anyone want explain this lebron james and why got ilx in a hizzy to a britisher?

just wonderin' like.

is there gonna be a space jam sequel or something?

hmmm, it's probably hard for a britisher to understand cuz i am under the impression that soccer teams don't hang on to their stars for dear life and will sell off their best players if they'll get lots of money

anyway, the reason we are all in a hizzy is cuz lebron is either the best or second best player in the nba -- two time mvp, incredibly skilled, jaw droppingly athletic etc. and pretty much he was playing for his hometown team, which is pretty rare in american sports because all of them have drafts, and he decided to leave his hometown team on his own accord, in his prime, when they wanted him back intensely. also because of the way the nba salary cap is structured, he left $30 million dollars on the table. this exact combination -- best player, hometown team, in prime, leaves city high and dry -- is pretty much unprecedented in american sports.

also he decided to have a one hour "special" on espn, which amounted pretty much to talking heads talking, a worthless interview, lebron saying his pick, and then more interview. but it was as terrible a PR move as it was unprecedented, because people are calling him selfish etc.

hope i answered your questions

So is he leaving for more money, for a more successful team, what?

pretty much he was playing for his hometown team, which is pretty rare in american sports because all of them have drafts

don't quite get this bit

This is pretty much how every Premiership player has behaved.

well, he's certainly leaving for less money, both because of the way the salary cap is structured to benefit incumbent teams (all nba teams can offer their own players more money than other teams, on a scale depending on time of service, as an incentive for them to stay) and because the team he is going to now wouldn't be able to afford the "max" contract

he's leaving because he's going to play with one dude -- dwayne wade -- who is either the 3rd or 4th best player in the league, and another dude -- chris bosh -- who is probably in the bottom of the top 10. so it's a superstar team, the nba has really not seen anything like it. it's a big risk tho because no one knows how they will co-exist, wade and lebron play pretty much the same position, and of course there is only one ball, and only one person can put it in the hoop. and also their team, becasue of the cap, will have 75% incredibly cheap and not great players filling out the roster.

but his old team wasn't very talented, and this new one is incredibly talented, but it's no sure thing

So is he leaving for more money, for a more successful team, what?

― ,,,,,,eeeeleon (darraghmac), Friday, July 9, 2010 6:13 AM (1 minute ago)

he's going to end up taking less money this way - it became sort of evident that he wouldn't win a championship with his former team, so he's in essence trying to win a championship. this team (miami heat) already had probably the second best shooting guard in the sport (dwyane wade) and also recently signed probably the best power forward in the game (chris bosh)

don't quite get this bit

― D, dilly, dillies, dill, d-bombs (history mayne), Friday, July 9, 2010 6:14 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

because we have drafts in our sports, obv amateur players can't choose where they play, so it's extremely rare that a top 3 or top 5 talent will be in the position to be taken by his hometown team (i.e. dwyane wade is from chicago, but got drafted by miami). the lebron situation resulted from his hometown team tanking the previous season, but lucking out and winning the draft lottery and getting the #1 pick and the ability to draft him, otherwise he would've just ended up somewhere else

this thread = the mirror image of the world cup thread

someone on fb linked the http://youropenbook.org/ results for 'lebron + (slur)', it was kind of eye-opening

the draft lottery

wait waht?

i couldn;t really answer much on football, but it's like a free market basically, i think. no lottery, just hell of kickbacks.

how i imagine it works:

ur a big deal player at college level
u get scouted
u get an agent
ur agent tries to sell you around the market for as much cashmoney as possible
repeat annually

well, this is only in the NBA ftr

they instituted a draft lottery like 20 years ago to help guard against teams purposefully tanking one season to get a draft position to draft the best player -- this hasn't always worked mind you, but it's there -- so how the lottery works is that all the teams that don't make the playoffs (16 teams iirc) get ping pong balls placed into a hopper, and then balls are pulled out, and that is the order of the draft -- but of course, the team with the worst record gets the most balls, and the team with the best record (to not make the playoffs) gets the least amount of balls, so there is still some benefit to being the worst, but the worst team still only has like a 25 percent shot of getting the #1 pick

Do his hometown team make any money off this deal?

