How much do team usa basketball players make

Men's, Women's Salaries in NBA and WNBA Differences

• The U.S. men's and women's basketball teams are playing for the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics.
• Their NBA and WNBA salaries are vastly different, with a $38 million difference in the highest-paid.
• WNBA players have called for more investment into their league to one day also make millions.

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There is an eye-opening disparity between the professional salaries of the U.S. men's basketball team members and the U. S. women's basketball team at the Tokyo Olympics.

It comes as no surprise that NBA players make more than their WNBA counterparts, but the gap between the two is still jarring, especially considering both are heavy favorites to win gold medals in Tokyo.

For instance, Kevin Durant made $39.1 million in salary during the 2020-21 NBA season, the most of any player on the U.S. men's roster, according to Spotrac.

Meanwhile, four women's players — Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, Skylar Diggins-Smith, and Britney Griner — share the lead for highest-paid on the women's roster, at $221,500.

In fact, the collective WNBA salaries of the women's team add up to just $1. 8 million — less than what Keldon Johnson, the lowest-paid player on the men's team, made in 2020-21.

When added up, the sum of USA Basketball's men's players' annual NBA salaries is a whopping 128 times higher than the combined WNBA earnings of the entire women's team.

Check out the chart below, which shows the 2020-21 NBA salaries of the men's roster vs. the 2021 WNBA salaries for the women's roster, via Spotrac:

The disparity could have been even greater. Bradley Beal and Kevin Love were forced to miss the Olympics due to COVID-19 protocols and an injury — the two players made $34.5 million and $31.2 million, respectively, in 2020-21. They were replaced by Johnson and JaVale McGee.

Meanwhile, players like LeBron James ($39.2 million in '20-21), Stephen Curry ($43 million), James Harden ($44.3 million), and Chris Paul ($41.3 million) opted not to play in the Olympics.

WNBA players aren't naive to the fact that their league brings in far less revenue than the men's game elicits. Superstars like Sue Bird have even been vocal about the fact that they don't think WNBA players "should get the same money as NBA players" — at least not right now.

What the WNBA needs, Bird argues, is "the same media coverage and the corporate sponsor looks" as the NBA — which is 50 years older and more established. Then, Bird says, "we can build the business and... when it's really good — like the NBA is — then we can get that money."

For years, WNBA players have also argued for a portion of the league's revenues commensurate with what NBA players receive.

While often misconstrued as a bid for the millions stars like LeBron James and Stephen Curry take home each season, the women's players simply lobbied for a greater percentage of the pie. Whereas James and Curry have long enjoyed a near-50-50 revenue split, the WNBA's figure hovered around 20%.

The WNBA's new CBA, which came to fruition in January 2020, offers players a chance to earn that same split contingent upon the league hitting its revenue goals. It also included significant player salary increases, a deeper pool of marketing dollars, and additional cash compensation opportunities for players.

In 2021, the WNBA's supermax salary cashed in at $221,450 — approximately $100,000 more than it was before the new CBA came into play. It's still a far, far cry from the multi-millions NBA stars command, but with time and equal investment, the league could make strides in that department. 

U.S. women's basketball team gets expanded training, pay for players - OlympicTalk

Associated PressJul 27, 2019, 3:16 PM EDT

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LAS VEGAS (AP) — Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi want their USA Basketball legacy to be more than just winning medals.

The four-time Olympic gold medalists came up with an idea for a training plan for USA Basketball leading up to next year’s Tokyo Olympics that would help the Americans go for an unprecedented seventh consecutive title: USA Basketball, which usually trains together only for short periods of time during a crowded calendar, would get a core group of eight players together for five training sessions over the next year.

The players would be paid $2,000 a day at each of the training camps and games leading up to the Olympics, with the chance to also earn bonuses.

USA Basketball loved the idea. The new training plan was announced on Saturday before the All-Star Game, with Bird, Taurasi, USA Basketball coach Dawn Staley and national team director Carol Callan in attendance.

“I think as you get closer to the end of your time, you understand you can 100% have an impact as a player. Go out there and move the needle on the court with your play and winning, but there are other ways that I would like to have an impact and one would be this,” Bird said. “Getting paid gives players, who want the option, to stay at home and not go overseas in the winter.”

Joining Bird and Taurasi for the training segments as part of the core group are Sylvia Fowles, Elena Delle Donne, Nneka Ogwumike, A’ja Wilson, Skylar Diggins-Smith and Chelsea Gray. The U.S. will also have a fluid group of players from the national team training pool join the core group.

Many of the U.S. players, including Bird and Taurasi, have played in the winter overseas, where they have been paid potentially 10 times their WNBA salaries. Finding time to train with USA Basketball has been difficult because of the overseas schedules and the WNBA schedule. If the players are paid by USA Basketball, they have more of a reason to stay here.

