Anyone else remember unrestricted free agency not existing? It feels like nobody does

[Kblaze8855]

All this talk about what _____ never did and how all these legends stayed in one place...it really feels like people don't know it wasn't an option.

Gary Payton is the first player to make the hall of fame who played his entire career in a league that allowed UFA. And even that's kinda off....because the first cases required you to have played out two full contracts and be at least a 7 year vet.

Every legend who was in the HOF before Gary Payton played under one of 3 systems....

At the beginning....the early Russell/Cousy/Oscar days?

Your contract expires?

Your team can offer you a new one at any number they wish....BUT...if you don't sign? They retain your rights at 10% less than your previous seasons pay.

So lets say Durant was making 20 million...Thunder offer him 5 years 200 million....he says no for some reason....they get to keep him on a one year deal for 18 million....or he can leave the NBA. He says no the next season? Loses another 10 percent...so 1.8 million down. He now makes 16.2. This goes on till he breaks and signs the deal they offer.



Cousy(president of the players union) and others find this unfair....strike. Its changed to....you get signed at your previous seasons pay...one year at time....or leave the NBA. So no more declining pay...you just cant have a raise either so long as they offer you a deal and you decline it. This ****ed over several guys like Earl Monroe who had bigger offers from the ABA when the Bullets/Wizards wouldn't give him a raise.

He said fine...hes going to the ABA...which he could do if they didn't make him an offer at all.

So what do they do? Make him a 3 year offer for LESS than the ABA offered. But since they made it....hes required to take it or play for his previous pay. Try to go to the ABA? Lawsuit. They managed to make Rick Barry sit out a year of his prime that way even though they eventually let him go. Doctor J tried to sign with the Hawks...did it:




....and played in the preseason on an early "Superteam" with Pistol Pete, Walt bellamy, and Lou Hudson.....lawsuit from the Bucks(held his nba rights) and the ABA forced it to end before the regular season. He couldn't just....sign somewhere. Nobody could just sign somewhere they wanted to be.


Around then the ABA and NBA want to merge. This is like 1969 or 70...well before it actually happened in 76. why did it take so long? Oscar Robertson(new union leader) sued saying the merger would remove the only real competition for the NBA creating a monopoly that would force players to take shitty deals forever without even the fear of a young player out of college just signing with the ABA to get out of the NBA bully contracts.

6 years of court battles later....Oscar wins. And we have extremely restricted free agency.

You can leave....if your old teams decides your new team is compensating it enough. So in this situation....the Thunder could let Durant go....but insist on say...2 picks..Barnes...and Stephs mom. whatever. There were no particular rules. Sometimes it was cash...or owners worked out a business deal trading other assets. I think an old deal involved a player being traded for rights to a valuable parking lot and "future considerations".

Anyway that went on for some time...till Tom Chambers. I'll post some excerpts from an article on how he became the first real free agent:

[Kblaze8855]

When the new collective bargaining agreement – and its subsequent unrestricted free agency rules – became official in 1988, Suns General Manager Jerry Colangelo looked over at Seattle owner Barry Ackerley.

“You’re going to lose Chambers,” Colangelo said.

The long-time Suns’ manager did not dare assume the star forward would wind up in Phoenix, but he and his staff were determined to do all they could to make that possibility a reality.

At 12:01 a.m. of Friday, July 1, 1988, Chambers’ home phone in Los Angeles rang. On the other end of the line was Suns assistant coach Paul Westphal

.

“Our intention in going there to meet with Tom was not for cordial conversation, but to come back with a signed contract,” Colangelo said. “I don’t think Tom knew that morning that he would be a Phoenix Sun by that night.”

He didn’t, but the idea became more and more appealing as that summer Saturday saw the sun pass overhead. The meeting had started at 9:00 a.m., and there was little sign it would end after lunch.

“The Suns were very aggressive,” Chambers admitted. “Cotton, Jerry and Paul were sitting in my house and they basically weren’t going home until they made a deal.”

Chambers wasn’t put off by Phoenix’s proactive approach. They might have been trying to beat him into submission, but they were beating him with millions of dollars. It was hard not to accept, let alone complain.

“They made a hell of an offer, and in my judgment we had to take it,” he said.

The speed with which an agreement was reached and ultimately announced blew the NBA and its followers away. Even with the ink of his own signature drying at the bottom of a five-year, multi-million dollar contract, Chambers was still trying to grasp what had happened.

Instead of being off-handedly used as a property, he had been wooed as a highly-sought after athlete. More importantly, the final decision had been his.

