A New Shade of Awesome

Last Thursday was a day, wasn't it? The trade dust finally settled. The Bulls traded their former future (Tyrus Thomas) for a new one (the salary-cap void he left behind). They also traded two saviors, both Thomas, who was once on some next-level can't-miss shit, and John Salmons, who arrived last year in time to scare Boston and conjure a false vision of the future. The Suns hung onto Amare now that he's been scared straight (no George Bluth). The Rockets got Kevin Martin. The Blazers got the current Marcus Camby while they wait for the better one to get healthy. The Bucks might have made the playoffs. The Celtics united the world's best shooter with its best dunker. The Mavs and Cavs basked in the glow that comes from helping the Wizards destroy themselves and effectively exile anyone ever infected with Gilbertitis.

And, of course, the Knicks completed their science project. After careful consideration, so many ingredients thrown around, and a concluding bang, the smoke in the lab cleared and the Knicks had actually managed to get two-star far enough under the salary cap.

It took Donnie Walsh 22 months to sell off and swap out the assets he was left to administer after the franchise entered existential bankruptcy under Isiah Thomas. The Knicks sent Darko Milicic to Minnesota for Brian Cardinal. Then, they traded Nate Robinson for a player somehow even more grating and circus-worthy, Eddie House, along with two expiring contracts from prep heroes J.R. Giddens and Bill Walker. After that, things got crazy. As you know, the Brickers wound up with Tracy McGrady, a personal victory because never before has my favorite team employed my favorite player. New York also acquired Sergio Rodriguez. The cost was bizarre: Houston got Jared Jeffries, Jordan Hill, a Top-1 protected draft pick in 2011 (Houston can swap picks with New York), and a top-5 protected pick in 2012. Appending New York's McGrady acquisition to the Kevin Martin trade meant that Rodriguez and Larry Hughes swapped roster spots.



About the cost: When Isiah signed Jared Jeffries to a bad contract, I threw up in my mouth. When New York drafted Jordan Hill, I threw my phone against a fence. I wasn't upset to see either leave, though I don't understand why any team wants Jeffries. (Shoals claims that he fits in with Houston's phalanx of longer wing defenders, falling in line behind Battier and Ariza.) Trading Hill so early into his career might seem shortsighted, or tantamount to an embarrassing admission of error, but the latter is a good thing. The Knicks should, indeed, be ashamed as they start Chris Duhon but read about Brandon Jennings and Tywon Lawson. Marinate in that failure. Never forget! The 2011 draft pick "protection" is goofy. Retaining the rights to the top overall selection is like having the pick protected against alien invasion, which seems only slightly less likely than New York winning the right to draft Hassan Whiteside or Harrison Barnes. The 2012 protection is aspirational--it's not even full-on lottery protected because the Knicks anticipate annual playoff trips resuming by then.

About the benefit: TMac, motherfuckers! TMac! He might not drive or elevate as he once did, but he remains lovable, sympathetic, exciting Tracy. He improves the Knicks and makes them far more interesting, even if only for about 30 games.

About the real benefit, and the path forward: As you've perhaps read and heard, Tracy's contract expires at the end of the season. (This is a little-known fact.) When McGrady's terms of employment are taken in concert with the odd bottom line that only Wilson Chandler, Danilo Gallinari, Eddy Curry, and Toney Douglas are affirmatively under contract for next year, the Brickers anticipate having more than $30 million in cap room. Perhaps you've also been made privy to the plan to sign two of the top-shelf free agents: LeBron, Dwyane, Bosh, and so forth. The best-case scenario for New York envisions LeBron and Wade or LeBron and some big man signing with the Knicks and the roster being filled in with minimum-compensation players. That's also the problem.

Why would any premier player want to join a team with so little money for anyone outside of the rotation's top 6? "Rotation" should be in quotation marks because Eddy Curry doesn't play, even when physically capable. Why play alongside so few proven commodities? Bereft of recent success or any rational path toward a title? Teams with two star players that haven't won championships have had stronger supporting casts. To be honest, it is a real problem. No marketing gimmicks or promised media exposure will improve Gallinari's defense or conjure a shot blocker.

