Your Guide to NBA Leverage

How players get what they want and why front offices give it to them

Now that the new NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement is in place, we’re going to be seeing a lot more contracts like last summer (though probably with less players switching teams, thereby making some of this article irrelevant but whatever I already started so let’s keep it going), contracts which left us all looking something like this:

So, How do players and agents manage get what they want? Leverage. What is leverage? Great question! Google it!

The greatest negotiators can get what they want without leverage to apply pressure. They use psychological warfare, Jedi mind-tricks and other advanced tactics that are too serious to be dealt with here. Other times, one of the negotiators is just so stupid or blinded that it’s not even fair (Warren Buffett is fond of saying that “if you can’t see the sucker, you’re it), like whoever was in the room with Joakim Noah’s representatives last year when he got a 4 year/$72 million contract with the New York Knicks. So for the purposes of this article we’re going to discount those situations, which, in effect, means we’re going to ignore every free agent signing/negotiation conducted by the New York Knicks since James Dolan purchased the team. We are going to try to understand how players and their agents consistently pull off the seemingly improbable, like getting Harrison Barnes a max contract (though, as my colleague pointed out, Harrison Barnes is playing quite well and is actually living up to his mammoth contract), while owners and GMs seem to always shoot themselves in the foot.

The Players

1. The Best: Probably the hardest leverage to acquire yet the easiest to use once you have it: just be the best. Nobody has ever questioned the Cavs signing LeBron James to that monster contract because everyone knows that he’s worth every penny. If the Cavs hadn’t made him a satisfactory offer there would’ve been 31 other teams willing to throw every cent of their cap space at him (though perhaps James’ contract is coming back to hurt him now, as the team is struggling to find all the complementary pieces he desires while also retaining him, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love to near max deals). For most players this phenomenon extends only to their own contracts but at this point LeBron is so valuable to the Cavs that his leverage enables him to effectively play both coach and GM, acquiring players and assigning them roles as he pleases. However, the power the Cavs have assigned LeBron is also a function of their understanding of how much he means to both their franchise and city, both financially and in terms of their national relevance.
2. Desperation: When a team that was once a competitor has fallen from grace, or its title window begins to close, the owner/GM duo becomes desperate. They look to sign someone that they think will dramatically alter their team’s fortunes in a single season and that is how you end up with signings like Dwyane Wade and Rajon Rondo. Chicago’s 2011–15 seasons were fun to watch and those teams took LeBron’s groups to the brink a few times before ultimately falling short each year. With Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah gone, and only Jimmy Butler to carry a weak squad, Jerry Reinsdorf was able to convince himself that signing an aging Wade and troubled Rondo were good ideas (No, they were bad ideas Jerry. Really, really bad.)
3. Championship Swag: Any player coming off a championship is automatically more valuable to teams when he enters free agency. Don’t ask me why because I have no idea why Timofey Mozgov and Matthew Delevadova are all of a sudden worthy of All-Star contracts.
4. The Perfect Fit: There are two kinds of perfect fits

• A) The Once (and Hopefully Future):The Player was the best fit in a given system and therefore put up inflated numbers and uses them as a negotiating tool. Ex: Harrison Barnes. Barnes’ production during the 2014–15 and 15–16 campaigns put him on the map and virtually ensured that he would be given a giant contract when he became a free agent. Once again, multiple people have pointed out to me that Barnes is actually having a great season for the Mavs, averaging over 20 points and 5 rebounds per game in a little under 36 minutes while shooting above 47% and around 34% from three, and I agree. He definitely surpassed my expectations of what he could do (and probably the Mavs’ expectations as well), and judging by the way he’s playing now, and seeing some of the struggles of the Golden State offense, Barnes’ tertiary offensive roll on that team was probably more of a testament to the difficulty of distributing shots among all the scorers on that team than his own limitations. However, I can, and will, still make the argument that Mark Cuban signed Barnes because of his inflated numbers with Golden State and merely lucked out with his performance this year. Why do I still believe this? In the Golden State system Barnes was relegated to the corner where he would get the ball from Steph Curry or Draymond Green off their deadly pick and roll and would either shoot the 3 or drive to the rim. Now, Barnes has been moved to more of a power forward/creator position and is flourishing. Are you gonna tell me that Cuban and Carlisle saw that coming? I’m not buying it.
• B) The Theoretical: The player has been an underachiever his entire career for any number of reasons, including but not limited to injury, bad systems, bad teammates, bad coaching, bad environments (think JR Smith pre-Cavaliers). Usually these free agents have the least leverage because they haven’t lived up to the expectations of their previous teams, unless the pursuing GM tips his hand. If a player is valuable to one guy, especially if that guy is a top-flight GM, and others know it, a bidding war may ensue. Today this mold is best fit by the Rockets’ Ryan Anderson and Eric Gordon, two historically underachieving gunners that fit perfectly into the Da’antoni/Morey uptempo system that uses advanced analytics to combine fast breaks, threes and layups. It’s incredible what they’ve been able to do. Eric Gordon’s per-36 (20.5 ppg, 3.2 rpg, 3.3 apg, while shooting 42% from the field and 39% from 3) numbers are finally living up to the expectations that were heaped upon him when he entered the league. For more on the Rockets and their incredible season, check out
  Kevin O'Connor
  ’s article in
  The Ringer
  and Howard Beck’s article in Bleacher Report.