They can earn roughly $100,000 for participating in all the training sessions.

“It’s legitimate, they knew they had to do it that way,” said Ogwumike, who has played in Russia and China in the winter. “That investment is what the players want. It’s quite amazing to afford that type of opportunity. Not just the investment in us, but the strategic nature of hitting different markets. We’ll have traveling tournaments.

“I was in a moment where I played a half-season in China. Don’t know if I can go overseas again. I have so much available to me here, it would benefit me not to go overseas. For them to put that investment in, that’s huge.”

The U.S. will get together in late September for the FIBA America’s Cup. The Americans will then get together in November and February to train and play in FIBA Olympic qualifying tournaments. The U.S. already has qualified for the Tokyo Games by winning the World Cup last fall. The Americans will also play exhibition games against college teams to train in the fall and winter.

“Our three priorities are to train and prepare for the Olympics, amplify the profile of the women’s national team and raise the profile of women’s basketball as a whole by using the best players in the world,” USA Basketball CEO Jim Tooley told The Associated Press. “Besides training they’ll be auxiliary events around our training. We’ll do some clinics for Boys & Girls clubs to spread the gospel of the women’s national team.”

Tooley said the training idea is a smaller version of what the U.S. did in 1995-96 that kicked off its run of success.

“That’s when our amazing run started,” he said. “It’s like bookends almost.”

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Ukraine Olympic champion auctions gold medals to support his country

By OlympicTalkNov 29, 2022, 12:11 PM EST

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Sprint canoeist Yuriy Cheban, Ukraine’s most decorated male Olympian, is auctioning his two gold medals and one bronze medal to support his country’s defense and recovery efforts amid the war with Russia.

“It was one of the best moments of my life that can be compared only with the birth of my child,” Cheban posted specifically about his repeat 200m gold at his last Olympics in Rio in 2016. “This Olympic finish left a great memory forever in the world history and in the hearts of Ukraine.

“Time to move on, I would like these medals to benefit Ukrainians once again.”

Cheban, a 36-year-old who coached Ukraine canoeists at the Tokyo Games, took 500m bronze in 2008 before his 200m golds in 2012 and 2016, all in individual races.

He and boxer Vasiliy Lomachenko are the only men to win two Olympic gold medals for Ukraine, which began competing independently in 1994. Cheban is the only man to win three total Olympic medals for Ukraine, according to Olympedia.org.

Swimmer Yana Klochkova won the most medals for Ukraine — four golds and five total.

All proceeds from the sales will go to Ukraine’s Olympic Circle charity, according to SCP Auctions.

Olympic Circle was created by sportsmen to help Mykolaiv, a city in southern Ukraine, fight Russian occupants, according to SCP.

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Alpine skiing TV, live stream schedule for 2022-23 World Cup season

By OlympicTalkNov 29, 2022, 12:00 PM EST

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NBC Sports and Peacock combine to air live coverage of the 2022-23 Alpine skiing season, including races on the World Cup, which starts this weekend.

Coverage begins with the traditional season-opening giant slaloms in Soelden, Austria, this Saturday and Sunday, streaming live on Peacock.

The first of four stops in the U.S. — the most in 26 years — is Thanksgiving weekend with a women’s giant slalom and slalom in Killington, Vermont. The men’s tour visits Beaver Creek, Colorado the following week, as well as Palisades Tahoe, California, and Aspen, Colorado after worlds in Courchevel and Meribel, France.

NBC Sports platforms will broadcast all four U.S. stops in the Alpine World Cup season, plus four more World Cups in other ski and snowboard disciplines. All Alpine World Cups in Austria will stream live on Peacock.

Mikaela Shiffrin, who last year won her fourth World Cup overall title, is the headliner. Shiffrin, who has 74 career World Cup race victories, will try to close the gap on the only Alpine skiers with more: Lindsey Vonn (82) and Ingemar Stenmark (86). Shiffrin won an average of five times per season the last three years and is hopeful of racing more often this season.

On the men’s side, 25-year-old Swiss Marco Odermatt returns after becoming the youngest man to win the overall, the biggest annual prize in ski racing, since Marcel Hirscher won the second of his record eight in a row in 2013.

2022-23 Alpine Skiing World Cup Broadcast Schedule
Schedule will be added to as the season progresses. All NBC Sports TV coverage also streams live on NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app.