Rather, it was a real problem. Last week's events have made clear that the Knicks should forgo a common basketball solution and instead make history: The Knicks should become a bank holding company, the first NBA team to ever undertake such a conversion. Problem solved. Put the champagne on ice, and read the FAQ about this obvious solution should the logic behind it elude you upon first glance.



A bank? What? What is a bank holding company, anyway?
Let's leave the economic nitty gritty to the finance guys and deal in basic terms. Pursuant to the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, such organizations are those that exercise control over a bank. By investing in so many toxic assets over the years (Curry and Jeffries, Allan Houston's degenerating knees, Stephon Marbury, etc.), leveraging those unreliable bets to prop up short-term viability at the expense of systemic health, and effectively issuing awful loans (paying salaries to so many foreseeable losers who could not deliver the expected return), the Knicks have surely earned technical, if not actual, distinction as the kind of bank that America loves. So this conversion shouldn't be too difficult from a financial standpoint.

The gift and the curse of being a bank holding company is that you must register with the Federal Reserve and comply with Fed regulations. This can elevate regulatory scrutiny, but it also gives bank holding companies access to the Fed's discount window and makes raising capital much easier. Fed loans, stock sales, stock repurchasing--it's all easier as a holding company.

Prominent examples of bank holding companies include Goldman Sachs, CIT, GMAC, and American Express. Look how varied that group is--they weren't even all commercial or investment banks before converting. More importantly, what's the one sort of entity logically missing from that set of peer institutions? A reckless financial concern with a focus on entertainment and sports. A basketball team. Synergy!



Does this mean that the Knicks will have to leave the NBA?
Have to? The Knicks should want to.

First--yes, it's unlikely that the league and the other NBA teams would sit by and allow one of its members to become a bank holding company. There would be complicated legal questions about financial regulation, antitrust, and labor laws. There would be confusion about whether the Knicks control a bank, and about whether a financial-sector holding company could own an NBA team. Unless David Stern and the other owners amend the bylaws to allow for bank holding companies to compete as members, the Knicks probably can't stay in the NBA.

But the Knicks shouldn't want to stay. This conversion is all about capital and artificial ceilings. The NBA's salary cap is too restrictive for a team like the Knicks, which is situated in the most populous city, is supported by fabulously wealthy people, is about to have no problem raising huge sums of cash, and is using a basketball model predicated on outspending and outglitzing everyone. Replacing the stymying regulation of the NBA with the more commodious oversight of the Fed will allow the Knicks to--pun alert--break the bank this summer. If the team opts out of the NBA and converts to a bank holding company, it will be able to sign James, Wade, Bosh, and Joe Johnson. There will be no cap. New York could probably sign John Wall after convincing him to not enter the draft and simply leave college for a unique opportunity. There really would be no limits on what New York could spend.*

Suddenly, a team with a prospective roster of Johnson, Bosh, the four Knick holdovers, and a bunch of league-minimum journeymen would transform into an All-NBA First Team supplemented by an elite bench. The Knicks could even re-sign David Lee under this model. The Fed discount window would provide the Knicks with low-cost capital. Similarly, the team could more easily issue equity if it felt that diversifying its ownership were a worthwhile cost of quickly raising money for operations, payroll, and investments.

*See below in the TARP section for one potential limit.



Doesn't leaving the NBA frustrate all attempts to win an NBA championship, the entire purpose of signing free agents in the first place?
It does, but the question is myopic. The Knicks would leave the NBA and become a barnstorming team. Barnstorming, the Knicks could play anyone, anywhere, anytime. It goes without saying that it would schedule an annual July best-of-seven series against the NBA champion to determine the true world champion. Emphasis on world. Think about the possibilities:

- New York could play challenge-match exhibitions against holdover NBA teams. For example, it could play the Bulls in the United Center during a Chicago home stand on an off day between pedestrian Bulls games against the Bucks and the Nets. Or it could host the Lakers as the team killed time on the East Coast between games against the Celtics and the Sixers.