“They came in the door and offered me a deal. I couldn’t refuse it,” he said. “It caught me off guard. I was prepared to talk to six or seven other teams. I was in a unique situation to be able to pick and choose a team. I never had a chance to talk to anybody else.”

“It was cutting-edge stuff,” Chambers now reflects. “It was stuff that hadn’t really been done. Even though they offered me more money than Seattle – quite a bit more – and it seemed like a huge contract, it became obsolete almost instantaneously. You could get a player and not have to give up anything for him except for money? That’s where it went kind of crazy after that.”

Pretty much that was the start of the new era. You could just straight up...buy a player.

With all the complaining I wonder if fans today would rather it go back to the old ways.....pretty much eternal franchise tags.

It wont of course....the union would let the NBA die first.

But with all the anger....it feels like fans would support the old 1950s rules. Sign back or take paycut...and still not leave.

[Kblaze8855]

Oh and this is from a couple years later.....the media already pissed they signed him:



THE SUNS' EMPTY CHAMBERS


Wednesday, May 1, 1991 at 4 a.m.

By Tom Fitzpatrick

Don't get me wrong. Don't sit there and assume I'm astonished that the Phoenix Suns pay Tom Chambers $2,060,000 a year for halfheartedly bouncing and throwing a round ball.

I'm not astonished by a salary that makes Chambers the most overpaid man in all of professional sports. I am amazed, astounded, dumbfounded and staggered. Come to think of it, I actually am surprised.

For some peculiar reason that puzzles me, it is considered bad form among the sporting media to mention the matter of how overpaid some players in the National Basketball Association have become.

Since I'm not a member in good standing, allow me to bring it up for discussion.


Does anyone really think Kevin Johnson is worth $1,750,000 a year? Should Xavier McDaniel get $1,400,000 or Jeff Hornacek get $1,100,000?

I don't mention Dan Majerle, who has just been raised over the million-dollar mark because he seems to me the one player on the team who might conceivably be worth that kind of money.

Next time you watch the Suns play, take a look at them huddled up before the game. This season's salary for the entire roster is $11,833,000.

Who are we all kidding here? Is this a group of young men that you can easily identify with?

But it is the Chambers-salary caper that points up where the money has become ridiculous. To cite the most extreme example, an ordinary performer like John Williams of the Cleveland Cavaliers is being paid $5,000,000 for this single season of play.

The way I see it, even if Chambers were engaged in successfully slam-dunking Kuwait's flaming oil wells, his current salary should be regarded as criminally excessive.

Here in Phoenix, which is a veritable Land of Enchantment for charlatans, only those engaged in selling land planned for freeway interchanges are generally so overpaid.

But for Jerry Colangelo to willingly spend that much of his stockholders' money for cybernetic and robotic Chambers was close to madness.

He could have done better buying bonds from Charles Keating. The Keating bonds, of course, turned out to be worthless.

So is Chambers.
He is great when things are going well. If the Suns are romping to an obvious victory, you can expect Chambers to hang around at midcourt and streak for easy passes from Kevin Johnson that will help him build up his scoring average.

The easy, uncontested basket is his way of life. But in the Utah Jazz series, Chambers has generally been matched up inside against players like Karl Malone.

They don't call the Utah power forward The Mailman for nothing. Every time Malone gets close to Chambers, he snatches the basketball away and stuffs it in his bag.

Every time Chambers makes a move, Malone reaches in and swats the ball from Chambers' hands and heads for a delivery in the opposite direction.

After a few of these traumatic episodes, Chambers loses his composure. He falls apart. He misses the long shots. He misses the lay-ups. He drops passes, throws the ball away.

The only shots you can expect him to make for the remainder of the time in a game like this are from the free-throw line. He becomes the two-million-dollar-a-year free-throw shooter.

Forget about Chambers ever making a clutch shot. Don't expect him to dive for loose balls. That's not his style. Men who make $2,060,000 a season don't do things that are so socially demeaning.

Lest we forget, Chambers pulled the same thing in the playoffs last season when Buck Williams of the Portland Trail Blazers kept stripping him of the ball inside.

That became obvious after KJ was injured and point production and enthusiasm from Chambers became imperative. He didn't come through then, and we shouldn't expect him to do so in the playoffs this year, either.

Colangelo must have thought Chambers was perfect for the Suns. The so-called drug scandal had just ended. Something had to be done to remove the terrible image the irresponsible indictments by the County Attorney's Office had been.

So Colangelo leaped at the opportunity to get Chambers from the Seattle SuperSonics as a free agent. He was, of course, far from being a free agent. He was pretty damned expensive.