Date	Coverage	Network/Platform	Time (ET)
Sat., Oct. 22	Women’s GS (Run 1) – Soelden (PPD)	Peacock	4 a.m.
	Women’s GS (Run 2) – Soelden (PPD)	Peacock	7:05 a.m.
Sun., Oct. 23	Men’s GS (Run 1) — Soelden	Peacock	4 a.m.
	Men’s GS (Run 2) – Soelden	Peacock	7 a.m.
Sat., Nov. 12	Women’s Parallel (Qualifying) — Lech (PPD)	Peacock	6 a.m.
	Women’s Parallel (Finals) — Lech (PPD)	Peacock	12 p.m.
Sun., Nov. 13	Men’s Parallel (Qualifying) — Lech (PPD)	Peacock	4 a.m.
	Men’s Parallel (Finals) — Lech (PPD)	Peacock	10 a. m.
Sat., Nov. 19	Women’s SL (Run 1) — Levi	Skiandsnowboard.live	4 a.m.
	Women’s SL (Run 2) — Levi	Skiandsnowboard.live	7 a.m.
Sun., Nov. 20	Women’s SL (Run 1) — Levi	Skiandsnowboard.live	4:15 a.m.
	Women’s SL (Run 2) — Levi	Skiandsnowboard.live	7:15 a.m.
Fri., Nov. 25	Men’s DH — Lake Louise (PPD)	Skiandsnowboard.live	2:30 p.m.
Sat., Nov. 26	Women’s GS (Run 2) — Killington	NBC, Peacock	12:30 p.m.
	Men’s DH — Lake Louise	Skiandsnowboard.live	2:30 p.m.
Sun., Nov. 27	Women’s SL (Run 2) — Killington	NBC, Peacock	12:30 p.m.
	Men’s SG — Lake Louise	Skiandsnowboard.live	2:15 p.m.
Fri., Dec. 2	Women’s DH — Lake Louise	Skiandsnowboard. live	2 p.m.
Sat., Dec. 3	Women’s DH — Lake Louise	Skiandsnowboard.live	2:30 p.m.
	Men’s DH — Beaver Creek	CNBC, Peacock	4 p.m.*
	Men’s DH — Beaver Creek	NBC, Peacock	5 p.m.*
Sun., Dec. 4	Women’s SG — Lake Louise	Skiandsnowboard.live	1 p.m.
	Men’s SG — Beaver Creek	NBC, Peacock	5 p.m.*

*Delayed broadcast.

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How much do NBA stars earn? Salary rating-2019 - Blogg on the floor - Blogs

We count other people's millions.

Many people know that the NBA has a salary cap. It is set at $109.14 million for the 2019/20 season.

But not everyone knows that the salary cap is directly tied to the league's income. And with it - the salaries of all players. Basketball players make millions of dollars because the NBA makes billions of dollars.

8.2 billion, to be exact - that's how much the NBA expects to receive in the coming season in the form of "Basketball-related income" (BRI, basketball-related income). This BRI includes only $400-500 million converted from yuan, so don't worry: even a complete break in relations with China won't take more than five or six percent off the BRI.

Under the 2017 Collective Agreement between the league and the players union, 50%* of BRI goes to players in the form of salaries.

* - actually not, but in order not to load the text with nuances, I will explain them in the comments.

There are 510 jobs in the league - each of the 30 teams can apply for 17 people.

51 NBA players - exactly 10% - will receive at least $20 million next season **.

** - and again I suggest going to the comments for those who want abstruseness.

The “Gini coefficient” and other indicators of financial inequality in the NBA as in a single economy look better than the global ones: if in the real world the richest 10% own 75-85% of all wealth (in the USA - 70-75% according to various estimates ), then in the NBA, the top 10% earn only 35% of all salaries.

But even this 35% is more than one and a half billion dollars. Or, in other words, 1,655 NBA rookie minimum contracts.

Let's look at how this one and a half billion is distributed. For a round number, we will limit ourselves to the top 50 earning more than 20 million; The 51st player in the ranking with a salary of exactly 20 million is Indiana guard Malcolm Brogdon. If you go to the basketball section less than once a week, then most likely you don’t even know who it is. And he earns more than Aguero, James, Neuer or any Serie A player except Cristiano.

Who is not in this part of the rating? For example, Philadelphia's rising star Ben Simmons, who signed a five-year, $170 million contract this summer that won't take effect until a year later, is now playing on a "modest" $8 million rookie salary.

For the same reason, Utah leader Donovan Mitchell, Dallas' delightful Luka Doncic, or intimidating rookie Zion Williamson are not yet on the NBA's Most Valuable Players list. All of them still earn a fixed salary (depending on the number under which the player was taken in the draft), for which they need to play 4 seasons before claiming a luxurious life.

Who is in this part of the rating? Giannis. The current NBA MVP - and the future, according to some forecasts, too.