- New York could play against a non-NCAA-sanctioned college all-star team in a "pickup" game that "just happens" to take shape at some point. So long as the college kids weren't paid, they probably could remain eligible after the ensuing NCAA investigation.

- New York could do a European tour, visiting Josh Childress and competing against league champions from each country. It could be called the Transatlantic Invitational. And, without any scheduling obligations imposed by an entity like the NBA, the Knicks could generate big ticket sales and media exposure by playing specialty games. Just consider the intrigue on Twitter and UStream when the Knicks face their old friend and nemesis by playing whichever Italian league team hires Stephon Marbury.

- New York, with its superstars, could continue to cultivate the Chinese basketball market while opening up markets in other countries where the lead-footed NBA has yet to establish infrastructure and regular presence.

(It seems fair to assume that New York also would enter and dominate some kind of intramural league for bankers and lawyers. You know, something akin to one of those proverbial "lawyer's games" where people like Barack Obama and Eric Holder would be found were they not running the country.)

See the opportunities? The Fed has no scheduling rules. Were the Knicks to compete against the best teams from around the world and to then defeat the reigning NBA champion, would anyone really look down upon the accomplishments? Perhaps the strength of the Knicks' schedule would be questioned. However, enough NBA exhibitions, enough games against national teams, and enough games against champions from strong leagues across Europe, plus all that travel, should assuage concerns.

The Knicks would lose out on 82 NBA games a year and a chance to play in the league's playoff system. The Brickers would also leave behind their history, to some degree. No one would ever fail to associate New York with Willis Reed or Patrick Ewing, but the franchise's legacy would be altered by converting to a bank holding company. However "altered" doesn't mean "diminished," and the conversion not only would create a new business and basketball model, but also would create so much novelty buzz that the organization's standing could be enhanced. Its reputation could be restored through innovation and relentless focus on worldwide basketball supremacy.



What will the Knicks do instead?
See above.

Would the Knicks receive TARP money? Is the TARP program even still going on? Isn't that taxpayer money?
As a bank holding company, the Knicks would be TARP eligible. Though the organization has done an admirable job mitigating its exposure to troubled assets with incalculable values, and though it didn't have as much mortgage liability as some of its soon-to-be-peer institutions, it nonetheless still faces losing gambles (Curry's contract) and environmental difficulty (the NBA's economic model is failing). The Knicks could use the cash flow, as could the NBA. Though the Knicks will be leaving the league upon conversion, the team will remain a competitor in the basketball-talent market place. The sooner that a team like the Knicks gets back to spending lavishly on top-end players, the sooner the basketball capital markets will thaw. More money in circulation will ensure that top talent stays in the industry and that basketball--either produced by the NBA or by the Knicks--continues to fuel the American entertainment economy. That's something all taxpayers should support.

Is TARP even still a thing? Well, TARP money issued to other financial institutions has been repaid, mostly. (AIG, Chrysler, Discover, and a few other firms remain outstanding public investments.) But the program has not been fully extinguished. Further, it was so amorphously constructed, so hastily implemented, and so haphazardly supervised that the Knicks can surely find a way to participate. Never underestimate the extent to which Timothy Geithner will be willing to help a bank.

One consideration that would likely influence the Knicks' decision about whether to participate in TARP is that TARP money has come with limits on executive compensation. Though no one is proposing that James Dolan or Donnie Walsh receive an exorbitant salary, the principle behind concerns about excessive compensation surely would be implicated by paying players such high salaries. Someone like LeBron could probably command $40 or $50 million a year. However, this complication might be overstated. TARP's limits on executive compensation were motivated by populist anger directed toward bank executives who appeared to be profiting from the financial ruin which they helped to create in the first place. There are no such concerns here, and the likelihood of the Knicks turning a profit as the team conquered the basketball world makes New York's conversion into a bank holding company an attractive safe harbor for public funds.



