.8 percent on player salaries. The Lakers' salaries alone, by this analysis, give them an 82 percent chance of making the playoffs before the season even starts.

    The union says basketball is a game of just 10 players on the court -- one star can make a huge impact. The wins and high salaries congregate around those stars.

    British economist David Forrest, who has studied sports leagues, says that hard caps are a major economic boon to ownership: "The way owners end up getting their fingers burnt in sports leagues is what you might call an arms race. It's in all their best interests not to go out and buy all the talent. But if things are calm, one club will see its chance, to get the special reward, financially and otherwise, of winning championships and so on. If all the others can be relied on just to carry on spending normal amounts of money, it's in the interest of one to go out and try to buy the talent and finish on top of the league. Of course, when that's seen, someone else will say well we've got to go nuclear as well. So a lot of agreements in sports leagues, to try to contain costs, break down. Are you familiar with the prisoner's dilemma? It's in the interest of everyone for them all to keep low wages. But one of them breaks ranks, and the war breaks out again, and the costs go through the roof. So, sports leagues would like some permanent way of stopping an arms race. And in America, leagues seem to find that they get this through regulators and the law very readily compared with Europe."

    Deputy commissioner Silver, however, denies that the league's interest in a stiff tax or a hard cap has to do with keeping salaries down. "By definition, it can't depress salaries" he says, referring to the league's offer to guarantee players a fixed percentage of basketball revenues. "So the economic discussion in terms of paying a percent of BRI or overall revenues to the players, both sides accept. ... We’re negotiating first in the aggregate as to the total amount we pay. So it cannot possibly depress salaries; that’s the math."

    That total to be paid to all players will not go down, or change in any way, should the league close the gap between how much rich and poor teams can spend.

    "This is not about suppressing salaries," says David Stern. "This is about distributing talents and salaries in a different way than we currently do. ... That’s what our proposals have been about."

    THEORY: It's really about reducing guaranteed contracts.

    It's generally true that NBA contracts are guaranteed, while NFL contracts are not. It's entirely untrue that that's because NBA players have guaranteed contracts as a birthright. The simple truth is that every player in either league is eligible to have guaranteed or non-guaranteed contracts. Your entire NFL roster could have guaranteed deals. Why doesn't that happen?

    Because the NFL's hard cap makes it bad strategy to hand out guaranteed contracts. Owners simply don't do it -- if the player becomes injured or unproductive for any reason, it's just too costly to keep him on the roster, tying up precious cap space. So all but the stars face the reality of being paid about as long as they are productive, and no longer. That's a tough gig for players, compared to the deals they could command on the free market. NBPA head Billy Hunter has made it a "blood issue" to keep the league's middle class from facing the same degree of uncertainty, where the vast majority of players could be unemployed every offseason.

    And the union says this is the NBA's real motivation in arguing for competitive balance. They are really arguing for a way to sign up the best players in the world, while protecting against having to commit to those players beyond their most productive periods.

    FACT: Hard caps are unproven in increasing competitive balance.

    The NFL has a hard cap and has tremendous parity, where any team has a good shot at winning any game. But the NFL has always had great parity, even before the current salary structure.

    The NHL has recently imposed a harder cap. So how's that working out? Some economists find "weak evidence" that it is having a desirable effect on making the league more competitive. Others say a mild tightening of the standings in the NHL is attributable to other factors.

    The NBA makes a convincing and logical case that redistributing talent would mean more excitement for fans, and more revenues for the league. And it might. But if it's that simple, why is it so hard to find examples of leagues that have achieved that?

    It's a tough issue to resolve ... and until it is resolved, it's likely these CBA talks won't find resolution.
    Why do teams tank? Ask a Spurs fan.
    Tags: None
  • #2
    Re: A good article on competitive balance

    Brings up a lot of points without any real conclusion. I still think a hard cap would help but it's not the ultimate tool to achieve better balance. Killing sign and trades as the owners have proposed is a must. That way players can't go to another team without giving up the additional year and higher % of raises in their contract. I think that alone would have stopped most of the movement we saw last year including the big 3. Melo would most likely still be in Denver, at least for another year.
    Why do teams tank? Ask a Spurs fan.

    Comment

    • #3
      Re: A good article on competitive balance

      Originally posted by Pacerized View Post
      Brings up a lot of points without any real conclusion. I still think a hard cap would help but it's not the ultimate tool to achieve better balance. Killing sign and trades as the owners have proposed is a must. That way players can't go to another team without giving up the additional year and higher % of raises in their contract. I think that alone would have stopped most of the movement we saw last year including the big 3. Melo would most likely still be in Denver, at least for another year.
      I agree, if a team can't our right sign a player they shouldn't be able to use another teams Bird rights in order to obtain said player. If you sign a player you should not be able to trade the player for at least one season.