Drafts seem p socialist btw, is the american right wing going mental?

like, the worst team in the league this past year actually ended up with the #3 pick

nah it's more like

-your team loses a lot
-your team gets a high draft # through the draft lottery
-you pick a good player or trade your pick for a currently good and established player

Do his hometown team make any money off this deal?

no not at all, they stand to lose an incredible amount of money in ticket sales, merchandise, endorsements etc

drafts sound crazeh

how it actually works:

ur a big deal player at college level
u get scouted
u get an agent
ur agent tries to sell you around to shoe companies and soft drink companies for as much cashmoney as possible
u get drafted by a shitty team against your will
u play for them

So he's going on a bosman (contract ran out in soccerball talk). Could they have sold him or does the nba only have drafts/trades?

if you're a good enough player you can refuse to play for the team you're drafted by and force a trade -- it happens once every few years in various sports

kobe bryant actually got drafted by charlotte but refused to play there and got traded to LA

the team could have done a sign-and-trade instead of just letting him walk xp

Could they have sold him or does the nba only have drafts/trades?

― fuque santa cruz (a hoy hoy), Friday, July 9, 2010 6:33 AM (42 seconds ago) Bookmark

ummm, you can sell/players picks, but since there is a salary cap, there's no real benefit to selling a player of great caliber because you can more than afford the amount of money that you are allowed to spend

yeah they could've traded him for other players, but you have no real leverage in this situation, with other teams

sell players/picks*

Poor Kobe. Guess there weren't enough hotel employees to abuse in Charlotte :(

So basically they get fucked over no matter what?

well in the nba, first round picks can leave after three years, and if you played well enough you can really cash in with a team of your choice

This is quite a big story over here - Radio 4 had a piece on it this morning!

The way they were phrasing it, LeBron has walked away from $30m but, now he's with Miami Heat, he's a far more marketable commodity and his off-court earnings will skyrocket. They were talking in terms of the first billionaire sportsman.

the benefit is that your contract is guaranteed, so even if you end up sucking you get to hang around for a few years and get paid mad dollars

being a rookie in the nfl on the other hand is pretty much indentured servitude

I was handed the keys to the kingdom, multi-million dollar deals, endorsements.

Everyone wanted a piece of my shit.

Just a man with a mind for victory and an arm like a fucking cannon.

But sometimes when you bring the thunder, you get lost in the storm.

The way they were phrasing it, LeBron has walked away from $30m but, now he's with Miami Heat, he's a far more marketable commodity and his off-court earnings will skyrocket. They were talking in terms of the first billionaire sportsman.

― Michael Jones, Friday, July 9, 2010 6:38 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

this isn't quite true -- he did walk from 30m, but he also walked from his best chance at being more marketable and being a billionaire, i.e. signing with new york

But for some reason I've always been trained to believe the knicks suck?

^good instincts

i guess a qn is, ok, it's a big deal, but *this* big a deal?

did shaquille o'neal or michael jordan (i'd guess the only two other players most brits could name) never get into this kind situation (ie leaving their team for another team)?

britishers can name magic johnson but more as a celebrity w/ aids than as a basketball..er.

xp shaq left orlando for LA but i don't remember it being as huge a deal as this, maybe because he was only 4 years into his career instead of 7. i dunno, i was pretty young at the time so i didn't really follow this type of sports news, i just watched the games.

shaq leaving was a big deal, it was kind of precedent setting in that franchise players of that era usually stuck with the teams that drafted them (david robinson, hakeem olajuwon, patrick ewing, jordan, stockton/malone). shaq just said "fuck orlando BYE" and went to the lakers who spent several years transitioning out of the abdul-jabbar/magic showtime laker days of the 80s. shaq and later kobe made them dominant again and ushered in a new model for franchise building through free agency.

(NB: many of those high-profile 90s players played a year or two elsewhere late in their careers when they were pretty much done as effective players, but they spent the bulk of their careers in one spot.)

The team Lebron left had the best regular season record in the NBA (or one of the best). They were a good team but the playoffs are a different story and the Cavaliers didn't have a strong enough playoff team to win.

did shaquille o'neal or michael jordan (i'd guess the only two other players most brits could name) never get into this kind situation (ie leaving their team for another team)?

