Bad news Boogie

Wrote about DeMarcus Cousins and unintended consequences. An excerpt:

The newly-created Designated Player Extension allows teams to offer in-their-prime homegrown stars so much more money than anyone else can — the Kings can offer Cousins about $80 million more than any other team — that the desire to be elsewhere, immediately, would have to be almost impossibly strong in order for it to overwhelm the desire to jump on that cash.

The owners obviously pushed for the new rule at least in part as a reaction to Kevin Durant signing with the 73-win Golden State Warriors — a signing made possible by the fact that the owners themselves pushed so hard during the 2011 CBA negotiations for a rule that would eliminate extend-and-trades like the one that sent Carmelo Anthony to the New York Knicks that they accidentally eliminated the motivation for any star veteran to sign an extension of any kind. (Limiting the number of years an extension could tack onto the current contract and the size of the raise a player could get over his current deal basically forced all star players into free agency if they wanted to maximize their market value.)

In this case, the NBA may again have unintentionally created new consequences that may not actually be desirable. The NBA’s popularity is soaring like never before. There is legitimate interest in the league year-round now, and though much of it is obviously driven by ever-rising quality of play and ridiculous numbers being compiled by several stars around the league, a great deal of that popularity has been generated by the crazy player movement the league has experienced ever since LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh decided to join forces with the Miami Heat back in 2010.

Read the full story at The Step Back.