      Comment

      • #4
        Re: A good article on competitive balance

        As good as the NBA is in terms of the game, the action, the athleticism, getting to see the players up close, their expressions, there's not much like it. NFL and MLB doesn't have that. But the issue with it not being competitive in A LOT of games is a huge problem and perhaps the biggest reason the NBA will never be the most popular league in the US. Most interesting is, the problem can be fixed.

        Comment

        • #5
          Re: A good article on competitive balance

          Originally posted by BlueNGold View Post
          As good as the NBA is in terms of the game, the action, the athleticism, getting to see the players up close, their expressions, there's not much like it. NFL and MLB doesn't have that. But the issue with it not being competitive in A LOT of games is a huge problem and perhaps the biggest reason the NBA will never be the most popular league in the US. Most interesting is, the problem can be fixed.
          Can it, though? The thing about the NBA is one great player can have more of an impact on the game (and on the team) than any other sport. If you ran a mock snake draft with 30 teams, with all players eligible, I think the teams with the top 10 picks would be the best because they'd get the superstars.

          (On a tangent, that'd be a real interesting exercise. This board has enough knowledgeable NBA fans to pull it off. And since it was my idea, I'm demanding to be Detroit. )

          Anyway, if you look at whose won titles, only the 2004 Pistons have won without a Hall of Famer (at least a surefire one anyway). I bet if you look at teams that have made the Finals since Bird and Magic entered the league, they all had at least one Hall of Famer (or future one). That's why I think it's harder in the NBA to create a parity situation like the NFL has, or even baseball or hockey.

          Comment

          • #6
            Re: A good article on competitive balance

            One comment. Have the economists who point to the Bulls and Thunder ever heard of the rookie wage scale? If we were back in the Glenn Robinson days, they wouldn't have low salaries, because they would have paid Rose and Durant market value.
            Come to the Dark Side -- There's cookies!

            Comment

            • #7
              Re: A good article on competitive balance

              Originally posted by BlueNGold View Post
              But the issue with it not being competitive in A LOT of games is a huge problem and perhaps the biggest reason the NBA will never be the most popular league in the US. Most interesting is, the problem can be fixed.
              The NBA will never, ever be the most popular league in the US because basketball is simply not the most popular sport. In reality it's always been behind football and baseball. Always has been and always will be. It's because of Stern and the superstar led dynasty teams of the 80s/90s that the NBA has even gotten some amount of airtime to rival that of the NFL and MLB.

              Why is NCAA football more popular than NCAA basketball? Because football is simply a more popular sport. Certainly I don't think it's because NCAA football is a better run organization than the basketball side of things. The football side is incredibly popular even though they don't have a legitimate way of determining a champion while basketball has arguably the best post-season tournament in all of sports.

              Football is king in this country and always will be.

              Comment

              • #8
                Re: A good article on competitive balance

                Originally posted by d_c View Post
                Football is king in this country and always will be.
                People used to think that was true for baseball too.

                Comment

                • #9
                  Re: A good article on competitive balance

                  Originally posted by Eleazar View Post
                  People used to think that was true for baseball too.
                  The thing that is different about football right now compared to baseball (in the era when baseball was king) is that football has established itself as #1 at BOTH the professional and amateur level. Baseball has never done that. And pro football simply got off to a much later start that pro baseball. In fact the time that it took for football to catch up in popularity baseball was approximately the time of the head start that baseball got in first getting established.

                  And it has grown to the extent that the amateur football teams in regions that don't have a pro team (many parts of the SEC) basically ARE the pro team in that area.

                  And again, this despite the fact that college basketball has a far more legitimate (and compelling) way of actually determining a champion. It's the better run side of the NCAA organization but it hasn't made basketball more popular.
                  Last edited by d_c; 10-02-2011, 08:38 PM.

                  Comment

                  • #10
                    Re: A good article on competitive balance

                    Well in the trio of Baseball, Football, and Basketball basketball is by far the youngest sport. The first instance of professional football came the year following the creation of basketball. So based on your theory of head starts, basketball is bound to overcome football in the next decade or so. Based on the latest gallup survey I could find (2001) basketball is vastly more popular with the younger generation than football.

                    Anyways my point is just because something is true today doesn't mean it will be true tomorrow. For all we know a decade from now Hockey and Soccer will be the two dominate sports in the US. Yeah the odds of that happening are extremely slim, but it is not that far of a stretch for basketball to become as popular as football. For most people basketball practically didn't exist before Bird and Magic.

                    Comment

                    • #11
                      Re: A good article on competitive balance

                      Originally posted by Eleazar View Post
                      For most people basketball practically didn't exist before Bird and Magic.
                      And that's what attracted the casual fan to NBA. It wasn't competitive balance. It was a of couple superstars creating a rivalry between two dynasties that combined for 8 titles in the same decade. And remember that Stern publicly begged Jordan to come back for one more year with the Bulls after 98'. He certainly wasn't doing it in the name of parity. He knew that another year of the Bulls trying to extend their dynasty = $.

