I Believe Obama Should Appoint A Committee To Investigate Heat, Cavs And All NBA Antitrust Practices

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sun, 07/11/2010 - 14:45.

I am not a professional sports fan or expert in professional sports regulation but it is obvious the professional sports teams are all owned by a small number of astoundingly rich and powerful global cut-throats - in many or most cases monopolists in extremely socially repugnant fields like banking, ticketmaster, cable, loans, waste management, and cruising - and they each always get their way, one way or the other. They control a select set of GLOBAL monopoly franchise, licensing and ticketing system that restrict all free trade in their industry to the point of making both players and fans slaves to the owners collective, greedy, collusive antitrustful whims.

And there can be no doubt the owners of all the professional sports teams acts as one, so that the only uncertainly in the outcomes of anything about professional sports is in the physical act of the players at the moment of action - and one can question how much of that is determined by the talent of the players versus the demands of the owners - e.g. Gilbert was a bookie - Gilbert plans to own pro sports and casinos in the industry and markets betting on them - and Gilbert says the Cavs games were thrown by his star player LeBron.

The LeBron James special promoting his decision to change teams from Gilbert owned Cavaliers to Arison owned Heat was on Disney and Hearst owned cable-only ESPN, surely broadcast on Cleveland Indians owning Dolan owned Cablevision - it was not LeBron's show it was the team owners' show - remember this is not a free market but rather monopoly or more accurately communist control structure where the players have no say at all on their careers, including how and where they are presented to the media.

I have no question LeBron is 100% a pawn in a sick little machine in all this - like being a rapper he is part of an evil industry and all the money in the world won't make it worth the ride - the personal satisfaction of achieving his goals may.

I hope my gut instincts are right and LeBron hasn't sold out at all in all of this - he has shown to me in his style over the past six months that the process has hurt him - he is not a happy participant in this play - I hope he continues to hate the industry haters and keeps loving the confused Cleveland crew that still loves him through all the hurt - I believe enough of the truth shall come forward about the Basketball industry abusing their monopoly rights to show LeBron has been a great leader of his community, against a truly evil empire.

I Believe Obama Should Appoint A Committee To Investigate Heat, Cavs And All Professional Sports Owners' Antitrust Practices

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June 1st, ESPN Came Close with "Are NBA free agents colluding?"

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sun, 07/11/2010 - 15:49.

June 1st, ESPN Came Close with "Are NBA free agents colluding?"

Hard to say Gilbert and the PD Professional Sports writers as well as tuned-in fans didn't know this LeBron deal with Miami was going-down - wide open friends planning their free agent futures and the media watches it blow right by them?!?! I don't think so- I think this is all a media hype set-up for the NBA owners - all the owners.

I guess all the NBA team owners, coaches, players and other professional sports media missed coverage by ESPN and in other sports media about "Are NBA free agents colluding?" which kicks off "Did you feel that? Or did the newest paradigm shift in the NBA blow right past you without your picking up the vibration?" which reports (on June 1st, 2010 - over FIVE WEEKS BEFORE LeBron went on ESPN to confirm the outcomes of these facts) - "When Wade talks about sitting down with LeBron James and Joe Johnson (and perhaps Chris Bosh) to discuss free agency and where each of them will wind up playing, he is absolutely suggesting that a tiny handful of elite players could conspire -- that's the familiar use of the word, not the legal -- to determine the future direction of the league."

I don't believe it is a conspiracy to tell people what you are going to do and then do it. What may be a conspiracy is if they were enabled and directed to do this by a conspiracy or collusion of owners, over a period of years, as appears to be the case.

If LeBron et al partied together and decided whey wanted to play together, that is legal. As the ESPN reports:

There certainly is no news value in the notion that players talk to fellow players about their futures. They've only been doing it since the advent of contracts. More recently, the idea of the stars on an NBA team openly wooing free agents via text, e-mail, voicemail, etc. is so common as to be unremarkable. You'd almost worry if it didn't happen.

Beyond that, the league has no rules to address this sort of thing. David Stern may be able to tell Mark Cuban when to clam up (or at least to tell Cuban how much it's going to cost him to speak), but the commissioner would have a hard time convincing anybody in America that D-Wade can't chat up LeBron about who is going to get his millions where.

 

Here is where the antitrust issues come in - something ESPN seems to have missed is the undercurrent of all these events:

That's the top handful of free agents in a supposedly open marketplace conferring about what each of them will do, which is essentially the same as those free agents pooling their bargaining power to leverage decisions around the NBA. If the owners did that outside of a collective bargaining session, they'd have a grievance slapped on their noggins within the hour.

In this case, it's apparently perfectly acceptable. Heck, it even has its roots in a time-honored act.

The author for ESPN concludes:

Not this summer. Not with the Gang of Four on hand. (Wade mentioned James and Johnson, but by several accounts, Bosh will be included in the "meeting.") There is nothing on the record to confirm that one meeting of a bunch of NBA stars is going to completely decide which teams get which players; but on the other hand, you do the math.

Again: If the owners did this, they'd be getting sued yesterday.

Maybe the most remarkable facet of the conversation is how casual Wade makes it all sound. You know, it's a bunch of friends getting together to talk hoops, and what could possibly be controversial about that?

It is not until you parse the words that you realize what's going on, and honestly, what is going on is impressive. It is a transfer of power from owner to player -- and on the players' side, a union within a union. Welcome to the NBA's summer of shift. Seat belts no longer optional.

I believe all this was so casual because all this was orchestrated by the astoundingly powerful owners and their league - with or without the planning of the players... unknown - to create hype in the marketplace... build a superteam for global NBA franchise value - a globalization play. The players don't "play" in those circles... only the owners do.

I'm sure the media has been involved in planning and executing this at all levels and is still involved in the spinmastering... we'll see where the machine goes.

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We talked around the shabbos table today about whether Gilbert..

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sun, 07/11/2010 - 19:13.

7.10.2010

Forward: Lebron James Moves from One Jewish Owned Team to Another

Thank you to the blog at the Forward for making this clear:

"The Heat’s owner is Mickey Arison, an Israeli-born billionaire. The Cleveland Cavaliers’ owner, Dan Gilbert, is a Jewish-American mortgage magnate (he owns Quicken) who sent Cavs fan an epic letter last night promising to win a championship before LeBron does. He won’t, but you should be rooting for him to."

We talked around the shabbos table today about whether Gilbert was crazy for writing that letter. Yes we said, crazy like a fox. He deliberately is turning the NBA into a pro-wrestling-like-circus, promising a smackdown, and his strategy will undoubtedly magnify ticket sales and increase league revenue. We love it.

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James responded to Gilbert's strongly-worded letter

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sun, 07/11/2010 - 22:02.

James responded to Gilbert's strongly-worded letter for the first time Sunday in an interview on ESPN.

"I think it's unfortunate that he did that," James said. "I understand that the fans are hurt and I wish it could have been a different way. But Dan and whoever his partners are have to look themselves in the mirror and understand what he may have done may have cost them in the long run."

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