Saturday, July 2, 2011

A proposal to Derek Fisher and the NBPA (part iii, player compensation)

Let's assume:
  1. non-merchandising based revenue (i.e everything except jersey sales). This includes tv & video game rights, sponsorship, etc...
  2. 80 man roster
  3. up to 3 players can team up, before the selection process. these players must pool and split their salaries. If there are more than 8 groups of players, the commissioner will arbitrate, with preference given to players with the greatest number of NBA all star appearances. Once this is done, the 8 captains will be selected by the commissioner. The order in which teams select will be done by lottery, two hours before team selection commences.
  4. Each team will have 1 head coach and 1 assistant coach
  5. $24 million regular season compensation/team
In an 80 man league, 16 players are designated as centers, 32 as forwards and 32 as guards. Teams are constructed by means of a round robin selection process, and in the first five picks, a team must select 1 center, 2 forwards and 2 guards. Also, this rule prevents 3 forwards or 3 guards from teaming up as about.

From a salary perspective, salaries are graded according to which round the player is selected in:
  1. $3,000,000
  2. $2,800,000
  3. $2,600,000
  4. $2,400,000
  5. $2,200,000
  6. $2,000,000
  7. $1,800,000
  8. $1,600,000
  9. $1,400,000
  10. $1,200,000
also pay the coach $2 million and his assistant $1 million, for a total of $24 million/team. This is done just to illustrate. The numbers could change.

Also we need to take pooling into account. let's say Kobe, Nash and Garnett wanted to play on the same team, then they would pool the salaries of the 1st 3 picks ($3.0 million + $2.8 million + $2.6 million), and split it 3 ways so that each player got $2.8 million. These 3 players would also count as the team's first three selection, so their first pick, in this case, would be a 4th round pick, depending on how Kobe and Garnett are designated, their team would have to select to fill the 1/2/2 criterion described above.

So the total salaries before tournament compensation would be $192 million.

Now for the tournament, lets take the salaries of two teams as the total prize money, which in this case would be $48 million. Split the money into 12 shares, and allocate it to the teams in winning order 6/3/2/1. So if a team won the whole thing, they'd double their salaries. 2nd place would increase their salaries by 50%, etc...

For individual players, there some interesting ramifications. Players will be paid according to how highly their fellow players rate them, and superstars who win, will reap the rewards of their play.

Take LeBron, for example. Let's say he teams up with Wade and Chris Bosh, and they win one tournament and come second in another. Then, using the numbers above, he'd make $9.8 million for around 6 months work. Not his NBA salary, but not chump change either, and certainly enough to keep the light running, while keeping his public profile high. Bear in mind, this doesn't include royalty compensation from jersey sales, which could greatly increase that number.

Another aspect is that teams are able to reset at the start of each tournament, so you will see the most competitive players join forces to give themselves the best chance to win. This is the kind of thing that sports writers love, since they get to speculate ad nauseam and generate a huge amount of content.

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