NBA General Manager sticks up for Miami Heat guard Dwyane Wade
Miami heat star Dwyane Wade caused a storm last week when he claimed that the super stars of the NBA are actually underpaid. The comments were perhaps a little ill-timed with the NBA lockout and all, but one General Manger thinks
they were also absolutely correct.
The NBA currently employs a salary cap system that does not allow player salaries to cross certain thresholds, and NBA Commissioner David Stern wants to get the salary cap even more suffocating in the new CBA. Sports, such as Baseball,
that do not have a salary cap have seen salaries of super star players reach astronomical figures, and an NBA GM agrees with Wade that the same thing would happen in the NBA if it were not for the salary cap.
“There’s absolutely no doubt that the top NBA stars are the most underpaid in sports,” the GM told Yahoo news.
He also went on to discuss how the salary cap can sometimes work against the very owners that created it to control the players. Quoting the example of the Miami Heat, where three of the biggest stars in the league joined hands
to make them an irresistible force, and therefore a problem for the rest of the NBA, the GM said it wouldn’t have happened if not for the salary cap.
“The max salaries created the Heat. The owners have only themselves to blame if they don’t like what happened with the Heat. There’s no way (Heat owner) Micky Arison could afford the $140 million to pay those three (Wade, LeBron
James and Chris Bosh) in a free market situation—and that’s $140 million annually.”
This is perhaps the reason the NBPA is h**l bent on resisting any move by the league towards a hard cap in the new CBA. Billy Hunter, Executive Director of the NBPA, has already called the salary cap a “blood issue” because the
players know they are being sold short as it is.
The real stars of the league, throughout the modern era, like Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, would command much higher salaries than they ever got if it weren’t for the salary cap system. The reason is that it
is these big names that draw the crowds to the games, they fill out the arenas and it is they who have made basketball and the NBA the global phenomenon that it is today.
Wade was therefore absolutely right when he said you cannot put a dollar value on what these top athletes have given to the game.
For an example, Los Angeles Lakers owner admits privately that Kobe Bryant probably brings in $70 million dollar for the franchise every year, yet he will earn only $25 million next season.
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