                      Even with baseball last year, I'm very glad the SF Giants finally got off the snide and won for the first time in 53 years, but MLB probably wasn't too happy with it. They got some of the worst World Series TV ratings in quite some time because the series didn't involve one of the juggernauts from the Northeast. So while Rangers vs. Giants did create some parity, the casual fan didn't care much for it.

                      Make no mistake about it, sports leagues will always love the traditional dynasties fighting it out for the title because that makes more money. Always has.

                      Comment

                      • #12
                        Re: A good article on competitive balance

                        Originally posted by d_c View Post
                        And that's what attracted the casual fan to NBA. It wasn't competitive balance. It was a of couple superstars creating a rivalry between two dynasties that combined for 8 titles in the same decade. And remember that Stern publicly begged Jordan to come back for one more year with the Bulls after 98'. He certainly wasn't doing it in the name of parity. He knew that another year of the Bulls trying to extend their dynasty = $.

                        Even with baseball last year, I'm very glad the SF Giants finally got off the snide and won for the first time in 53 years, but MLB probably wasn't too happy with it. They got some of the worst World Series TV ratings in quite some time because the series didn't involve one of the juggernauts from the Northeast. So while Rangers vs. Giants did create some parity, the casual fan didn't care much for it.

                        Make no mistake about it, sports leagues will always love the traditional dynasties fighting it out for the title because that makes more money. Always has.
                        Did you completely ignore the part where I said what is true today doesn't mean it will be true tomorrow? There is an evolution to everything. Yes, the flashiness of those great players gets new people into the game, but it is the parity and competitiveness that keeps fans around after the flare of the great players wears off.

                        Comment

                        • #13
                          Re: A good article on competitive balance

                          Originally posted by Eleazar View Post
                          Did you completely ignore the part where I said what is true today doesn't mean it will be true tomorrow? There is an evolution to everything. Yes, the flashiness of those great players gets new people into the game, but it is the parity and competitiveness that keeps fans around after the flare of the great players wears off.
                          The NBA has experienced some of its highest ratings the past few years BECAUSE of the rekindling of the Lakers/Celtics rivalry and what appears to be a Heat assembling a juggernaut.

                          Fans like the flash of great players, but what they really love watching are great teams/dynasties. If Stern didn't like that, he would've encouraged Jordan to stay retired after 1993, but of course he was begging him to stay on after 98'. And that's because Stern is a businessman who knows what makes money. He's a businessman in the entertainment industry and his goal is to make money, not achieve a level of moral equality.

                          Comment

                          • #14
                            Re: A good article on competitive balance

                            Originally posted by d_c View Post
                            And again, this despite the fact that college basketball has a far more legitimate (and compelling) way of actually determining a champion. It's the better run side of the NCAA organization but it hasn't made basketball more popular.
                            Not sure I agree with that. I would say it hasn't made basketball as popular but I think the college game as made more people interested in pro basketball.

                            I think college ball has failed to gain popularity in certain areas of the country like the south where football hasn't. Why that is I don't know but I do agree dynasties are good in any sport but I don't think a Cinderella story is bad for the sport just because the ratings are down one year.

                            Originally posted by d_c View Post
                            The NBA has experienced some of its highest ratings the past few years BECAUSE of the rekindling of the Lakers/Celtics rivalry and what appears to be a Heat assembling a juggernaut.
                            Comparing pro football to Bball one thing that stands out to me is that they have more rivalries and more dynasties to point to. ITs not up to two teams to carry the league popularity in the NFL.
                            Last edited by Gamble1; 10-02-2011, 10:24 PM.

                            Comment

                            • #15
                              Re: A good article on competitive balance

                              Originally posted by Eleazar View Post
                              I agree, if a team can't our right sign a player they shouldn't be able to use another teams Bird rights in order to obtain said player. If you sign a player you should not be able to trade the player for at least one season.

                              These are the kind of rules that could go into the next cba instead of a true hard cap. Another thought would be limiting the # of max contracts a team can hand out to 1 per year. The owners have already put a proposal in to limit teams using Bird rights to one player per year. Anything that takes control from the players to form super teams is a good thing. Something still needs to be in place to keep a handful of owners from outspending the rest though. It could be a hard cap or super tough LT.
                              The union is full of it saying a hard cap is about limiting salaries. They're still only guaranteed the same amount of the BRI no matter what the system is. They either lose it escrow if teams overspend, or they get it in a payout from the league if teams under spend. In the end, total player salaries are the same under a hard cap as they are under the current system. It may just be distributed a little differently.
                              Why do teams tank? Ask a Spurs fan.

                              Comment

                              Previous 1 2 template Next
                              Working...
                              X