What else will happen if the Knicks convert into a bank holding company?
This conversion will allow the Knicks to begin originating mortgages, something the team has always wanted to do. Now, the team can sponsor Hamptons Night, Columbia County Night, Florida Keys Night, Harlem Renaissance Night, Section 8 Night, Co-Op Conversion Night, and other promotions during which fans can come enjoy basketball and sign the paperwork needed for a dream home, or to finally secure that ideal fourth property on the water. This grows the financial pie at the Knicks' disposal, and it allows for the unique circumstance in which someone like LeBron James also could be the Real Estate King of New York. Try to match that, Akron. Serving as a mortgage broker will allow the Knicks to diversify their revenue streams and (hopefully--fingers crossed) tap into the eventual real estate rebound that Knick insiders forecast as taking hold in early Q3 of FY 2011.

The Knicks also will be offering competitive-rate CDs and free pens.

Someone's Favorite

In a perfect world, all of you would read The Baseline all day long. But I recognize there are differences. So how about taking a look at the following FD-friendly posts:

-Sleep-deprived column on how messy complex salaries have gotten and what it means for fans.

-Death of the mini-max dream.

-Is it time to redefine tampering?

-Why Nike should want the public to know that LeBron got dunked on.

Big Bucks on Astral Plane

At this point, we should probably just ignore Wade, Bron, and Bosh when they're asked about the future. James just messes with reporters, Wade's the good soldier, and Bosh is too polite to regularly let it smolder like he wants. For the record, on intuition and common sense alone, I figure James stays, Wade too but only after JO's replaced with quality, and Bosh might even be traded to Cleveland by next spring.

That said, I was struck by this Marc Spears Durant piece, which includes the following quotes:

"But after coming here and seeing the city, I love Oklahoma. The fans have been with me every night. What more can you ask for?"

"I like the nucleus that we have," he said. "I'm excited. I want to be here as long as possible. It's like family. I love being here. We're going to get better. We can get better.

"Hopefully, we will make the playoffs next season. That's what we're fighting for. We'll have a good chance."

Fine, maybe your standard clap-trap from a young, upbeat athlete not looking to make waves. But unless I'm just really stupid, Durant and Uncle Jeff will be looking for extensions next summer. So it's not like he's talking to thin air here. More importantly, though, is the emphasis on 1) OKC being a viable home for Durant's prime and 2) how impressed he is with the team around him.

The first point relates to both LeBron's supposed predicament, and possibly, the economy. I've written previously that James doesn't need New York or Miami except as lifestyle accessories; and hell, he can Gulfstream it out there whenever he feels like it, or buy a mansion for weekends. The Knicks, even the city itself in these troubled times, need brand LeBron, not vice-versa. And at the same time, he's elevating Cleveland, turning it from the butt of jokes and flaming rivers into the home of King James. Durant has more of an uphill battle in this respect, since despite his college hype he's been all but invisible this season. Still, this can't last much longer, and if next season the recognition comes, and the fans flock, by 2010 OKC might not be a joke any longer.

But more importantly is Durant's conviction, even good-natured shock, and just how brilliantly-engineered this team's future is. Sam Presti is smart. Sure, being surrounded by bikinis and beaches is nice, as would time spent in a national spotlight you don't have to earn. And yet we've seen that the Knicks can tumble into oblivion, even before the economy collapsed. Presti will not mess up when it comes to developing this team and its players. You could say similar things about Pritchard. If team markets are becoming more and more negligible, and the perilous state of all things financial makes the astute GM more precious than ever, how far are we from Presti being what keeps Durant in OKC?



P.S.: Because I am serious about those Amazon recommendations, the current ones: Eros Plus Massacre is the book on Japanese New Wave and such; The Street of Crocodiles an obvious influence on FreeDarko's prose style and worldview; On the Rainbow Road, the cheap way to some essential Southern soul; Sherman's March is my favorite documentary ever, except for maybe his Bright Leaves; The Wizard of Odds is FD itself; All Things Must Fight to Live will change your life.