― D, dilly, dillies, dill, d-bombs (history mayne), Friday, July 9, 2010 9:50 AM (6 hours ago)

neither player did anything exactly like this - shaq left the magic pretty quietly & signed with LA, where he won 3 championships with kobe. the big drama there was when shaq was traded a couple years later and everyone assumed kobe forced the team to trade him. jordan nevr did anything like this, except after his father died and he annouced he was going to try to become a professional baseball player (which he did briefly).

lebron, who is the best player in the world and plays in a city that loves him for a very good (but never champion) team, basically called a press conference/interview and announced to the world (dragged out over 25 MINUTES) that he was leaving his team and signing with miami

it's completely bizarre to me that britishers aren't familiar with drafts, like sam said you would figure it would be in the US that capitalism/free agency would be more prevalent

well... yeah. the uk is a very peculiar mix of free market capitalism and what looks to americans like state socialism. even after thatcher, the state was pretty large (actually, it was larger after she left), for example. but shit we pretty much invented capitalism. so from my limited knowledge, if you have billions of pounds [via being a russian oligarch], you can just buy the top players and dominate the league.

in theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notts_County_F.C.#Middle_East_investment

iirc soccer in europe is basically, you can just buy players like chattel or something?

im not an expert, but yeah, seems that way. not like any day of the week, but each year there is a 'transfer frenzy'. and it's an international free market (iirc a few north americans play in european clubs even; obviously some brazilians etc do). well, lol, i say free market, but one which involves nefarious practices (kickbacks). oh shit JUST LIKE THE FREE MARKET RIGHT?

I think the Shaq situation was pretty similar to LeBron's, really. a huge star who had lots of success but no titles with the team that he started out with left in free agency. Shaq didn't have an ESPN special, and Orlando fans aren't nearly as good at feeling aggrieved as Cleveland fans, but the main weird thing about LeBron's situation was that he was going to a team that already had an enormous star in his prime. The NBA only has a handful of alpha-dog stars to begin with, and having two on the same team plus another all-star is basically unheard of.

key dif is shaq isn't from orlando area

exactly

yeah. it just feels like sentimental bullshit. people have been setting themselves up for this for years.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

http://thegrandnarrative.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/right-on-the-nose.jpg

honestly surprised that britishers hadn't heard of the draft! it's an institution in every major american sport, to the point that ~draft day~ is like a thing that people have parties for

also in trying to think of a parallel here the closest i can come up with would be gerrard leaving for like chelsea or something

British people don't give a shit about American sports

gerrard leaving for like chelsea or something

LOL funny choice of example, like that would never happen...

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=642556&cc=5901

I tried to care but Australians stopped caring about Basketball when the 20th century ended.

Did like the Cavs owner's COMIC SANS SULK, through.

I do love the US team names, tho. LOL @ "Utah Jazz"

"Los Angeles Lakers" - lololololol no lakes in LA rite

There's Echo Park lake, this "Silver Lake" I keep hearing about...

"Sacramento Kings" - lololololol no royalty in AMERIKKKA rite

Hahaaaaaaaa

LOL @ "Los Angeles Lakers"

xps beaten by pato, ouch

"New York Knicks" - more leik NEW YORK KNICKERS!!

There should be like the Alabama Communists or something

"The Baton Rouge Lamb Eaters"

(cos no americans eat lamb)

I would diss the Orlando Magic but Australia's very own National Basketball League once topped that in the early-90s with the geographically vague "South East Melbourne Magic".

Worst one is "Memphis Grizzlies" for obvious reasons.

Orlando Magic makes more sense than the Lakers' name does

Yeah but how can you turn up at one of the games and yell "COME ON THE MAGIC, GO YOU MAGIC" without sounding a bit lavender?

You'll be spending the whole game doing that annoying "DEE-FENCE DEE-FENCE" thing that Americans love.

maybe, maybe not, maybe fuck yourself

:D

you guys mean the MINNEAPOLIS LAKERS

zackly

New Orleans Jazz too, fwiw

CLEVELAND BROWN

It is MUCH more likely that a grizzly will exist in Memphis than a lake will exist in Los Angeles, or jazz will exist in Utah.

it obv. didn't play out as much nationally but ORL held a big grudge against shaq for a few years, he was their first huge franchise player; penny hardaway (his all-star teammate at the time, for the brits) felt betrayed and said so, and it was felt he snuck out suddenly, 'went hollywood' etc. the controversy didnt make it past nbaworld cause (1) its ORL (2) lakers were just ok at the time and shaq wasnt going to make them instant worldbeaters.

until he did from 2000-2002 three championships all by himself iirc

Man was he ever good then.

except after his father died and he annouced he was going to try to become a professional baseball player (which he did briefly).

Wait I just assumed this was the Space Jam storyline?

honestly surprised that britishers hadn't heard of the draft! it's an institution in every major american sport, to the point that ~draft day~ is like a thing that people have parties for

also in trying to think of a parallel here the closest i can come up with would be gerrard leaving for like chelsea or something

― gbx, Friday, 9 July 2010 23:14 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Ummm... the rest of the world really does not know/care for American sports. Pretty much every non-American still lols @ the name World Series for example. It just seems like genetic freaks being good at being genetic freaks. And lol ice hockey.

