COLUMN: Whatever happened to team loyalty?

    What is going on with the NBA? Earlier this week, the Nuggets finally pulled the trigger on a deal that sent Carmelo Anthony to the Knicks, a move that has been talked about for months. Then on Wednesday, the Jazz stunningly traded away their franchise player Deron Williams.

So what is up with all the wheelin’ and dealin’? Well, it really boils down to two words: Free agency.

    This started because of everybody’s favorite trend-setter, LeBron James. Last summer during his highly anticipated free agency, all of the teams in the NBA learned a valuable lesson – you can’t trust your star.

    Now, I know that sounds shallow, but it’s true. Last summer, LeBron ditched Cleveland to form a super team in Miami with Wade and Bosh, who coincidentally also ditched on his former club. The lure of potential championships with Miami outweighed the loyalty they had for their previous teams.

    LeBron’s actions last summer did two things: One, it gave players the upper hand in contract negotiations and also gave them more confidence to use that upper hand, and two, it really put teams in a tough spot.

    Think of it from their point of view. You’re the general manager of an NBA team, and you have a franchise player. It’s a guy who you’ve built your team around and want to keep with you for as long as you can, somebody like LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Dwight Howard, Chris Paul, or Deron Williams.

    But there’s a problem. That player’s contract is expiring in the near future and you have no guarantee whether or not they will sign an extension with you. You hope they’ll re-sign; you hope they are loyal to you, but sometimes the lure of more money or rings will draw them away.

    So what do you do? Well Mr. GM, you have two options. You either take a big risk and do all you can to get them to stay, or you trade them and get something out of them before they leave you in the lurch like LeBron did to Cleveland.

    As we saw this week, many GMs are going with option two. Just look at the contracts of the guys who were recently traded. Anthony’s Nuggets contract was set to expire at the end of this year, and Deron Williams would have become a free agent in the summer of 2012. So rather than have those guys bolt as soon as their contract is up, the GMs are essentially forced to trade them.

    So what does this new trend mean for the future? Besides Williams, Howard and Paul are both set to be free agents come 2012, thus already sparking the discussion of where they might end up, or if they’ll get traded before then.

    This free agent craze is changing the NBA. Just like LeBron, Wade and Bosh in Miami, with players gaining more and more control, I think we will see more and more “super” teams and I’m not so sure that’s a good thing.

    In addition to that, this recent trend definitely favors big market teams. Look at Miami, New York, Chicago or Los Angeles. All of these teams are big markets, and therefore are much more attractive to stars. I mean, Oklahoma City is a good team, but do you really think Carmelo Anthony, with his ego the size of the Goodyear blimp, would really ever choose to go there instead of New York?

    Lastly, and much more importantly than contracts, super teams and market size, what does all this mean for the future of the NBA and basketball in general?

    I repeat the first thing I said in this column: What is going on with the NBA? Is it even about the game of basketball anymore? The league has gone from a bunch of athletes playing basketball to a bunch of businessmen negotiating deals and making money, and then playing basketball in their spare time.

    Seriously, when did the NBA become more about how much someone is being paid instead of how well they are playing? When did it become about where a person plays instead of how they play? The news that Carmelo Anthony was “possibly” being traded was plastered all over ESPN for weeks on end, but they barely find time to squeeze in highlight clips of actual games. Surely I’m not the only one who thinks that’s a little ridiculous.

    Maybe I’m just waxing poetic here and just need to get with the times and accept the NBA for what it is, but I don’t think so. The National Basketball Association should not be about contracts and free agency, it should be about basketball, and I’m just hoping that sometime soon, we may start to figure that out.

Mark Israelsen is a freshman majoring in mechanical engineering. He has also been a lifelong fan of the Utah Jazz. He can be reached at mark.israelsen@aggiemail.usu.edu