5. The Only Hope: Sometimes one player is all that separates a directionless franchise from fading away and becoming irrelevant, whether for good and bad reasons. Sometimes this incentivizes the front office to keep the player around, and the player knows it. Today, this is what Boogie Cousins and Anthony Davis represent to the Kings and Pelicans. Without them, both of those teams would drop into obscurity season after season. Boogie manages to do this both by simultaneously playing spectacularly and being one of the most entertaining off-court personalities in the sport, while Davis “just” uses his incredible on-court talents to keep the hapless Pelicans afloat in an uber-competitive West.

6. The Hometown Hero: Having a hometown that you don’t play for already, one that you constantly reference as your home and how you’d love to go back there someday is the perfect bargaining chip. Best example right now? Steph Curry. No question. Steph (and don’t forget about Ayesha!) was born and raised in Charlotte, NC, where his father Dell, a fine shooter in his own right, played for the Hornets.

Young Steph had more swag than today’s

He goes to Panthers games decked out in their gear, he has commented (poorly) on the bathroom law controversy and the possibility that he might leave and play for Michael Jordan just seems to keep popping up, especially now that Kevin Durant has usurped his alpha dog status. Do I think he’ll leave Golden State? No chance. But will the threat of him returning to his hometown serve him in free agency when the Warriors Front Office is trying to convince him that he should take a pay cut so they can retain Klay, Draymond and KD? No question.

Sending a message? “Pay Me”

The Front Office

Many times GMs are powerless to execute a plan that they think will ultimately be more effective because the owners decide that they own the franchise and will thus run it however they choose because, at the end of the day, it’s their money on the line (Which, don’t get me wrong, is a valid argument. But the same way that most of these hundred-millionaires and billionaires pay and trust experts to manage their financial holdings, perhaps they should trust the experts that they’re paying to run their NBA franchise. Just a thought.) Other times the GM is just bad. Let’s examine some models in which the front office defeats itself before the agent and player even have a chance:

1. The Starfucker (Steve Ballmer): Basketball is different from baseball and football in that one incredible star can have a visible impact on the team’s overall performance. Since there are only five players on the court, it is much easier for one of them to simply take over and will his team to victory (excepting on play). Therefore, the easiest thing to do in basketball is pay a bunch of superstars and expect them to produce out on the court without accounting for how they’ll mesh with current players or the system that coach already has in place. The classic case of this was when Dolan gutted the surging Knicks lineup of Raymond Felton, Landry Fields, Danillo Gallinari, Wilson Chandler, Amare Stoudemire that was playing textbook Da’antoni basketball in exchange for Carmelo Anthony who, for some reason, couldn’t wait until the off-season. Then the Knicks signed Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah and we now have the wonderful flaming pile of garbage that is the 2015–16 Knicks. But since we have already disqualified all Walsh-related transactions, we’ll have to focus instead on Steve Ballmer who, this coming off season, will sign both Chris Paul (deserving, but unknown whether he’ll want to stay) and Blake Griffin (undeserving, definitely wants to stay) to maximum contracts while destroying the rest of his team in the process. The Clippers are the team that always seems to be hanging
2. The Win-Now: This my least favorite owner philosophy because it demonstrates that one of the few people fortunate enough to own an NBA basketball team has very little knowledge and understanding of how basketball is played and championships are won. Everyone except Mikhail Prokhorov knew that mortgaging your entire future for a bunch of aging stars was a terrible idea but the Nets went through with it anyway. This philosophy is very rarely the brainchild of the GM because GMs tend to have a better understanding of the sport than owners, but ultimately the owner is the one who signs the check and therefore gets final say on all team-related decisions.
3. The Glory Days: GMs trying to recreate the system that worked for them as players without understanding how the league has changed. Basketball, much more than football and definitely more than baseball, has changed immensely over the past 20 years. For the most part, almost every player on a competitive team in 2017 needs to be somewhat quick and able to score facing the basket. When Vlade Divac played, in the late 90’s, early 00’s, that was not the case; the game was dominated by Shaq, one of the most dominant low post players in the history of the league and post-up centers were a key component of an elite team. For some reason Divac still seems to believe that low post players are the key to thriving in today’s NBA, so he drafted multiple big men with limited offensive capability in the past few drafts, despite having DeMarcus Cousins, possibly the best modern center in the league, on his team for the past 7 years. I don’t understand it, but maybe you do and if so please share your knowledge.

For more information on NBA Free Agency check out http://www.cbafaq.com/salarycap.htm