Sky’s the Limit on NBA Salaries, Unless Sky Caves In

Someday, when his playing skills diminish and his investment portfolio expands, Earvin (Mogul) Johnson says he will buy a certain National Basketball Assn. team.

He will be a shrewd fiscal player and prudent chief executive, making deals that will provide Coach Michael Cooper and General Manager Isiah Thomas with a nucleus to assure the club’s status as team of the decade. That decade is the 2000s, of course.

But during one off-season, star center Amir Abdul-Jabbar will come calling, flanked by his old man and business manager, Kareem. Amir will ask for $10 million a season, a $2-million raise.

Johnson, aghast, may be tempted to tell Amir how he had to scrape by on a mere $3.1 million back in ‘90--and that was the season after he’d won the MVP trophy. He will probably grouse about the seven-figure salaries broadcaster Chick Hearn and color commentator Vlade Divac command just for analyzing games on television.

But then Johnson will remember those clutch celestial hooks the balding Amir sank in the playoffs and finally relent. P.R. Director Mychal Thompson will alert the media that the league’s first $10-million player has been signed.

Privately, though, will Johnson confide to Pat Riley, the renowned European clothes designer, and West Virginia Congressman Jerry West that these modern NBA players are overpaid? “No, I’m not ever going to say that,” Johnson said, laughing. “I’ll be fair to the guys. If I want to win (as an owner), I know what I got to pay to win. I may not still be (playing) in the league when guys are making $10 million, but that’s all right.”

Dismiss it now as pure fantasy, but the day may come when the salaries of the NBA’s top players exceed eight figures a season, when the league’s average wage earner will take home $1 million a season and when the owners’ gross revenue from television contracts and gate receipts are such that the salary cap will become permanently unsealed.

Considering the salary boon that swept through the league during this last off-season, this scenario may come to pass sooner than expected.

With the salary cap expanded to $9.802 million this season, thanks to an agreement that owners must give the players 53% of the gross revenue, and the loosening of free-agent rules, players have never had it better.

College draft picks are commanding more lucrative salaries than many established players. Free agents, both the restricted and unrestricted types, have received big-money deals that, in most cases, far exceed their abilities. Some star players, tethered to long-term contracts, have incredulously sought renegotiation after seeing what the current market will bear. The average NBA player salary may top $600,000 this season.

Both players and management view this spending spree as proof of the NBA’s popularity and a direct result of its liquidity, not as a potential danger to the league’s well-being. After all, back in 1983-84, when the salary cap was imposed, the ceiling was $3.6 million. A few star players will make nearly that much this season alone. Still, some of the recent contracts have evoked disbelief in many players and some murmuring among team executives, fearful that things may be getting out of hand.

Most of the grumbling resulted from Jon Koncak’s seemingly exorbitant six-season, $13.2-million contract with the Atlanta Hawks.

A restricted free agent, Koncak signed a $2.5-million offer sheet from the Detroit Pistons. Not wanting to lose a 7-foot center, even one with only modest skills and a 7.4 career scoring average, the Hawks not only matched the Pistons’ offer sheet but worked out a lucrative long-term deal so that Koncak would not be lost as an unrestricted free agent after this season.

News of Koncak’s signing traveled fast. General managers gawked at their telex printouts and wondered how they would be able to appease their own players when the inevitable salary comparisons came up in negotiations.

It did not take veteran players, and their agents, long to devise something of a Koncak conversion chart. Let’s see. This guy averaged 4.7 points and 6.1 rebounds last season, so we should be worth . . .

Fallout first hit in Utah, where Karl Malone, the All-Star power forward for the Jazz, demanded renegotiation of a 10-season, $18-million contract he had restructured just the season before.

Did the Koncak signing influence his decision?

“Blank, yeah,” Malone told Utah writers. “I would say hell, yeah, but I know newspapers don’t like that.”

In Philadelphia, when 76er forward Charles Barkley learned that Koncak will earn $600,000 more than he would, despite averaging 21.1 fewer points, he also demanded renegotiation. He got it, too. Barkley’s five-season, $9.4-million deal was restructured to $19 million over six seasons. The 76ers also have the option of an additional three seasons for $10.5 million.

The outspoken Barkley, talking on a Philadelphia radio show last summer, had this to say about Koncak’s contract:

“It’s unfair for a guy to be making a million and a half more than me, especially one who can’t play. If Michael Jordan is making more than me, I can shake his hand. But if Jon Koncak is making $1.5 (million) more than me (over the contract’s length), we’ve got a problem.