Greek-Frick did not make the top 40 for a number of reasons, the main of which is that the NBA does not revise existing contracts (with some exceptions that are so rare that they do not even deserve an asterisk and a footnote in the commentary). Antetokounmpo signed his contract back in 2016, by that time the Greek had never played in the All-Star Game, averaging 17 points and playing as the main point guard of the very weak Bucks (49losses in a season).

And Giannis, not so long ago a beggar teenager who sold souvenirs on the streets of Athens and ran in patched sneakers, was so grateful that Milwaukee believed in him that he did not insist on either a maximum contract or even a player option in the last year contract. He was told that he would receive $100 million, and he was stunned by this amount - and it does not matter that at the same time as him, Stephen Adams also signed for exactly the same contract, whom Oklahoma renewed only in a panic from losing Durant.

All in all, Antetokounmpo did great humanly but naively economically three years ago: Giannis has already lost $33 million by waiving his maximum wage and has also pushed back his possible free agency entry from 2020 to 2021.

That's why next year he will be so low in the rankings again. But then - hello to the biggest contract in the history of the NBA.

There are now only 32 people in the NBA with maximum contracts of (this number does not include DeRozan, whose salary was maximum only in the first two years of the contract, Horford and Love, who played at maximum levels a year ago, Vucevic, and Millsap and Middleton from the next group).

At the same time, almost everyone has different salaries.

How did it happen?

To answer this question, needs to understand how maximum contracts are formed .

Maximum contracts come in three levels depending on the player's experience:

• up to 6 league seasons - 25% of ceiling;
• 7-9 seasons - 30%;
• and more 10 - 35%

A player can jump up one category by becoming MVP, NBA Defensive Player of the Year or making the All-Star Team of the Season. At the same time, all these 25, 30 and 35% form only the salary in the first season. For example, now 25% of the ceiling is the salary of Russell, Porzingis, Booker, Towns. The first two signed a contract this summer, and the last two lasted a year ago, just their agreements implied entry into force in 2019-m.

And then everything changes: Russell, who signed a contract with a new team, Golden State after Brooklyn, will have an annual increase of 5%. Towns, who lasted with Minnesota, has 8%. And next year their salaries will be different.

Other players signed maximum wages in other years when there was a different salary cap. Anthony Davis received 25% of the ceiling in 2016 (he could have received 30%, but he got injured in the key season 15/16 and did not make the team of the season). Then, when he moved to the Lakers, he voluntarily forfeited a trading bonus so the Los Angelesers could sign a third star this summer.

Voiceover: They couldn't.

So it turned out that Davis and three other maximum speeds in 2016 are not included in the top 30, since they are slightly behind the maximum contracts concluded later, in 2017-2019 - the growth rate of the ceiling and, consequently, the new maximum speeds were higher than the increase in their contracts .

Six people signed a new contract this year with a starting salary of 30% of the ceiling. And they are all different:

The strangest one is with Kyrie Irving: 1 million allocated to 8 bonuses, for which he needs to play in 70 games, hit 88. 5% of free throws in a season, lose the ball no more than 2.4 times per game and so on. He did not achieve all this a year ago, and bonuses are not yet taken into account in his salary.

Tobias Harris will receive the maximum in the first year of his contract only, and will receive a total of 10 million less in the remaining seasons.

Clay Thompson signed up for 5 years.

Kemba Walker and Jimmy Butler - for 4 years, the only difference is a possible trading bonus in Kemba's contract.

Kawhi signed up for 3. And the third year is a player option, so he should be a free agent again in 2021.

Yes, it's strange to see Kawhi Leonard outside the top 10 - but he chose this path himself (as the last NBA finals showed - he did the right thing). If the forward did not change teams, but remained in San Antonio, then this season his salary would be the same as that of Harden or Durant. But he has a different financial mechanism turned on: better conditions for winning the championship + a large market for new advertising contracts = the opportunity to get much more than the extra 5-6 million a year in the club salary.

Did you really think there was no calculator built into Kawhi's operating system?

P.S. Interestingly, in the top 20 - only Americans, this has not happened since the implementation of the salary cap in 1984! A new generation of super-foreigners, constrained by the financial rules of the NBA, has not yet reached the old American star guard.

King James always wants to be at the top of the list. But he was the most expensive NBA player only once : in the 2016/17 season. Before that, the Miami discount to team up with Wade and Bosch, the move back to Cleveland on a one-year contract, the technical impossibility of reaching Kobe's maximum salary. And then Curry, who has been playing in one club all his career, took the lead - after all, the NBA salary rules reward those stars who do not change clubs: they get a slightly higher maximum salary, a little longer, a little earlier.

But LeBron was always pissed off about the concept of a maximum salary. Why should workers be capped by some sort of salary cap? Why can't he earn in the NBA as much as she earns on him? According to various statistical metrics, the benefit of LeBron in his peak years should have been paid by a contract of 70-80 million a year 2003, with a completely different salary cap.

