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February 19, 2009
League distributes financial warning
Yahoo Sports
by Adrian Wojnarowski and Johnny Ludden
We don't think we'd want to be long an NBA franchise right around now.
The NBA sent out an ominous memo to its teams on the eve of the league’s trade deadline to outline dramatic projected drops in salary-cap and luxury-tax levels for the next two summers, Yahoo! Sports has learned.
Because of rapidly declining revenues, the league office delivered a sobering warning to teams trying to free cap space for the historic free-agent class of 2010: Owners and executives will likely have to strip more payroll than initially planned.
At a time when most of the league’s teams are trying to shed salary, these stark projections did nothing to encourage the absorbing of top talent and pricey contracts in the final hours leading up to Thursday’s 3 p.m. ET trade deadline.
“They’re scaring the crap out of the people,” one Western Conference executive said Wednesday night. “There were already not enough buyers in this market, and after seeing that [memo], there are even less now.”
NoLandGrab: Given news like this, the idea of committing even more public money to increase the supply of local NBA-sized arenas makes about as much sense as buying a new analog television.
Posted by eric at February 19, 2009 1:07 PM