Colangelo knew Chambers could score over a long season, and the fact that he was white was a major plus. Chambers' face would be great on billboards and television advertising. His was an innocent white face that could help bring white season ticketholders back into the fold. The ploy worked.

Dan Majerle fits the same mold. He is also white. The difference, however, is that Majerle is also one of the hardest-working players in the entire NBA. He never quits. He never gets flustered when the league's tough guys start working on him.

What I notice now about the local sports media is that they have all risen to Chambers' defense. Listen to announcers Al McCoy and Dick Van Arsdale the next time the Suns play. Notice how often they will point out that Chambers is "trying hard." Listen to them urge the fans not to heap abuse from their seats.

Listen to KTAR Radio, which is inextricably bound to the Suns' fortunes in the playoffs and hear Jude ("I am not a homer") LaCava moaning that fans are "being unfair to poor Tom Chambers."LaCava will be wrong on at least one count. Not by any stretch of the imagination can Tom Chambers be described as "poor."

[houston]

great thread

[VengefulAngel]

Still reading, so far an interesting read.

[GOBB]

Bookmarking thread for a later date...like when I'm on an airplane for 5 hours and need something to read/kill time.

[Kblaze8855]

Bookmarking thread for a later date...like when I'm on an airplane for 5 hours and need something to read/kill time.

I grabbed my xbox controller as I read that to confirm you were recently online playing some bullshit so I could come back with "You know you don't have shit to do" but it seems you have been offline for 10 hours. So ill save that for another day.

[KobeLookLike2Pac]

Damn, I miss those days

[GOBB]

I grabbed my xbox controller as I read that to confirm you were recently online playing some bullshit so I could come back with "You know you don't have shit to do" but it seems you have been offline for 10 hours. So ill save that for another day.

[MP.Trey]

Kblaze droppin knowledge.

Only read the first post so far, interesting and informative. Never knew a lot of this stuff.

[Stringer Bell]

Thanks for the history lesson, I didn't know the details regarding free agency in the past.

I remember Hot Rod Williams being the highest paid player at one point. I was a kid but thinking "WTF is he doing getting paid more than Jordan and Magic and Barkley and those stars?"

Oh and that Jim Mcilvaine contract in the mid 90s when he was getting paid more than teammates Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp...Jim Mcilvaine!!??

[Kblaze8855]

My main issue has just always been talks about what such and such never did. You know that Magic Johnson was under contract with the Lakers until 2009? in 81 they signed him to an extension making him the highest paid athlete ever....it kicked in in 84....and went to 2009. Contracts were totally unpredictable till after the 99 lockout.

You know Chris Webbers rookie deal was for 15 years? But the idiots gave him a bunch of player options so he threatened to opt out after a season so they had to trade him. But his deal out of college should have made him a Warrior till the season before Steph arrived.

Larry Johnsons was....and I'm not 100% sure on the number...12 years 85 million. I know it was 12 and 80ish. Jordan was on an 8 year deal. The old guys contracts were even crazier. Wilt Chamberlain as I explained was never actually a free agent...but he always used threats of retiring to get a better deal when he wanted it so he played like 10 years....on one year deals. And he didn't have an agent. Just let his deal expire...knew he couldn't sign anywhere else....told the team he would retire if they didn't pay him....then they would pay. But he couldn't just leave....not till his ABA threats after Rick Barry got away with it by sitting out a season.

Bill Russell and Red had an even stranger agreement...Russells contract was signed to just be....a dollar more than Wilt made. One dollar. Pretty much to be *****.

Putting all these rules in place governing contracts is what got us to this point. Unhindered by the rules I bet OKC signs Durant to a 10-12 year 150 millon dollar deal in like 2010....and he would be pissed about it now.

The entire system has been slowly morphing to allow total player freedom with really easy to predict contract setups letting teams prepare themselves to sign your guy away years in advance.

None of this shit was possible for many of the players that get brought up for having been "loyal". Karl Malone played from 84 to 1999 on 2 deals.

[wang4three]

I'd be surprised if people remember Gary Payton getting traded to Milwaukee for Ray Allen.

[Old Man River]

Great post. Let's talk reality. Eeveryone would collude and play with their friends if it is allowed. If it's not allowed, they stay "loyal".

[Old Man River]

"Colangelo knew Chambers could score over a long season, and the fact that he was white was a major plus. Chambers' face would be great on billboards and television advertising. His was an innocent white face that could help bring white season ticketholders back into the fold. The ploy worked.

Dan Majerle fits the same mold. He is also white. The difference, however, is that Majerle is also one of the hardest-working players in the entire NBA. He never quits. He never gets flustered when the league's tough guys start working on him."