Even now, LeBron James's salary would be much more than 37.4 million if there were no artificial restrictions in the NBA. Reference point? Let's take Cristiano Ronaldo. Similar age, status, achievements, popularity, the situation with the transition to another club, even advertising contracts they have about the same level of income. Ronaldo earns about 64 million a year from Juventus before taxes; LeBron, it turns out, almost half as much.

Nevertheless, LeBron will still be the first - in terms of total career earnings . In the upcoming season, he (307 million) will overtake Shaquille (286 million) and will be second only to Kobe Bryant (323 million) and Kevin Garnett (334 million), whom he will overtake in 2021. LeBron will earn almost $400 million in the NBA by the end of his career - and even more from advertising contracts. The dream of becoming a billionaire is getting closer.

Fans often demand strict logic in issuing maximum contracts. That they should only be given to MVPs or champions, that clubs shouldn't give big contracts to non-All-Star players, that only five/two/ten people/one LeBron/all 510 NBA players are eligible for the top salary.

Actually there is no logic.

The maximum contract, even the largest possible one (35% of the ceiling), can be obtained for real services to the club, like Harden - and still there will be people who consider his salary too high.

You can - for previous achievements. Kevin Durant will make over $38 million in a season without a game for Brooklyn due to a Achilles tear, but the Nets believe he can return to his former superstar level and add championship experience to the team.

Or you can - for vague promises to become a top player in the NBA, as was the case with John Wall. He sparkled in the second half of the 2016/17 season and made it to the NBA's third All-Star Five, which qualified him for a Supermax contract extension. And "Washington" then gave him this 170 million extension for 4 years, which is effective now.

Since signing, Wall has never played more than 50% of his season and, like Durant, will miss the 2019 season/20 whole. But in 2017, he was a rising star, soon to be the best defenseman in the conference, and was priced into a super max contract...

Or just the Washingtons. A team that hasn't played in an Eastern final for 40 years.

Westbrook and Paul are united not only by the fact that they were traded for each other in July, but also that since 2018 they have an identical salary. They were extended through different mechanisms, but came to the same numbers (although Westbrook has a contract for a year longer).

Why are their salaries higher than the Durant-Harden Wall trio? Again, remember that the maximum salary depends on the ceiling, which grows unevenly . The annual salary increase is 8%, while the salary cap has increased by only 7.14% in the last year.

Contracts in the NBA, as already mentioned, are not reviewed - neither as a result of negotiations between the parties, nor by any automatic rules, so in a year Westbrook and Paul are entitled to 41 million, in two - 44 million each. And this figure will not change, even if all countries, including the United States, follow the example of China, turn their backs on the NBA, and the salary cap falls from 109million dollars to 109 million cents.

Next year, Durant, Harden, Wall, Paul and Westbrook will break the $40 million salary bar with their supermaxes. But they won't be the first.

Steph Curry won his first MVP and first title, being fourth in salary on his team, and 53rd in the league behind JaVale McGee, Larry Sanders and Andrea Bargnani.

Second MVP - fifth salary with the Warriors and 61st in the NBA, behind Amir Johnson, Demarre Carroll and Brandon Knight.

Second title - Curry is the 82nd highest paid in the NBA, and it's too long to list role players earning more. At the time, Curry's salary of $12 million was closer to the minimum (1.3 million) than the maximum (26.5 million).

Just before the third title, Stef was given the contract he deserved. The largest in history at that time - 201.2 million dollars.

The third season of this contract breaks the historic mark of $40 million. However, taking into account inflation, this is not a record, but only the third most expensive indicator.

Jordan has the first two, of course. His 30 million in 96/97 would be $49 million in today's dollars, and his 33 million in 97/98 would be $54 million.

more than the entire salary cap), we may never see again.

* * *

You can complain that your parents forgot to send you to the basketball section or fed you little carrots, cottage cheese and oatmeal, in the comments.

Photo: globallookpress. com/TPG/ZUMAPRESS.com, /Naoki Morita/AFLO; Gettyimages.ru/Sean M. Haffey, /Ezra Shaw, /Al Bello

How the NBA started making billions of dollars with David Stern

On January 1, David Stern, the former National Basketball Association (NBA) commissioner, passed away. He led the NBA for 30 years in a row - from 1984 to 2014.

His marketing talent and business sense helped to pull the association almost out of oblivion, and make basketball players the same world stars as football players and millionaires.

