*Writer’s note: the use of “small-market” in this piece refers to both the term in the traditional, media market sense, and to teams outside the purview of title contention.
When news broke that the NBA would be introducing a type of contract that was bigger than the ordinary maximum deal, appropriately named the “Designated Player Extension,” it seemed like a huge win for smaller-market franchises. After all, they were the only ones who could offer deals that started at around 30 percent of the salary cap and, at least at the time, it was difficult to imagine a player turning down that much money.
The problem that every single franchise, but particularly those small-market ones, are going to have to deal with is the fact that there’s no real evidence that points to the extra money actually being enough of a bargaining chip to get star players to stay in their cities, which kind of makes sense for a few different reasons, the biggest one being that money is not the biggest factor for players at this level.
When you start talking about the true stars in the NBA, like New Orleans Pelicans big man Anthony Davis, Golden State Warriors forward Kevin Durant and Giannis Antetokuonmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks, they’re going to get an obscene amount of money from whatever team signs them — that part is just a given. Unless it’s an almost undeniably huge boost, it’s probably not going to be enough for players to overcome, for example, doubts over whether the franchise they’d be committing to can build a team that could compete for a title. That’s all without mentioning the innumerable other factors in deciding where to spend the prime years of a star’s career.
Even if the contracts keep ballooning, however, there’s still no guarantee that it’d be enough to sway free agents. Again, the super-duper stars of the league are going to get ludicrous money from whatever team signs them, and once a player gets to that point, the exact figures of the contract aren’t the most important aspect. That’s especially true when you factor in things like advertisements, sponsorships, shoe deals and the myriad of other ways guys are making money off-the-court these days.
Though superstars might be leaving big money on the table in the short-term, the “Q rating” boost they’d get from moving to a bigger market could make them all that money back off the court. Of any other point I’m going to present today, this is the one that should terrify small-market teams the most. If a superstar has the right people in his ear — like most of them seem to — the short-term losses won’t really matter too much to them.
We live in the most connected age ever, but at the end of the day, unless a player is on one of the six or seven or so most relevant teams in the NBA that year, there’s still a clear cap to the growth his brand can actually experience. The visibility a player gets from a bigger media marker and/or a real contender will open doors for players in terms of endorsements they can’t get anywhere else. After all, they’re on the teams with the most media attention, the most national conversation and/or the best chance of making a run in the postseason when audience engagement is at its peak. For evidence, just look at the sponsors and advertisements of Anthony Davis and compare them to those of Boston Celtics point guard Kyrie Irving.
Irving, while a superstar in his own right, is a sizable level below Davis on the court and yet has a minute-long advertisement running to advertise his own shoe line and one of the most famous basketball ad campaigns of the 21st century as Uncle Drew with Pepsi — which has an entire movie based on it. Though his game is built to perpetually feature on Instagram highlight pages, his Finals runs with LeBron James and his continued reign of the Eastern Conference have undeniably played big roles in getting his brand where it is today.
Now compare that to Davis, who featured in a few group ads Nike was running at the beginning of this season, but whose only solo ad I can find is something for Mobil 1. Anthony Davis should be one of the most marketable stars in the league at this point; he’s the most uniquely gifted player we’ve seen since Shaq with an underdog backstory and can throw down some of the most vicious dunks of anyone in the league. In theory, he should be one of the most marketable players in the league. But because New Orleans has never been able to put a good enough team around him to break into the national spotlight, he’s had a difficult time breaking into it, as well.
No matter how talented a player is, companies are going to be a tad hesitant to pull the trigger on any deal if his team can’t even stay relevant to the national NBA dialogue. If he goes pretty much anywhere else with a secondary star and a semi-functional roster, it’ll almost certainly be enough to open doors for his brand that would have never been available in New Orleans.
The simple fact of the matter is that it’s exceedingly difficult for a player to build a brand if his team can’t win in the playoffs and isn’t a huge media market.
Away from the financial side of the equation, it’s still unclear if the extra money in the Designated Player Extension is enough to make up for the organizational problems a player might see both on and off the court. The early returns, however, don’t look great. Though Kawhi Leonard was never formally offered the contract, most speculation around the events that unfolded over the last two years of his San Antonio Spurs tenure indicates that he would have turned it down despite the money.
According to the excellent reporting of ESPN’s Michael C. Wright, the tipping-point issue between Leonard and the Spurs came down to disagreements over both their diagnosis of the injury that kept him out all of last year and the way they treated it. The relationship is far more complicated than that — as are his reasons for not playing last year — but that seems to have been one of the bigger reasons the team traded him to the Toronto Raptors this past summer.
Remember, that injury happened when San Antonio was blowing the doors off the Death Star Warriors during Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals and appearing to mount the first real challenge to the Warriors since Kevin Durant joined them. And that was in a year where Leonard had a legitimate MVP case and a solid team around him that looked poised to stay around the top of the league for years to come. Yet, disagreements between Leonard and the Spurs about the severity and treatment of his injury hurt the relationship to such an extent that Leonard felt the need to force a trade out of town a year removed from almost making the Finals.
The NBA is an intensely personal business, and it doesn’t matter how much money’s on the table if guys don’t want to stay with a franchise. Players are smarter than ever with their careers now — which is a cliché, but it’s absolutely true — and they understand they don’t just have to play on one team if they’re unhappy or even if they’re merely content. The players have the power to decide what happens from now on, and it doesn’t seem like that’s going to change anytime soon – which is absolutely a good thing.
The one problem with that development, however, is that it puts even more pressure on franchises across the league — and small markets in particular — to keep their superstars happy. Oftentimes, that means mortgaging future assets so they can get players who can help them win right away, as Cleveland did with LeBron James and Houston continues to do with James Harden and Chris Paul. These teams are essentially throwing away their future for at least a few years to maybe have the chance to contend for a title.
Arguably the biggest issue with the so-called “supermax” is that if a player does end up taking it, it’ll be almost impossible to build a viable contender around just that one player. You can’t win at a high level anymore with just one superstar and a solid supporting cast; you need multiple All-Stars and a solid group around them. Even if a team does end up acquiring an All-Star to pair with its supermax player, the chances they’ll have the money to get enough decent role players to build a contender are low. By giving out the supermax, teams are essentially capping what they’ll be able to do in the immediate future.
All of these problems existed well before the introduction of the DVPE, and they’ll likely exist long after. Small markets have always been at a disadvantage when it comes to trying to retain their superstars, and it’s possible no rules will ever be able to change that. Nor is there much incentive for the NBA to try and change that reality. Despite outcries that the NBA’s viewership would collapse after Durant signed with Golden State in 2016, ratings have never been higher, and the league has never been more entertaining.
The problem that is native to the DVPE, though, is the say that media members now have in determining contracts. The DVPE only applies to players who’ve been on an All-NBA team or won Defensive Player of the Year in either of the two years prior or MVP in any of the previous three — all of which are media-voted awards. Granted, for the most part, the media seems to be taking that responsibility seriously, and the number of ridiculous votes from them has fallen dramatically. But either way, you’re letting the media directly influence the future of the league.
Journalists — and journalism as a whole — really aren’t supposed to have such a big role in the happenings of whatever they’re covering. It’s not new for those media awards to be used as incentives in contracts, but it’s at least a little jarring that those awards are the basis for contracts that shape the league as we know it.
It’s too early to call the supermax a failure, but it obviously hasn’t been a success. Whether or not that changes one thing remains crystal clear: the NBA still hasn’t figured out how to give smaller-market franchises a leg up.