Gerrard turned the car back around, right? I don't know if there is a true equivilant, Gerrard was leaving the most successful team in English footballing history who had just won the Champions League with Rafa Benitez, Football Manager . Rooney to Utd I guess?

australian rules football also has a draft; similar situation to this a couple of years ago when chris judd (captain of west coast and best midfielder in the league) decided he wanted to come and live back in melbourne again. free agency doesn't really exist in the same way as it seems to for NBA players, so his options were: a) let his contract lapse, nominate for the draft, and hope that a melbourne team would draft him; or b) hope that another interested team could work out a deal to swap draft picks / players to west coast and get him in return. in the end carlton did this, swapping a young player and two draft picks (iirc) to west coast to secure him.

there's another situation going on at the moment where several uncontracted players including gary ablett, who's probably the best player in the league right now, are being heavily courted by a new franchise that's being set up with the financial backing of the league's bosses. the draft restrictions don't apply because the league want the new team to be competitive ASAP. it's a fucked situation imo, but the clubs signed their rights in such matters away years ago, partly because they were all incompetently run and on the brink of bankruptcy before the national league was set up.

The hard bit to translate into a football analogy is the degree to which one player makes a difference in basketball - it's rather as if Barcelona had a horrible team, but still always won La Liga because Messi was able to carry them singlehandedly - but when they got to the Champions League they came against teams like United who had one nearly-as-good player (say, Rooney) and 2 or even 3 good complementary players (Ferdinand, Evra), and so he couldn't compete. Anyway he's seen as a huge, game-changing talent and also a general all-round good guy.

So this hypothetical Messi comes to the end of his contract, and there's speculation where he's going to go. Will he re-sign for the club that built him up? Will he go to an already-strong team, and finally win the Champions League? Or perhaps he will go to a sleeping giant with huge residual media interest, singlehandedly turn *them* into a contender, and make insane money? He declares that he's gonna give his decision in a ~one hour TV special~ (this is exactly as mental and unprecedented as it would be in football), which starts with highlights montages of him being good etc, then he announces that actually, actually he is going to Porto. And so is his friend David Villa. And so is his friend Kaka. And they are going to win everything.

honestly surprised that britishers hadn't heard of the draft! it's an institution in every major american sport, to the point that ~draft day~ is like a thing that people have parties for

i've heard of the draft, but everything i know about it i learnt from jerry macguire, and i didn't realise that players didn't also move teams regularly during their career, which is what i'm getting from this thread. like i know michael johnson was at one team for most of his career, but i assumed that was an exception, like it is in football.

players are sold like chattels regularly in football but the fee is to break the player's contract with his club, not to "own" the player. so if there isn't long to go on a contract (or if it's expired) then the fee is small, which means a player will generally have multiple options and hold the cards. the massive ronaldo-type deals with four years still to go on a contract make the headlines, but they are rare relative to the bulk of transfers (although obv. more common than in us sport). and they are not dun without the player's cooperation: a club isn't going to invest money breaking a contract for a player who doesn't want to join them. often the club doing the selling doesn't really want to sell.

the other thing is the player gets to choose who he signs his first contract with, and contracts are generally pretty short (five years is reserved for the ronaldos). if you're drafted, are you drafted for life (barring exceptional circumstances like these)? and how did these exceptional circs arise? and to what extent do you have any say over who you're drafted too? is your only option if you don't like where you're drafted too to do what kobe bryant apparently did and simply refuse to play?

"dun"?

dun verb (dunned, dunning) to press someone persistently for payment. noun a demand for payment.

An NBA draft contract lasts 4 years for a first-round picked player - separate rules exist for 2nd round picks, who are normally journeymen trying to stick with a team. The contracts players are offered are the same each year, and depend on what order you were picked in (so a guy like Andrew Bogut, who went #1 and was expected to be quite good, got the same contract as a guy like Lebron, who went #1 and was expected to be a superstar). After three years, the team decide whether to activate the 4th year of the player's contract or not. Before that, it's guaranteed, so the team must pay even if he turns out not to very good.

Players have no say in trades, which is weird and kind of creepy.

You cannot exchange more than $3m as part of any trade, so trades (which are often carried out without the player's consent) are generally for draft picks or other players. Some really top players insist on 'no trade without my consent' clauses in their contracts, but it's unusual.

