Free Agency, Free Market? : NBA Players Expected to Be Fielding Lots of Offers; It Hasn’t Worked Out That Way

Theoretically, the Denver Nuggets could lose nine of the 12 players on their roster to free agency after the 1985-86 season. Of the nine, seven are among the team’s best players, including the cornerstone of the franchise, forward Alex English.

Theoretically, the Nuggets could be in big trouble after this season. Theoretically, two other starters besides English could take a hike. Starting center Wayne Cooper could be gone. So could Cooper’s backup, Danny Schayes. So could starting guard T.R. Dunn. And Bill Hanzlik. And Mike Evans. And Elston Turner and Willie White and Joe Kopicki.

Theoretically, the Nuggets, who at the moment are negotiating with only Evans, are fiddling while the Midwest Division championship banner burns.

A funny word, theoretically. As Nugget player personnel director Pete Babcock says, “Sometimes, there’s a big difference between theory and reality.”

This is one of those times. The Nuggets are not in any trouble at all. If they want to keep most or all of their potential free agents, they will be able to. They are willing to wait until after this season to talk to all the free agents--except Evans, whose signing appears imminent--because the good players, in Babcock’s own words, “aren’t going anywhere.”

The system says so. The right-of-first-refusal system, that is. The one management calls the salvation of the league, and agents and players call things that cannot necessarily be put in a family newspaper.

Under the terms of the right-of-first-refusal, a team can keep any of its free agents simply by matching an offer sheet made by another club. That is the reason the Nuggets can afford to go into this season with most of their best players in the final year of their contracts.

“It’s a pretty simple situation to evaluate,” says Babcock. “Any player has a certain marketability. If he contributes to your team, if he’s a superstar or if he gives you a good 18 minutes a game, he’ll be attractive to another team. But he’ll also be attractive to you. You’ll want to keep him.”

And right-of-first-refusal gives teams that chance. “It’s insurance for the team,” Babcock says.

“It certainly gives you a bit of leverage,” says Nugget owner Sidney Shlenker.

But it gives the players and agents a bit of a headache. According to them, management has too much leverage. According to them, management is negotiating--or, more to the point, not negotiating--in bad faith, and they will march out the statistics to prove it.

According to Larry Fleisher, executive counsel to the National Basketball Assn. Players Assn. and himself an agent, an average of 12 veteran free agents got offer sheets from other teams in the late 1970s, during the first three years the right-of-first-refusal clause was in affect. Last year, according to Fleisher, four or five got offer sheets. This year, of the more than 70 free agents available, only three--Golden State center Joe Barry Carroll, Indiana guard Jerry Sichting and Utah center Rich Kelley--have received offer sheets.

Says Keith Glass, the agent for Nuggets top draft choice Blair Rasmussen: “I don’t think you have to go any farther than that to see what’s going on.”

For the players and agents, gone are the good old days of a few years ago, when players like Scott Wedman and Mitch Kupchak and James Edwards and Dave Corzine and Nuggets forwards Calvin Natt and English signed huge free-agent offer sheets with other teams.

Why are those days gone? Why aren’t more players--Norm Nixon, Darrell Griffith and Tom Chambers, among others--getting offers? Why isn’t the system working as the agents and players want it to?

Says English’s agent, Ted Steinberg: “There’s no good faith here, especially when the players agreed to a salary cap (which they did in April 1983), the ultimate good-faith gesture in sports. When nobody says to Norm Nixon, ‘How much do you want?’ then you know something is screwed up. Part of it is collusion, part of it is the system.

“The guys who are getting offers, it’s extraordinary circumstances. Red Auerbach (the president of the Boston Celtics, who signed Sichting to an offer sheet) doesn’t care if somebody doesn’t like him. It’s his league. It takes a Red Auerbach or a Don Nelson (the Milwaukee Bucks coach-general manager who signed Carroll to an offer sheet), who comes from the Red Auerbach mold. The other clubs, they don’t want to tee each other off.”

“Basically,” says Glass, “there’s no free agency any more. The right-of-first-refusal has stifled free agency as we’ve known it. The whole flavor of the league is, ‘You go get me an offer sheet, and we’ll match it.’ They’re afraid to rile up other clubs. I don’t think there’s good faith. It’s an unspoken collusion, a system collusion.”

Then there’s Babcock who, while admitting the system has not worked out in the players’ favor, says it is because of an awareness of sound business practices rather than collusion. The Nuggets, for instance, are interested in some of the veteran free agents available--most notably Chambers--but have not and probably will not make any offers. Why?

“If a guy is of interest to us, he’s going to be of interest to his team, so they’re going to match the offer,” says Babcock. “In effect, what you do is negotiate someone’s contract for him. You put in all the time and effort to make someone an offer sheet, then the club turns around and matches it. So why bother? You can talk all you want about theory, that players should be getting offers, but that’s the reality of it. The system hasn’t worked out the way the players wanted, but those are the ground rules.”

The same ones that figure to change when the current collective bargaining agreement expires after the 1986-87 season. The league’s player representatives met in Chicago two weeks ago and were united in their resolve to change the right-of-first-refusal system.

“That’s our number one thing,” says English, the Nuggets’ player rep. “I don’t think it’s fair to the players.”

Fleisher is blunt about the issue. “I assure you,” he says, “the right-of-first-refusal will not be part of the next one (collective bargaining agreement).”