Before Stern's appointment as Commissioner, it seemed a very real possibility that the NBA would disappear. This basketball association looked very faded against the backdrop of the leagues of American football and baseball. And when Stern retired in 2014, the NBA had annual revenues of $5.5 billion, its broadcast revenues had grown 40 times over $1 billion in 30 years. The NBA had offices in 15 cities outside the United States. Her games have been broadcast in over 200 countries in over 40 languages. Compare for yourself: how much do you know about American football or baseball, but how much about American basketball?

The attractiveness of business for investors has also grown. Shortly after Stern's arrival, the Chicago Bulls were sold for $16 million. And after 30 years of his work, the Los Angeles Clippers changed hands for $2 billion. Salaries also increased. The famous basketball player Charles Barkley recalled that in 1984 the average salary of players was $250,000. Now it is almost $9 million. He broke the record of the head of the National Football League, Pete Rozelle, for a year (1960–1989).

From deli to basketball

David Joel Stern was born on September 22, 1942 in Manhattan (New York, USA). His father ran the family's deli, Stern's Deli, where all three of his children worked from childhood. Stern chose a profession far from both trade and sports. First he received a degree in history from the prestigious Rutgers University (New Jersey). Then - a law degree from Columbia University. In 1966 he joined the law firm Proskauer, Rose, Goetz & Mendelsohn.

David's parents divorced when he was young. Like his father, he became a fan of the New York Knicks basketball team and often went to games with his dad.

Stern himself played for a while, and played well. His height was not basketball - about 176 cm (although, according to the sports website ESPN, he still turned out to be taller than the leaders of other US national sports leagues). “I played for my law firm's team in the New York Lawyers Basketball League. And it cost me most of the cartilage in my right knee,” Stern joked in an interview with The New York Times (NYT).

It's better to be a basketball player than a football player

In the 2019/20 season, Steph Curry, defenseman for the Golden State Warriors, should receive the largest reward among NBA players - $ 40.2 million (the reward is calculated from the forecast of income from basketball activities and is subject to adjustment at the end of the season), writes the author of the blog in Sports. ru. But even, for example, the 51st number in the NBA rating Malcolm Brogdon from the Indiana Pacers (Indianapolis) should receive $ 20 million. That is, he earns more than such football stars as the striker of the English Manchester City and Argentina national team Sergio or the goalkeeper and captain of the German Bayern München and the German national team Manuel Neuer. Brogdon's name doesn't mean much to the average person, and he's not the only one in the NBA: according to the rules of the NBA, based on its projected income, 51 players should receive at least $20 million this season.

His work as a lawyer also turned out to be related to sports. Proskauer, Rose, Goetz & Mendelsohn represented the NBA. Stern has been involved in several high-profile cases, including a 1970 antitrust lawsuit in which NBA player union president Oscar Robertson interfered with the NBA's merger with rival American Basketball Association (ABA). As a result, the merger had to be postponed for six years - the case in court dragged on until 1976. It had other important consequences. For example, before the players were actually serfs of the club: they did not have the right to negotiate a transfer to another team, at the same time they could be fired at any time.

How Stern increased the competition

In 1978, Stern was lured to the NBA, where he became general counsel. Then the post of vice president was created for him. In addition to resolving legal issues, he was responsible for marketing, PR, negotiations with television companies and much more.

The NBA star was waning in those years. In the 1980/81 season, out of 23 teams, 16 were unprofitable. The finals of the games were often not live, but recorded, and at an unpopular time - at 23.30. At 1980 a drug scandal erupted. An article in The Los Angeles Times claimed that 40 to 75% of gamblers use cocaine. The press then wrote about the NBA as an association overflowing with black players and drug addicts, Stern recalled in a conversation with ESPN. As vice president, he entered into negotiations with NBA member clubs to introduce anti-drug tests before games. The NBA was the first sports league in North America to implement this innovation.

In 1984, Stern took over the NBA. Other candidates were not even considered. He was number two in the NBA for several years, and his appointment seemed like a no-brainer. One of his first steps was to help small clubs. Restrictions were introduced on the size of the players' pay fund, which was tied to income from basketball activities (BRI, basketball-related income), and, accordingly, it is different every year. The first time it was $3.8 million per team (in the 2018/19 season- $ 109.14 million, according to the Sports.ru blog dedicated to salaries in the NBA). This somewhat equalized rich and poor clubs—the rich could no longer buy up all the stars who needed to be paid a lot—and led to a new round of rivalry between the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers, which seemed to have faded back in 1969.

Now the system of remuneration of players is arranged according to the principle of soft and hard ceiling, therefore it is permissible to exceed the originally announced limit. But there is an amount starting from which the NBA will have to pay the so-called "luxury tax" - in the 2018/19 seasonthe tax threshold was set at $132.627 million. And, finally, there is a hard ceiling that cannot be broken under any pretext: in the season just ended it is $138.928 million. club owners to find a compromise regarding remuneration: basketball players received the right to 53% of the income.