Drafts aren't for life. However, the team that drafts a player has a massive advantage in keeping the player. If you draft a player who turns out to be brilliant, you have him for those 4 years at a cheap rate (it's a standard off-the-shelf contract, so its very good value). However, you can then turn to him two years in, and offer him the chance to switch to a Max contract (the highest permitted contract) for five or even six years. If he accepts, you now have him until *that* expires - if he refuses, he's stuck earning rookie scale money instead of max money for two more years.

so lebron's 4 year deal had run out?

why are the cleveland people surprised he left then? surely as soon as you turn down one of those contracts you get offered during the 4 years, it's obvious what your intentions are?

iirc in the uk there used to be some connection between the home town and the players, but that was before it was a mega-money thing i guess

nothing formal though (except yorkshire ccc)

is your only option if you don't like where you're drafted too to do what kobe bryant apparently did and simply refuse to play?

If you're American, yes. This is a big problem, because a few teams are run by cheapskates/inept lunatics/racists, and because they always do badly, they always get a very high pick in the draft, which means that next year they get first choice of even more potential stars.

Last year, Minnesota (one of the badly-run franchises) drafted a very good Spanish player called Ricky Rubio, who announced that he would keep playing in the Spanish league for the time being instead of coming over.

Lebron signed an extention, which ran out.

lol good luck usa

The 2003 draft class was exceptionally good - it featured Lebron, the two other star players who joined him in the megamove, and some other really good players too. All of them signed 5 years extentions (ie switches to max money) in 2005, so they all expired 2010.

how does this salary cap thing affect things? i thought it made it diff to have more than one big money player at a team?

Cleveland aren't surprised so much as (butt)hurt - Lebron flirted with a number of suitors in the whole year leading up to his contract expiring, and as late as April said they were "in the lead" for his signature - this is why he's made such heel turn this year from well-liked guy to exciting villain.

Yes - the "max contract" is roughly defined as 30% of the salary cap (there are actually 3127465124 clauses and exceptions and sub-clauses to this, but that's the general idea), so only those teams paying 70% or less of the cap at the moment were in the chases for LeBron.

The Miami team that the three have gone too will have to fill out the rest of their squad (and starting lineup!) with journeymen - the manager's job will be convincing players that they'll look so good next to three megastars that it'll be in their long-term financial interest to play for peanuts this year.

mike miller and udonis haslem aren't journeyman. the other school-of-thought is that, with this young core, many players -- especially veterans hungry for a title or shooters who want lots of open shots at the basket -- will line up to apply for a roster spot on this team.

iirc in the uk there used to be some connection between the home town and the players, but that was before it was a mega-money thing i guess

You'd be surprised at just how early there were itinerant professional footballers tho. By the 1900s at least, and by the '30s I would imagine teams being about half and half home town players and buy-ins - although the buy-ins probably didn't come from very far away, cos the money was almost universally not good enough to drag you from one end of the country to the other. Not sure how many Scottish and Irish players were already coming to English clubs by then tho.

(Daniel is right (and knows far more about this than I do) - no-one really doubts that having convinced three absolute superstars to take pay cuts to play for him, the manager of Miami will be able to get some other tolerable guys around them - I'm just explaining that part of the remaining drama of this offseason is which guys they'll be)

(Daniel:Miami :: A hoy hoy:Arsenal)

lol. i was surprised to read that "hi dere" is a miami fan, too (i don't think he's from miami).

in any event, it's no small task to fill-out the roster. three superstars is a great core, but by no means a complete team.

(except all of his Jack Wilshire 10th Ballon d'Or stuff actually came true this week)

:DDDDDDDDDDDD

Ok so how does the draft work for the players? How do you decide who gets picked first or whatever? I mean if you get the #1 draft and LeBron is the #1 player but you don't need a player in that position?

(except all of his Jack Wilshire 10th Ballon d'Or stuff actually came true this week)

― Gravel Puzzleworth, Saturday, 10 July 2010 12:51 (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the guy is about to become an integral part of faio fucking capello's team at 18... its p much the same.

There are 30 teams in the league. The bottom 14, by league position, go into a lottery - they get a number of tickets determined by how badly they do, so that the very worst teams have the best chances of 'winning' the lottery (you can see the exact odds here: http://www.nba.com/history/lottery_probabilities.html)

Picks 1, 2 and 3 in the draft are determined by the lottery, then the other 27 teams just pick in reverse order of how well they did (so the team with the worst record can't pick lower than 4th)

Whether you should pick by need or quality is an open question - Michael Jordan famously fell to #3 because the team picking 2nd felt they didn't need a player at his position.

So they do have an order for the player part of the draft, it isn't just who knows who is good/been scouted?

