NBA Should Regain Its Senses

The visiting locker room is 133 steps away from the Clippers’ locker room at the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim.

It takes 1 minute 14 seconds to make the walk.

It should have been so easy for Brent Barry and Isaac Austin to make the switch after Thursday’s trade that sent Barry to the Miami Heat for Austin, rookie Charles Smith and a first-round draft pick.

Just a short stroll away. But that would have made too much sense--and nothing in the NBA makes much sense these days.

So Barry was on a plane to Miami and Austin was in a hotel room in Anaheim Thursday. Barry has to be examined by the Heat team physician before he can join the team in the midst of its four-game swing through the West. Austin will have been examined in Los Angeles today and if everyone passes his physical (no safe assumption with Barry), Austin can play for the Clippers Saturday.

Of course if all was right with the NBA, Austin would have been in uniform for the Heat. Instead the Heat has been frantically shopping one of its best players for the last two months.

That’s because Austin will be an “Early Bird” free agent after the season, and the most the Heat could pay him next year would be about $2.8 million--far below the market value he established when he averaged 18.9 points and 9.3 rebounds while filling in for the injured Alonzo Mourning in the first 22 games of the season.

It’s one more gigantic flaw in the current collective bargaining agreement. Teams can’t keep their rookies more than two or three years because they become unrestricted free agents and demand mega-contracts or a trade, and they can’t keep pleasant veteran surprises like Austin because they are not allowed to pay them their fair value.

The Early Bird rule came about because so many teams got around the salary cap by signing players to contracts with one-year “escape” clauses and then re-sign them to a higher amount (under the so-called “Larry Bird” exemption that allows teams to go over the cap to sign their own free agents for any amount). Now veterans who are on their first contract with a team for less than two years can receive only a 20% raise or the average NBA salary, whichever is greater.

Here’s an idea for when the league sits down for another round of collective bargaining negotiations this summer: Dig out a copy of the old agreement and reinstate it. These are the rules that were in effect in the 1980s, when the league was booming. Now, with more money in the pot, more teams will lose money--more than half the league. It doesn’t add up.

Can the NBA regain its senses? Heat President and Coach Pat Riley couldn’t afford to wait.

“One of the reasons I was reluctant [to trade Austin was] because we thought that probably, maybe, this summer something could be done where they might make an adjustment on the Early Bird, retroactive back to . . .” he smiled.

“Probably maybe” isn’t his type of odds.

If it happens, “It can only benefit the Clippers right now.”

Actually that’s one department in which the Clippers don’t need help. Unlike the Heat, the Clippers will be far enough under the salary cap next season to be able to meet Austin’s salary needs (probably $5 million to $6 million per season.)

Not that Austin will be back.

Sure, he said the right things Thursday, such as “They have the opportunity to sign me back” and “They showed [their interest] a little bit more by making a trade for me, they get a fair chance like everyone else.”

In reality, all the Clippers did was give Austin a shorter move next summer. He’ll probably either sign with Utah, where he still has a home and could play next to his good buddy Karl Malone, or Phoenix, which also will have room under the salary cap and an actual chance at doing something in the playoffs.

But at least he hasn’t flatly said he won’t come back, which is what Barry’s agent did. The Clippers figured a free agent who possibly maybe could come back is better than a free agent who absolutely will not.

And the Heat figured it could plug a hole left by injured shooting guard Jamal Mashburn. Riley even thinks he can get Barry to play Riley-level defense.

“We’ll toughen him up,” he said.

He’d have a better chance trying to re-sign Austin under these crazy rules.