People, not teams

Current NBA commissioner Adam Silver says Stern was among the founders of modern sports marketing - "one of the people who took modern marketing techniques and applied them to the sports league."

He founded the licensing and sponsorship division of the NBA. Together with its director, he compiled a “dream list” of NBA partners (McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, etc. ) and went on a trip around the country to persuade them to cooperate.

While still a vice president, Stern helped launch NBA Entertainment's basketball-related content division. And becoming a commissioner, he expanded the staff, agreed with video game manufacturers, and in the end, with his participation, a hit appeared - a series of sports simulators NBA Jam (the first came out at 1993).

He decided to promote star players rather than whole teams. If in the 1960s the rivalry between the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers was a battle of clubs, then under Stern it became the confrontation between Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. Stern's other star was Michael Jordan, who joined the Chicago Bulls in 1994.

In his first year as commissioner, Stern sold the rights to broadcast NBA games to an Argentinean television station for a ridiculous $2,000 a year. Every Sunday in a country where children dreamed of football, they showed that the ball can be dribbled with their hands. And it has borne fruit. When Argentinean Emanuel Ginobili was a child, he looked at Michael Jordan and thought he was from another planet. Since then, Ginobili has won the NBA championship four times with the San Antonio Spurs, although there had not been a single one of his compatriots in the league before.

Women, Greek and Canadian

David Stern added seven new teams to the NBA for a total of 30. The NBA Women's League was born in 1997 and the NBA minor league for the G League farm clubs in 2001. According to Stern, we need to work with young talents so that there are as many boys and girls as possible who “will start to dribble the ball with their hands instead of kicking it.” The
NBA was a purely American league. And now the title of its most valuable player is Giannis Antetokounmpo, a Greek born to Nigerian immigrants, and the NBA champion is the Canadian team Toronto Raptors with players from three continents.

In 1989, Stern waited four hours in Beijing to meet Chinese CCTV representatives, then persuaded them to broadcast the games for free. Now 18 million people watch the NBA games in China, and last year the Chinese Tencent and the NBA announced a five-year contract for $1.5 billion.

NBA - and defeated all rivals. That team was called the dream team, and upon their return they were honored, as Stern told the NYT, as if it were the Bolshoi Theater, the Philharmonic and The Beatles put together. “The dream team ignited interest in basketball around the world,” Stern recalled ESPN last year. – Before the Olympics-92 NBA games were shown in about 80 countries, today - in 215.

The following fact testifies to Stern's attitude towards the players. In 1991, Magic Johnson announced that he had HIV and was retiring from playing. The disease in those days caused irrational fear and disgust in society. Some did not want to play on the same site with Johnson, for fear of getting infected through scratches. But Stern launched a whole campaign of tolerant attitude towards HIV patients - doctors came to the players and talked about the disease. He insisted that Johnson not be crossed off the voting lists for the most outstanding player of the season - and he earned the award. The photo of Stern presenting the prize to Johnson was posted by the NBA commissioner in a prominent place in his office. He also pushed for Johnson to be included in the Olympic Dream Team.

Stern soft and hard

Stern liked to call himself Easy Dave, which can be translated as "easy Dave" and "easily inferior Dave." But among those around him, he earned a reputation as a tyrant. In 2005, Stern became concerned about the image of the players and introduced a dress code. At official NBA events, they were ordered to stick to business attire, abandoning shorts, wide pants, massive chains, bandanas and other attributes of gangsters and hip-hop fans.

This sparked strong protests from players, fans and even African American rights activists. The dress code was clearly infringing on the style that black players were used to. However, it brought a positive effect, Sports. ru noted: basketball players thought about their appearance, hired stylists, and developed their own clothing style. And, as a result, articles about their life outside the basketball court began to appear more often in the media.

Dress code - yes, it has entered the life of the players. But in another important issue, Stern did not succeed in insisting on his own. In the 2006/07 season, he introduced synthetic turf balls into the game, despite the dissatisfaction of the players: after test drives, they complained that the ball bounced off the floor differently. Already in December 2006, it was necessary to announce that the NBA was returning to the good old leather balls.

Stern was not soft on the guilty. Latrell Sprewell was suspended for the entire season-19 for assaulting a coach during training.97/98 - 82 games. In court, Sprewell's lawyer managed to reduce this period to 68 games, for which the NBA legal counsel received a severe scolding from Stern.

In 2004, during a match, the Detroit Pistons and Indiana Pacers teams fought - first with each other, and then with the audience. Nine players were suspended for a total of over 100 matches without pay, which resulted in a loss of about $11 million. “We couldn't let the barrier between players and fans break down. This would deprive us of the most accessible game in the world, where you could literally sit on the edge of the court and almost touch the players running past, ”Stern explained. But at the same time, he visited the family of Indiana Pacers player Ron Artest, who was suspended for as many as 86 games at his insistence, and helped his sick relatives get the necessary medical care.