This shit is super communist btw, I want to see a Fox News report.

Ummm... the rest of the world really does not know/care for American sports. Pretty much every non-American still lols @ the name World Series for example.

i vaguely recall on some sports fan board a few years back bringing up the argument of why American sports use "world champions" to crown their champs, when at best the sports reach two countries, and one continent.

The response I got back was "fuck that, we have the best sports leagues in the world, and if we ever played teams in other countries we'd win". Yea let's grant monikers based on brass, unfounded assumptions of superiority!

(The lottery system is afaik only used by basketball and ice hockey - I don't know anything at all about ice hockey but in basketball it's necessary because one player can make such a huge difference, and an 18y/o can be so much of a sure thing, that otherwise teams would lose games on purpose ('tank') to secure the worst record and be sure of picking him in the draft. This actually happens *anyway* even with the lottery when really good players are imminent (it certainly happened with LeBron) with teams deliberately losing just to move from a 15% to a 20% chance of the top pick.)

xpost nevermind this discussion happened after the 2006 US National Basketball team's loss to Greece, and multiple World Baseball Classic failures...

sam, the order teams pick in is decided based on previous performance+lottery, but they can pick who they want, e.g. the team with #1 pick isn't stuck with the player who is generally agreed to be the best in his year.

hmm what would the NBA truly be like if players were "assigned".....

18y/o? I thought it was a college system? Was Lebron too stupid to go to university?

also lol spidermark.

So they do have an order for the player part of the draft, it isn't just who knows who is good/been scouted?

No - teams can pick whoever they want. There's generally a rough consensus leading up to the draft as to the rough tiers of the p[layers involved, but there's a lot of question marks teams have to decide on - for instance, this year, almost everyone agreed that DeMarcus Cousins was one of the three most talented players in the draft, but also that he was a headcase who might well flame out, so he eventually went #5, but it could easily have been anything between 2 and 8.

18y/o? I thought it was a college system? Was Lebron too stupid to go to university?

― fuque santa cruz (a hoy hoy), Saturday, July 10, 2010 4:42 PM (30 seconds ago) Bookmark

my anglo impression is that american universities will give you a scholarship if you're good at sportz

Pre 2006, you could enter the draft right out of high school, and many top players (LeBron, Kobe, Kevin Garnett) did this.

Post 2006, there was an age limit of 19, so most top top tier prospects play in college for a year (on a scholarship), then declare for the draft. One or two spend the year between 18 and 19 playing abroad, for money.

if you can throw an orange sphere through a rim, you can pretty much spend your high school career defecating on scantrons and get a full ride.

apparently it's more common than it was for basketball players to draft without a full college career. i think that's still pretty rare in the other sports though, presumably because high school linebackers are insufficiently morbidly obese.

it's mostly the sexy positions (QB/RB/WR) that declare early in football, and lately QBs seem to want to go the distance in college

i guess the dominicans et al. are another story, but do american baseball players declare early?

College basketball is taken pretty seriously, so it's also not unusual for a player to go to college for 2 or 3 years, then declare for the draft, or even to stay all four, graduate, and then declare for the draft. If a player does well in college, he's likely to be picked higher, so for players who weren't considered one of the top 5 players of their age in the country when they turned 18, even pre-2006 college was your only route into the NBA.

What do the colleges get out of it btw?

billions of $

The 2010 NBA Draft - top 7 picks

1 John Wall PG (1 year in college)
2 Evan Turner SG (3 years)
3 Derrick Favors PF (1 year)
4 Wesley Johnson SF (3 years)
5 DeMarcus Cousins PF/C (1 year)
6 Ekpe Udoh PF (3 years)
7 Greg Monroe PF/C (2 years)

etc - the highest picked full college graduate was taken at #23.

caek otm - national tv rights to sell, in exchange for 'educating' players who they're not even paying, and who they don't even allow to earn money in any other way (endorsements etc)

billions of $

― caek, Saturday, July 10, 2010 4:52 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

presumably college basketball is shown on tv?

ah xp

Wait so the college reserve league makes it on to telly? Y'all Americans need to get out more often.

This shit is super communist btw, I want to see a Fox News report.

My assumption is that a draft is important in leagues with franchises and no promotion/relegation because you need to keep all teams at least reasonably competitive to keep them alive. A free market on players wd probably produce the kind of inequalities we've got in Premier League football now, but without the thrill of a relegation battle/Europa Cup spots to keep fans interested in the middling sides. So it's all about keeping the brand healthy and not really Socialism At The Door at all.

