Shaquille O’Neal points finger at NBA owners over financial turmoil; Joe Johnson gets exemplified
While the debate about the current labour dispute has been centred at NBA owners demanding financial sacrifices from the players to offset their losses, Shaquille O’Neal has a different view. The legendary ex-player said in an interview that the owners have been irresponsible themselves and are at least partly to blame for the crisis.
The NBA Commissioner David Stern has claimed that the league lost around $300 million last season alone. The league also says that around 22 of the 30 NBA franchises incurred operating losses. The NBA has based its drastic financial demands in the new CBA over these figures and continues to push the players into a corner with the season drawing close.
There has been some talk before of how the NBA owners might have exaggerated their losses to support the demands made in the labour dispute. When the lockout started some people even expressed the view that the players were not to blame for the financial crisis and the owners should share in the blame.
Shaquille O’Neal has now lent his voice to those concerns and said the many contracts handed out by the league in recent years which did not reflect value in terms of player quality and the franchise’s resources are a major cause of the current situation.
The Times Picayune reported Shaq,
``They are stalling us out, all the issues they are talking about on TV, those aren’t real issues.''
Shaquille gave the example of Joe Johnson and the Atlanta Hawks to support his argument. Johnson was handed a huge contract in 2010 by the Hawks. Although Joe is a very good player, the contract still seems too excessive, especially given that the Hawks are not a team with large financial resources.
However the owners still made the decision to hand out the bumper deal just to keep him tied to the club. O’Neal was not impressed,
``I love Joe Johnson and I hope he doesn’t get mad with me, but he’s not a $20 million a year guy,'' O'Neal said. ``Business-wise, Atlanta isn’t making that much money. But if you are going to offer a kid a lot of money, he’s going to take it. I think we need a system that protects the owners from each other.’’
That deal just did not make sense. The owners that handed out the contract to Johnson have since sold the franchise and moved on. It might have been that they knew they were not going to be around for doling out the money and used it as a short term measure to raise the profile of the franchise to attract better buyers.
Still, it was a totally irrational move.
"In this economy, if you upset some people now, they’re not going to buy any tickets,’’ O’Neal said. ``Guys (owners) have to be responsible for the business they conduct.’’
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