It's Anyone's Pattern

For starters, there's something cosmic about the Chandler-to-OKC trade. The Hornets hadn't quite had it this season, and I hate Byron Scott. Squelching Julian Wright is foolish. And now this, delivering a big man recently considered Olympic-ish material into the mitts of the most FD team since the '06-07 Warriors. If the word "FD" still means anything, or remotely the same thing, in this very different league we live in. So go ahead and type it with me, because I know you've been saying it in your head since yesterday:Kevin&Jeff&Russell&Tyson&Blake. That, my friends, is a monster.

However, as much as I'd (prophetically?) been down on New Orleans, you can't like what this says about the direction the league is headed. I already did a TSB post on it, coming to the conclusion that we're headed toward baseball. Combine that with the Morey/Battier revelations, and this week we're practically staring down the barrel of the future of front offices.

First, you've got the Thunder, a bandwagon you need to be finding if you haven't tracked it down already. All the payroll went to heaven, causing much controversy and embarrassment, or was of the walking corpse variety—save for the rookie contracts belonging to the team's nucleus. And now, even if Chandler improves them greatly, OKC's most likely landing a choice lottery pick. A once-in-a-generation phenom—LeBron is the exception that proves everything, which is why Durant can still be once-in-a-generation—combined with very astute use of high picks, and one big contract stolen off of team's not blessed with such meager payroll. Will this last? No. Does it take a mastermind to pull off? Probably. Does that mean, in the wartorn economic future of the NBA, it's not a viable model? Only if there's a cheaper alternative that promises such a strong chance of competing. Blow the team up before it takes your hand with you, then start all over again. It's not nihilistic, it's living each second like it's your last, and having the balls to believe your front office can repeat the process every five years.



The Hornets now become the consummate underdog, handicapped by forces beyond their control but expected. One superstar, surrounded by passable role players and guided by a coach determined to make up the difference. If that sounds like the 2000-01 Sixers, congraulations. They went to the Finals, and so we can imagine the post-Chandler Hornets making a similarly inspirational push—provided they change coaches in the off-season. That's when you end up with a peculiar merger of "this is a league of stars" with "this is a league of coaches," where these proclamations apply only to the most elite, who in secret compacts join forces to overcome the system's strictures. That's the real lesson of those Sixers—that when you have a single-minded MVP and a stubborn coach with a fully-formed basketball worldview, it's hard to tell exactly who is establishment, which means they must both be out in the cold, tossing flaming bottles at something else.

You're right, I've skimped on baseball comparisons, because I can't always make them. But I do know that, if Morey's research comes to anything, you could find another model in which incomplete or flawed players are brought together to complete each other. Not the flawed or incomplete the FD book so concerns itself with—not towering figures with great, bleeding holes in their sides. Instead, a team of guys who are at once, like Battier, useful and detrimental, but without any hierarchy. Such that no single individual, or his flaws, can overwhelm the balance of the whole. It's often said that D'Antoni's ideal team is comprised of 6'9" guys who can shoot, run, and pass. The Knicks may be one of the few teams that can do this, because as other teams look for efficient and affordable models, free agents will increasingly accumulate in one place willing to pay them an above average salary. Morey, though, could make due with a team of Battiers, provided one had just a little bit more scoring ability in place of a little less rebounding. But not too much. A team of multi-purpose yeoman immune to all yearning and glory, one that might eventually swallow up the likes of Marion and Odom.

Will we ever see this come to pass? That depends on how long the economic crisis lingers in basketball. Certainly, though, if teams suffer a major hit this year and the next, and the summer of 2010 finds the large market teams cashing in (sorry for the mixed, if not oppositional, metaphor), we might see contracts signed that extend a relatively brief window of disaster across the foreseeable. Who knows what will be discovered, or what will pan out? Front office philosophies could find themselves twisted into a grimace that, over time, becomes a sign of worldliness and thought most deep.