Many americans openly talk about preferring to watch college basketball to the NBA! I can explain many thing about basketball but not that, because it is totally incomprehensible to me too.

in terms of eyeballs, college level sport is not much smaller than pro sports in the u.s. (i think?) seems like everyone has a team, it dominates college towns to a degree that is unheard of in the uk (even lol oxbridge), it's all live on tv, etc., etc. and for a few college teams with "storied histories" it seems like the school is there to give the team a reason to exist. big american football college teams get bigger attendances than man utd.

college sports fans are among our most insane and dedicated

it dominates college towns to a degree that is unheard of in the uk (even lol oxbridge)

hey man, don't front on the bumps

Wait so the college reserve league makes it on to telly? Y'all Americans need to get out more often.

― fuque santa cruz (a hoy hoy), Saturday, July 10, 2010 4:57 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

two reasons afaict: (i) the standard is not that much lower than it is in pro teams (ii) there is no concept of promotion or relegation in the pro sports (lol protectionism), which means there are not actually that many pro teams (outside of those pro teams own feeder leagues, which are nothing like championship, league 1, etc.) this is a huge country with a huge appetite for live/televised sport, and there is a shortage of pro teams. also i think a lot of people prefer college teams and the average college fan seems way more passionate (identify with the culture more, different more enjoyable style of play, etc.)

There seems to be a lot of Corinthian spirit stuff going on with love of College sports as well, if movies and TV are anything to go by.

sam, the difference b/w the most popular US college sports and the most popular UK university sport:

http://taylormadetirade.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/matthew-mcconaughey-hook-em-horns201217061.jpg

vs.

http://cache3.asset-cache.net/xc/85690665.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=77BFBA49EF8789215ABF3343C02EA548C12B4E7AEA6B4943513122098C7D4DA320DA16446450D0CFE30A760B0D811297

http://andrew1769.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/royal-henley-regatta-blazer-2.jpg

vs

http://forum.tayyar.org/members/faithful-albums-my-album-picture2023-tx-cheerleaders.jpg

If the two dudes on the left and right threw the guy with the boater 10 feet up in the air then caught him in the splits position, it wd be the most awesome sporting moment of all time.

didn't that happen in true blue?

Many americans openly talk about preferring to watch college basketball to the NBA!

fwiw those ppl are total morons imho

i've heard of the draft, but everything i know about it i learnt from jerry macguire, and i didn't realise that players didn't also move teams regularly during their career, which is what i'm getting from this thread. like i know michael johnson was at one team for most of his career, but i assumed that was an exception, like it is in football.

― caek, Saturday, July 10, 2010 3:36 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

The names here are ADORABLE

my friend is a huge basketball fan but pretty much refuses to watch the NBA because, in his opinion, the players are selfish, lazy, money/fame-obsessed jerks who are often uncoachable and only try if its the playoffs or their contract will expire at the end of the season and they need to impress other teams and "trick" them into giving them more $ than they're truly worth. Whereas college teams are filled with eager kids who give their all 100% of the time and are dominated by a tyrannical coach who makes sure even the most talented player knows the team comes before him as an individual. there's a bit of truth to it imo, but there's also a lot of stereotyping and racism there, too.

lol "michael johnson"

to answer a question above, baseball has a draft too, for US and canadian kids. it breaks down to maybe 50% college kids, 50% kids that just finished high school. it's maybe been trending towards more college kids lately.

it's the same idea as the NBA, the team with the worst record gets the first pick and so on. but with baseball it is so so hard to project who might be good 3-7 years down the road that it really turns into a crapshoot. a player like steven strasburg becomes once in a generation just because he could jump from college to the majors in a year and be nearly as good. that basically never happens, not with that short of a turnaround.

(no one watches college baseball btw. it's as hard to overstate how much no one cares about college baseball as it is to understate how much everyone loves college basketball and football)

also in baseball you can't be drafted out of college until your junior year, with a few exceptions

The baseball rule is that you can get drafted out of high school, but if you opt to go to college, then you are locked in for three years (meaning you can't be drafted again until you are either a junior or a redshirt sophomore). You can also opt to complete your stay in college if you want, but if there is $$$ waiting, most dudes seem to go that way.

Also yeah college baseball is stupendously unpopular (it is probably below college hockey, and maaaaybe even women's college basketball in terms of media/fan interest), but I will say I went to the College World Series on a whim a couple of weeks ago and it is a totally awesome thing to do. I kinda have a little crush on Omaha, Nebraska right now because I had so much fun.