“If I average four points and six rebounds, I’d get killed. This man gets a $2.3-million raise for averaging four points a game. If he’s getting $2.5 million for four points, I should average 2.4 points and the Sixers would be getting their money’s worth.”

Koncak, in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, responded: “Charles should be grateful. He made a lot of money off my deal, and he was not a free agent.”

Also benefiting from Koncak’s deal was teammate Dominique Wilkins. Hawk President Stan Kasten had agreed to restructure Wilkins’ contract before Koncak’s offer sheet came in, but Wilkins’ asking price quickly soared. Not wanting to have Koncak, a part-time starter, earn more than Wilkins, the club’s All-Star forward, Kasten seemingly had no option but to give Wilkins a five-season, $14.5-million package.

Other renegotiations followed. Houston center Akeem Olajuwon, for example, received a raise from $1.7 to $3 million. Rick Mahorn’s impasse with the Minnesota Timberwolves, however, was only partially affected by Koncak’s deal.

Clipper center Benoit Benjamin said he attempted to use Koncak’s contract as a barometer of his worth. Before Benjamin made his brief stopover in Italy, he complained at a press conference, “I couldn’t even get what Koncak got.”

Steve Kauffman, Koncak’s agent, said he really did not expect such reaction to his client’s deal. Kauffman defended Koncak, speculating on the player’s potential once Hawk center Moses Malone retires and pointing out that few centers are on the market.

“I certainly realized it would have a trickle-down effect,” Kauffman said. “But if it weren’t this one, it’d be another player. I’m not going to sit here and say Jon is an Akeem or a (Patrick) Ewing. He’s not that kind of player. But he can be a center that could (play well) for a team for six or seven years.

“He and I knew it’d have a big impact. But we maybe weren’t quite ready for the extent or degree it did explode. Charles (Barkley) has talked to me several times. He said he’d take me out to lunch to thank me for the new contract he got out of (the Koncak deal).”

Contract renegotiation has been around about as long as contracts. So, too, have free-agent signings.

But because of Koncak’s signing and Denver’s $1.8-million offer sheet to Terry Porter, Portland’s restricted free-agent guard, renegotiation has become as popular an off-season pastime as golf for some players.

“(Renegotiation) is nothing different than what has happened periodically throughout the history of the league,” said Detroit General Manager Jack McCloskey, who restructured Isiah Thomas’ Piston contract last season. “If the numbers (gross revenue) go up, we can use the money they require us to use.”

Agent David Falk, whose company, Proserv, represents Wilkins and about 30 other NBA players, said that renegotiation is more widespread and accepted now.

Falk said that several of his clients’ long-term contracts are due for restructuring, including that of Laker forward James Worthy. Falk said he probably will approach the Lakers about renegotiation next summer, when the salary cap figures to expand again.

“When it’s appropriate, I’d certainly like to do that for James,” Falk said. “But hopefully, we’ll get it done quietly. It won’t be ala Karl Malone, where there are threats of (going to) Italy or holding out.”

Most renegotiations have not been so civil. Malone’s has yet to be resolved, but he will play under his existing contract for now.

“I think Karl Malone is obviously one of the best players in the league, but no one has a crystal ball,” said Falk, who does not represent Malone. “When he renegotiated his deal last year, which I think was his fourth contract in five years, no one anticipated there would be that much growth in the cap.

“There have been enough cases around the league where teams have accommodated their key players, whether it be Boston with Larry Bird, Detroit with Isiah or Los Angeles with Magic Johnson, etc., that it’s become almost expected. If a player is a core member of a team and the market changes and renders his contract below market value, the teams have shown a willingness to adjust it accordingly. . . . I think it’s just good to do to maintain a good environment. But the question is, where do you draw the line.”

Whenever a line is drawn, a contract such as Koncak’s moves it forward anyway. “If you are a center, would you say the market today is Jon Koncak, who some people say hit the lottery?” Falk said. “Or would it be a good center who is underpaid, comparatively, like an Olajuwon?”

The answer, apparently, is Koncak.

“I think (players) should be happy,” Koncak has been quoted as saying. “All these guys should be sending me Christmas cards.”

There was an awkward pause in the conversation. While a reporter tried to think of a tactful way of saying Koncak’s salary is outlandish, Kasten broke in.

“I’ll say it for you,” Kasten said. “He is overpaid. Every player in the league should send him a bouquet, all right. Let’s face it, it’s something we’re going to have to deal with. “We have to go by whatever the system is. We intend to compete, we want to win a world championship. We have to take care and preserve our roster.”

