Knicks fans, Nets fans, Bulls fans and even Cavs fans- Get ready for the summer of 2011! Two of these 3 future hall-of-famers will be available next June (maybe even May!).
The first issue is that they haven’t worked out the money situation yet. Sure, it’s easy to say that they’ll all take less money. But I can’t imagine it being easy to divvy up that pie, no matter how big or small it is. Somebody’s not gonna be happy with their cut. Wade has a ring and Miami’s his home. Lebron is the MVP. And Bosh knows how much he could have made elsewhere. There’s a strong chance that none of the three will be happy.
Secondly, the amount available for the other 7 Heat players (Chalmers and Beasley are already under contract) will be miniscule. This means a bunch of rookies and lifetime reserve players. These are the types of players that need discipline. Wade, James and Bosh will have a different set of rules than the other nine players. They will need time to supplement their low incomes with advertising and reality show appearances.
Additionally, they will be booed in practically every arena in the country. Most of the nation will celebrate their losses. The nation will wonder how combining 3 individually-beloved heroes can yield a universally-despised entity. This cannot be good for a team comprised of players that haven’t played together in the NBA, and don’t have any real history with each other. Thay haven’t fought any wars together yet (the 2-week Olympic fling isn’t the same thing as a 9-month NBA marriage).
I think that we will first see the signs during the contract negotiations over the next few weeks. We may even see some early success. But a flameout is inevitable, imho.
For starters, even if this does not take off, there is absolutely no way Miami is going to give up on it during the first season. That would be the stupidest imaginable thing they could do because they will have more flexibility with money as the years go on. The players will make the money work. That’s the easy part since they’re all rich already. Probably they’ll all take the same amount, close to the maximum. They wouldn’t have agreed to go to the same team in the first place if they couldn’t accept the idea of giving up a little money. LeBron, at least, gave up about $30 million already.
Getting other players is going to be the biggest issue, especially this year. But consider what Miami just pulled off I think you have to wait and see what they’re going to do. You can’t just write them off. Beasley is being traded, for starters- I believe the story that he’s going to Toronto as part of a deal for Bosh. Miami seems to have written him off as a flake and they need some extra money for other players. They haven’t even signed their three draft picks. And they don’t have to just take scrubs; they can get some veterans who want a shot at a title, too. The supporting cast does not need to be amazing, it just needs to be guys in the correct roles. Jordan and Pippen weren’t surrounded by Hall of Famers in Chicago and they won six titles together.
As for being hated… eh. They’ll deal with it. How many people love the Lakers? True villains are popular and some guys relish that role.
Well, the think with the Lakers and the loudmouths in Boston is that while they are widely hated around the country they have huge and widespread historic fan bases. They aren’t quite the villains that these heat are. Miami isn’t exactly a long running franchise and Miami fans aren’t really what you’d call diehards nor are there a ton of Miami expats all over the country. This group will be hated everywhere and mildly appreciated at home.
Understatement of the year. There aren’t a ton of Miami fans in Miami, either. It’s so bad that the Dolphins have trouble selling out home playoff games.
Mike Golic told the story of his year in Miami, the Dolphins started 9-2, had the best record in the league, and they couldn’t sell out their home games. And that was with Dan Marino at QB. What chance do the Heat have?
Dan le Batard, the longtime Miami resident and former sportswriter turned pundit, said it best: Miami doesn’t deserve these three guys.
What exactly was the leverage? It isn’t like Miami wouldn’t have been willing to max out otherwise.
And they are going to be plenty popular too. Sure they will be hated, but a lot of people like rooting for the best and they will be the best individually if not collectively.
No they won’t. James and Wade are not going to be happy spending a 9-month season sharing the spotlight and James admitted in his hour-long ego masturbation that the reason he was going to Miami was so that he did not have to have the pressure of being the best and carrying a team. James has no heart and wants to be able to take games off.
The whole thing smacks of collusion. The players got together and agreed to go to the Heat. I am not sure collusion is immoral or illegal when the players do it. But it feels wrong.
They have to develop a team with all their money vested in 3 players. The supporting staff may not be good enough to win it all. I hope so.
They may end up with a clash of egos that blows it all up anyway. I want to see them explain at the end of next season why they did not win it all.
One of the ESPN guys pointed out that Bosh and Wade had been traipsing around the last couple of months with camera crews, apparently planning to try to make some sort of reality show about the free agency “drama.” He suggested that this could have been one reason for the not-necessarily-serious meetings with other teams (of course you’d involve big city teams like Chicago/Knicks/Nets because they have big fan bases and their egocentric local media would of course fan the flames that any player in his right senses would want to come there). But all the meetings would create tension and “drama.” Sounds cynical but he also noted that in a couple of the meetings Bosh seemed more concerned with making sure the camera crews captured everything than with talking about the teams, and none of this is inconsistent with standard reality show manipulation. We’ll just see if some Joaquin Phoenix style reality show surfaces in coming months.
By the way, Bosh in particular would have an interest in manipulating the situation as he’s kind of managed to transform himself to being referred to along with Wade and James as “the three superstars.” I’m not sure he deserved that kind of bootstrapping (not that he’s not good, but not on their level).
He’s taking less money to be the second banana. The Heat is Wade’s team, through and through.
He’s clearly more interested in hanging out at South Beach and being a celebrity than forging his own legacy. No matter what happens in Miami, he failed in Cleveland. He couldn’t get it done as the alpha dog.
It is not collusion, it is not illegal, and it is not wrong. People who say the players colluded do not understand what collusion is. Players discussing their plans, or even agreeing to go to the same team, are not colluding. Here’s another thread about this.
Perhaps “leverage” isn’t quite the word, but after watching Chicago try to woo him/them, one wonders what they gave up in order to be more marketable to them.
June 6th ,Lebron told sports writers the players were getting together in a large group and deciding where each would go. He said their main interest was to help out some franchises and the game. When collusion was brought up later, he quickly tried to defuse it with the old, I was misquoted or misunderstood defense.