Oh and also if you are Dominican or from elsewhere in Latin America, you can't be signed until you are 16 years old. Because there were issues with teams signing kids younger than that.

18y/o? I thought it was a college system? Was Lebron too stupid to go to university?

He was accepted to college but never had any intention of going.

this is honestly fascinating to me - i had no idea that drafts and stuff were so unique to america!

...refuses to watch the NBA because, in his opinion...

Much of what he says is uninformed crap. All of it is true if you selectively apply it to some players and not others, but that is like saying "white people all look and act like sitcom characters".

BTW, I'm very surprised the shitty NBA officiating didn't make that list. It is a very legitimate beef against the NBA and makes them look very, very bad. All you have to do is read what the ref who was fired for gambling on games said on the subject. It all rings true as a bell.

i just assume people who don't like nba basketball don't like things such as "skill," "athleticism," and "talent"

he does but he needs those things to be subsumed into a team-focused "system". I do wish there was more teamwork in the NBA (it's a joy to watch the Jazz run that offense, for instance, and they're pretty much unique in the league right now), but NBA haters wayyy overstate and overapply their criticisms. and the ones I've encountered seem to get off on giving a big middle finger to rich, successful, physically-gifted young black men.

well because of the nature of the game these days, inefficient volume scorers aren't really valued nor are they widespread--how many players can really be regarded as "selfish" these days. i mean yeah there's still a lot of isos and stuff but a lot of drive-and-kick and sharing the ball too.

yeah pretty sure he's still judging things based on the steve francis/marbury era

anyway the main thing college basketball has going for it is an awesome championship tournament. 65ish teams, single-elimination. it's so popular that 50yr old women who couldn't tell you how many people are on each team will join the office pool betting on it.

yup--it's pretty safe to ignore it the rest of the time

what a fascinating lil thread

can i just say by the way--i cant speak for americans who get all weird and jingoistic about the name "the world series"--but its just called the world series cause its always been called the world series and it is a funny and idiosyncratic little thing and most baseball fans are aware of the irony so shut up europe

NFL and NBA winners are called "world champions" tho too

http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/ckBxm8h4eJp/Cleveland+Cavaliers+v+Boston+Celtics

2 b fair, nba is premier basketball liga in da world, and no one outside of america gives a fukk about what the nfl does

and i thought that my grandpa was the best in the world--tho no one outside of my family gived a fuck about what he did--but still, that "world's #1 grandpa" shirt i gave him rang a bit hollow. i think we both knew that.

yeah but this if more like if he had to beat other american grandpas in a long tournament and then when he won the cover of every newspaper in the country said "GRANNY'S GRANPA IS THE GRANDPA CHAMPION OF THE WORLD" and he got a parade

I mean I guess world series champions get a t-shirt too

everyone knows american grandpas are the cream of the world's crop

my friend's grandpa just couldn't cut it here and had to spend a few years in Turkey developing his "got your nose" skills. pretty sad.

lol

another example to make this simpler for british people: in grandpa terms the miami heat are now what you would get if abe simpson, frank costanza and peter boyle's character in everybody loves raymond teamed up to talk about what they think about twitter

high-level lol

[no1 in england watches ELR]

I saw it once (on an aeroplane) and was so viscerally disgusted I couldn't actually speak

actually

god, my writing

i think more people watch elr than watched seinfeld tbh

i guess. when is it even on, except like 9am? (iirc) n e ways, no-one watched/watches either of them.

i dunno if it's been mentioned in this thread for the folks outside of the USA but part of the reason you see people so upset over this is because no Cleveland sports team has won a championship in 4+ decades. LeBron was the first superstar athlete of this degree in Cleveland in a long long time (maybe ever? i can't remember who the last one would have been)

Can I just... College World Series roffles.

yeah lol everybody loves raymond. i saw it once, the joke seemed to be he has an annoying family which iirc, no sitcom has ever made fun of before. surprising really, you think it would be a furtile area for hilarity.

kind of a sidebar, but what's the deal with betty white?

thats the internets fault

she's old and filthy

She has a great jump shot.

so whatever happened to this guy? has he become lebron air james yet?

this thread is adorable - prob what i would look like if i tried to understand soccer

sam the team struggled out of the gate, lots of questions about team chemistry etc, but they've won 5 in a row now and seem to be hitting their stride. last week the heat (lebron's new team) played the cavs (old team) and lebron scored 38 points (a lot of points) & won - sort of like a "turning point" in all this

occasionally he becomes lebron airball james

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ABZR7R9lbw

should be noted that they've been playing soft opponents of late