Kasten has been defending his deal with Koncak all summer and is carrying that defense into fall. He has heard the grumbling from general managers in other cities. He has read their disparaging remarks in the newspapers.

Still, he maintains that he had no choice but to match Detroit’s offer sheet and work out a long-term deal so that the Hawks would not lose Koncak to free agency without compensation. If anyone is to blame, Kasten said, it is Detroit for making the initial $2.5-million offer to Koncak. “Once that happened, it changed everything in a lot of players’ and agents’ minds,” Kasten said. “The players are utilizing (Koncak’s contract), and you’ve got to deal with it. Every team has to confront it.”

Over the summer, the confrontation was strictly between the Hawks and Pistons. Since the teams are Central Division rivals, rumors abounded that the Pistons, knowing the Hawks would match the offer sheet so as not to lose Koncak, made the offer simply to sabotage the Hawks’ effort to replace guard Reggie Theus, lost in the expansion draft. By re-signing Koncak, then renegotiating Wilkins’ contract, the Hawks had no money left to pursue a shooting guard.

McCloskey, however, said that hurting the Hawks was not a consideration. He said that the Pistons needed another power forward to replace Rick Mahorn, also lost in the expansion draft. “I think it was a unique situation for us,” McCloskey said. “We really wanted a basketball player of his caliber. We wanted to make it difficult for (the Hawks) to match it. . . . We had quite a bit of money available under the new salary structure. I think we have been very prudent in our salary structure. Had we gotten (Koncak), he certainly wouldn’t have gotten that ($2.5 million) for the next five years. We would’ve gotten it down to a reasonable figure after that (first season).”

McCloskey, too, has heard grumbling by other general managers for setting the Koncak salary domino in motion. But Kauffman, Koncak’s agent, said it would have been another team if had not been the Pistons.

“I’ve heard that (sabotage) talk, but I don’t subscribe to it,” Kauffman said. “It’s very Machiavellian in concept, but the thing that has not been noted is that the Pistons were not the only team willing to talk big dollars for Jon. The Pistons were able to assert themselves, and now all the other GMs are dumping on them.”

Denver’s $1.8-million offer sheet to Porter, a quality point guard, also has been criticized as an absurd sum. The Trail Blazers matched the offer and, in order not to lose Porter to unrestricted free agency after this season, signed him to the same kind of six-season, $13.2-million contract Koncak received.

Pete Babcock, the Nuggets’ general manager, denied that he made the offer to Porter to spite the Trail Blazers, who signed unrestricted free-agent center Wayne Cooper, a former Nugget.

In any event, Porter will earn $1.8 million this season, the same as Larry Bird. Porter’s long-term deal also made the Phoenix Suns pay point guard Kevin Johnson considerably more than they originally planned. The Suns signed Johnson to a seven-season, $15-million contract, reportedly about $1 million more than General Manager Jerry Colangelo figured on.

“I think this whole thing is a matter of degree,” Kauffman said. “Two or three years down the road, these numbers won’t seem that outrageous.”

If seemingly outlandish salaries are paid to the Jon Koncaks of the league, has not the salary cap been rendered ineffective? Was not the device that the NBA imposed upon its own teams supposed to curb rampant spending and impulse shopping?

The answer from players, management and even agents is no and a qualified yes. All still maintain that the salary cap is effective, that it is partly responsible for the league’s prosperity and popularity, and that without it, salaries would be much more out of control.

Kasten said: “Without it, we’d be paying a whole lot more. This way, it’s based on revenues.”

Said Magic Johnson: “As long as the league’s (popularity) goes up and the gate goes up, the players are going to benefit. If it maxes out, it maxes out. But right now, the league is more popular than any other league. They’re making a lot of money.”

Falk said: “While I am a neo-capitalist who wishes there were no restrictions at all, I think the cap has been a cohesive device that has given the league a perception of stability publicly, which is partly responsible for its growth.”

How much the league has grown is evidenced by the former megabuck contracts that now don’t seem so lucrative.

“I remember being a guest on a cable show right after Magic signed that original $25-million contract spread over all those years,” Kauffman said. “I said on the air that when you look at the inflation rate and the rising salaries, he’d be dramatically underpaid in a few years. Now, he’s renegotiated a couple times.”

So who can tell? One day Johnson himself may be renegotiating Amir Abdul-Jabbar’s $10-million deal.