Charles Barkley Right About Lebron? This Time Yes (from mcnsports.com)

Charles Barkley Right About Lebron? This Time Yes

By Evan Weiner



Charles Barkley is right. Lebron James needs to shut up about his impending free agency in July 2010 and NBA Commissioner David Stern should once again be concerned about the integrity of the NBA. In 1976, Major League Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn refused to allow Oakland A’s owner Charles O. Finley to trade Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers to Boston and Vida Blue to the Yankees because it was not in the best interest of baseball.

All this talk of Lebron James signing with the Knicks after the Knicks dumped contracts in various trades and having what is left of the New York sports media virtually anointing Lebron as the Knicks savior two years down the road hits at the very core of sports competition. Stern may like the New York media doing the Knicks recruiting to the point where professional journalists are imploring the “sophisticated” Madison Square Garden crowd to greet Lebron with the utmost in respect and dignity so that he can feel at home and be treated as if he is royalty. But is the whole Lebron James talk of joining the Knicks in nearly two years good for the best interest of the NBA?

The answer is no.

Yes it is good for James Dolan’s Knicks, a franchise that David Stern has expressed a great deal of concerned about following last year’s sexual harassment suit and its losing ways but it is not good for Cleveland and all the other small markets that cannot compete for big name stars at free agency. The NBA has for a long time been successful with a bad New York franchise. New York is not the most important team or market in the NBA. It is just another big market like Los Angeles and Chicago. It seems Stern doesn’t have the same feeling for another perennial losing team in Philadelphia or the LA Clippers that he has for the Knicks or maybe it is just the New York media that constantly makes Stern talk about the Manhattan franchise.

Lebron James can salivate over being a free agent and having a chance to decide what is best for him in 2010 as he did in 2007 but he should shut up now. It may not be good for Lebron’s business partners, the Cavaliers and the others who are not in the basketball industry. Chris Bosh in Toronto has the same option in July 2010 and he keeping quiet. The New York Knicks beat writers and sports radio talk show hosts are already dreaming of Lebron and Dwayne Wade teaming up for James Dolan’s franchise, a franchise that by the way will have enough money for star players yet cannot afford to pay New York City property tax, which is less than the proposed contract for either Lebron James or Dwayne Wade.

It is estimated that Madison Square Garden should be paying about $13 million annually in property tax to the city which all of a sudden is cash starved because of the Wall Street collapse. By the way, it is the Wall Street crowd that is able to afford the price of Knicks tickets. Madison Square Garden has not paid property taxes since 1982 after Garden officials complained to New York City and state leaders that the cost of doing business in Manhattan was too high and that they would move the Knicks to Long Island (where the Nets had failed) and the Rangers to the new Meadowlands Arena in New Jersey because they could not compete with say the San Diego Clippers or the Kansas City Kings in the NBA or the Hartford Whalers or the Winnipeg Jets in the NHL financially without tax breaks.

Barkley is 100 percent right. James is being disrespectful to the game and to the Cavaliers ownership, the team’s corporate and media partners, the people buying luxury boxes, club seats and others who have rooting interest in the team. Teams dumping salaries so that they can get well under the salary cap by July 2010 are also not being serious in trying to put the best talent on the floor right now and playing competitive games either for higher draft picks and the NBA Draft Lottery doesn’t address those concerns or clearing cap room. In some ways, this is an even bigger integrity issue than whether or not Tim Donaghy was fixing games as an official.

Stern though has to get ahead on this issue and shut up James, the Knicks, through the team’s media surrogates, as well as quiet down the talk of the Jim Dolan also attempting to sign Wade. It is in the best interest of the NBA.

Sports is based on bona fide competition on a level playing field although there have always been good and bad teams for various reasons, with front office incompetence as a major factor. But finances are also a big part of success. The Washington Senators franchise was always in financial straights and there was a Senators-Boston Red Sox in the 1930s and 1940s pipeline when Clark Griffith owned the Senators and his son-in-law Joe Cronin was the Red Sox GM. Griffith traded Cronin to Boston because he got too expensive when Cronin was in the middle of a Hall of Fame career. In the late 1950s, Kansas City A’s owner Arnold Johnson, who bought the Philadelphia A’s and moved the team to Missouri with help from the New York Yankees owner Del Webb, used to trade his best players to the Yankees. Kuhn would eventually say no to one owner, Finley but very few Commissioners ever get around to invoking the best interest clause and tell an owner no.

If a Commissioner says no, even one as powerful as Stern, one who has built the NBA into a global presence, Stern could find himself on the outside looking in. It happened to Pete Rozelle who oversaw the NFL growth from a mom and pop part time operation to a behemoth. Rozelle was finished after 29 years as NFL Commissioner in 1989 partly due to the fact that he could not get a substantial increase in TV monies in the late 1980s.

But Stern can control players; he has proven that with imposing a dress code and other measures. Stern needs to explain to the businessman Lebron James that Ohio is still an important market and that the NBA is still a North American based entity with franchises throughout the United States and one in Canada. It would behoove Lebron to keep the Cleveland franchise strong as long as he is a member of the Cavaliers. Stern cannot control what is left of the New York media and certainly he will not stop the Dolan-owned Newsday from speculating about Lebron James 2010 Knicks contract.

There is no guarantee that Lebron James would he consider signing with the Knicks. At the end of the day, Cleveland can offer James more money than the Knicks because of the Collective Bargaining Agreement and salary cap rules. If the global economy improves, there could be a European or Russian team that might seek his services and James the businessman might be better off playing in Italy or Greece or Spain if his corporate partners think that his presence in Europe would benefit their global strategies. That option seemed to be very real before September’s financial meltdown.

Lebron James is in a great position and whatever he does in 2010, he does. But in fall 2008, Charles Barkley is right. Shut up, play basketball in Cleveland at the highest level and sell whatever your corporate partners want you to sell. Sometimes the grass isn’t greener on the other side of the street. Just ask Eric Davis and Darryl Strawberry. Back in 1990, the Los Angeles friends from school were openly talking about playing together for the hometown Dodgers after Davis finished his contract with the Cincinnati Reds and Strawberry finished his New York Mets commitment. Davis was traded to the Dodgers and Strawberry signed with the team. Both found out the grass wasn’t greener in LA.

In July 2010, Lebron James can start talking again and no, Charles Barkley isn’t stupid. He happens to be right this time.