How much does regular season matter? Is Heat built for playoffs? Improbable run raising questions
When asked to revisit that comment in the Madison Square Garden visiting team locker room following Sunday’s Game 1 win, Haslem said: “The thing is you want to win, but that comment wasn’t about wins and losses. That comment is about just being able to get the most out of our guys and playing up to our potential. Understanding that you’re not going to win every game, but you still want to play to your potential. So for me, I just want us to play up to our potential. Win or loss, I want us to play at our potential.”
U.D.’s post-facto means that the “Heat” did not play to their potential in the regular season--yet the fans paid as if they were. This is the question that Chiang's column does not even touch and it is a question for the Association across the Association. Recently, Tottenham Hotspur went to Newcastle and got humiliated 6-1. You know what happened? The players refunded their traveling fans for the cost of their trips and tickets.
There is an "implied contract" when a fan buys a ticket: "I give you $100 (the average price of an NBA regular season ticket is $95-$98). You give me effort. A win is not part of the bargain, I understand that, but "getting the most out of our guys" is." Haslem's post-facto is that for 41 home games--$4,100 for a season ticket--the "Heat" did not play the full 100 to their potential. Now, what does the Association do about that?
When I have to make an important decision I divide it up. 1) Is it a "complex" decision where I don't know enough about the facts; 2) is it a "hard" decision, one where I am master of the case but I am torn by crosscurrents that sometimes have nothing to do with understanding. In that construct that I use this is both a complex and a hard decision. Commissioner Silver has taken steps to master the facts in the latest CBA: To be eligible for individual awards at the end of the season players must play in 65 games. There are exceptions, as there have to be with sweeping rules, but the benchmark is 65 out of 82, 79%, of games. Implicitly, if a player is going to take "load management" or "personal" days, he has got to limit those to 17 games. That goes a fair way to incentivizing players to fulfill their part of the "implied contract" with fans. But what about the money outlay by fans? The players get 17 play-free days but are still getting paid their pro rata salary for the games not played. Meanwhile, the fan gets no $1700 discount on her season ticket. It seems reasonable to me for the owner and player to share a fan refund. Jimmy Butler gets paid $459,000 for each of 82 games whether he plays or not. If he were explicitly contracted to refund the pro rata share of his contract, that would amount to $4,591 per personal day game missed. If Micky Arison and Butler split the refund it would be $2296. I assume all would agree that either of those amounts is chump change to owner and player but not to fans who the owner-player union is treating like chumps. Per fan, based on 19,600 seats purchased by fans in Kaseya Center, the cost would be 23 cents if Butler alone, 12 cents if shared evenly between Arison and Butler. Another component to the facts of the decision would be to reduce the number of games NBA teams play from 82 to _x.
Why have neither of those two things been done? This is the "hard" part of the decision. Because neither the players nor the owners want a reduction in the number of games played because...they would rake in less of the fans' money. For Arison, net worth $5.5B, and for Butler, annual salary $37.65M, 12 cents for a personal day off is just too much money.