He also interfered in the affairs of teams. In 2011, he banned New Orleans from trading players. For many years, Stern explained this decision briefly in all interviews: “It was in the interests of basketball.” And only two years ago, already retired, he condescended to details: “I offered the best option <...> But [Dell, who was in charge at that time of New Orleans] Demps, turned out to be a lousy general manager” (quoted from Championat. com).

What is a lockout

Under Stern, there were all four lockouts in NBA history, when club owners and players could not agree on the terms of a contract extension, as a result, practice and games had to be canceled and any negotiations to transfer players from club to club were frozen . The first lockout began in the summer of 1995 and stretched out for two months, but ended before the start of the season. Only the summer fees suffered. The second lockout lasted only three hours in 1996. The third lasted from July 1998 to January 1999, due to which the start of the season had to be postponed and the number of games in it was reduced from 82 to 50. The last one was from July to December 2011 ., due to which the season was reduced to 66 games.

Player income was the key issue. For example, during the 1996 three-hour lockout, basketball players demanded more TV revenue, and the NBA agreed to increase payouts by a compromise amount.

Stern represented club owners during the lockouts who wanted to save money on players, but played more of an intermediary role. Reviews about him were mixed. Stern threatened the players. “I know where the bodies are buried in the NBA — I personally buried some there,” he said, appearing in the locker room of the basketball players during Star Weekend. True, the cases of his revenge were unknown to anyone, ESPN assures: he was an explosive person, but quick-witted.

"You can't be too nice a guy"

In 1986, just two years after his appointment as commissioner, David Stern interviewed former basketball player Rod Thorne for the position of vice president in charge of discipline. "They say you're a nice guy," Stern said thoughtfully. “Well, at our job, you can’t be too nice a guy.” “There was nothing soft about him,” recalled Thorn, who was hired and served as vice president of the NBA for 14 years. He expected you to do your job. And if not, he will not hesitate to tell you about it. From time to time I listened to similar things, sometimes in very harsh terms. But most of the time [Stern] was right. " Stern loved to arrange mini-exams: ask subordinates questions, the answers to which he knew, and if they found it difficult to answer, he gave them a dressing down.
One of the top managers of the NBA admitted that many times he left his job with the thought of being fired. But at 10 p.m., Stern called, talking about new goals and how great it would be when they were achieved: “And I was ready to go through walls for Stern.”

The permanent commissar was forgiven a lot for his ability to ignite people, and for his ability to foresee the future of sports, and for the fact that he gushed with ideas. For example, in the 1990s a subordinate gave him the idea of ​​holding a press conference about a new deal with Coca-Cola, showing clips on video screens. Stern immediately ordered to figure out how to organize an event in a cinema: on a huge screen, the commercials would look unbelievably better. “You walk into his office thinking you've thought of everything,” the subordinate concluded. “And he says something that didn’t occur to you - and, damn it, he’s right!”

Sociologist Harry Edwards, who studies the characteristics of African American athletes, assured that Stern's reputation among the players only strengthened as a result of negotiations. But HBO sportswriter Bryant Gumbel called him egocentric and compared his negotiating tactics to the diplomacy of a plantation overseer. Stern himself, many years later, having already retired from the NBA commissioners, publicly responded to Gumbel: he called him an “idiot” in an interview with The Washington Post - another touch to his harsh character.

Season 19 lockout98/99 ended with the victory of the owners of the clubs, who set the maximum salary cap they needed for players, mainly due to Stern's actions, wrote the NYT. He sowed distrust between the players and agents, so that the athletes no longer knew who to listen to.

During the 2011 lockout, club owners were able to increase their share from 43% to 50% of revenues.

But even Stern's opponents recognized his merits. “Stern realized that the game is about the players, and raised their market appeal to such heights as never before,” said lawyer Jeff Kessler, who represented the union in numerous battles with Stern. “He was a worthy adversary and sometimes a pain in the ass, but I loved him despite all the difficulties.”

Commissioner farewell

As NBA commissioner, Stern made about $9 million a year, according to ESPN. In February 2014, he retired and could have lived an idle and comfortable life. But he is a natural workaholic. He actively advised his successor, taking the post of honorary commissioner of the NBA. He has served as an advisor to investment bank PJT Partners, venture capital firm Greycroft Partners, consulting business PricewaterhouseCoopers, and a number of other smaller firms.

Last November, Thorne, a former NBA vice president, and his wife dined with Stern and his wife. He was in good health and in excellent spirits.

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