Friday Super Challenge

First, for everyone who lost his job on account of that tits yacht, here's a harmless video of Nicolas Batum attempting a trip to Burger King (about 2:00 in):



I love this guy. On so many levels, he's like the missing other half of Barbosa. Moves weird, mild and yet aggressive in the most slippery way imaginable, by all accounts a lovable ingenue on these shores. But as of now, you see it mostly off the ball and on defense.

-Here's something to ponder: Read this TSB column of mine on a proposed overhauling of the NBA salary system, and explain to me where it lands me on the political spectrum. I truly have no idea.

-New Quotemonger, where the comments section gets especially silly.

-Share your favorite Harrington/Bender memories in the comments section.

-Also, at the Launch Thing on Wednesday, I was badgering Kevin Pelton about what I deemed "the single game indicator." As in—off of the Anthony Morrow phenomenon, of course—are there any one-night performances that can definitively mark a player as of lasting worth? The caveats here are Anthony Johnson and Tony Delk; they'd seem to throw scoring out the window, unless maybe you set the bar over 60 or something. That's pretty rarefied air.

My suggestions were a little more sneaky: The Hakeem triple-double and Kirilenko's 5x5. I don't have the data to back this up, but I just don't think a player reaches one of these statistical benchmarks—however fleeting—unless there's real substance there. And you? Any new submissions?

UPDATE from DR. LIC: Our old friend and FD affiliate, Emynd, has blazing remix of Paper Route Gangstaz' "Woodgrain"



It appears on the new Fear and Loathing in Hunts Vegas project. COP here.

To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Basketball

Note for those of you who have ordered a shirt: There has been a delay with the screen printing, so none of the new shirts will be sent out for at least a week or two. Thank you for your patience. Carry on.

First, make sure you check out Shoals and Ziller's psychoanalysis of the NBA in The Ziller Sessions: Edition 8.

Today’s guest lecture courtesy of Mark Pike, law student and author of “Green Building Red-Lighted by Homeowners’ Associations”, 33 Wm. & Mary Envtl. L. & Pol'y Rev. Vol. 3 (forthcoming Spring 2009). He is a DJ at WCWM 90.9FM and sometimes plays Free Darko’s “The Macrophenomenal Anthem” on his show.

During a recent Local Government Law class my brain started short-circuiting information I had just read on ESPN. I began fusing basketball recaps with the concepts of zoning, land use, architectural review boards, etc. It’s not too difficult to gently stretch the metaphor.

If the Sonics departure from Seattle was, more or less, a repudiation of the principles of publicly financed stadiums (cf. CLEAN v. State of Washington), is David Stern essentially concurring with Kennedy's opinion in Kelo, crafting the NBA's version of eminent domain for private benefit? Is the rise of guard-forward hybrid players, such as Kevin Durant, indicative of a larger movement which mirrors architecture's increasing acceptance of mixed-use facilities as an example of progressive efficiency? Could Brandon Jennings and Josh Childress' exodus to Europe be comparable to the "Offshoring Audacity" of "starchitects", lured to the desert of Dubai to pad their resume or just build their own empire? Is Gilbert Arenas, a geometric savant known for his unique expressions through populist mediums, ostensibly the athletic incarnation of Antoni Gaudí?


As I marinated on these thoughts, I decided to run it by Matthew Yglesias, a basketball fan who happens to frequently write about transportation and city planning issues. He responded with:

Surely there's something about building height and player height. Skyscrapers and big men. DC with its height limit is like Don Nelson's small ball lineups -- Andris Biedrins is the Washington Monument. Maybe that works?

I would counter that Don Nelson strikes me more in the mold of a Western-libertarian reaction to restrictive contemporary city planning: if a player of any given height is best for utility, efficient breach theory suggests a Coach should insert them into the lineup instead of following the traditional G-SG-F-PF-C architecture that GM’s dictate by covenant and contract. Yglesias’s reference to Andris Biedrins as the Washington Monument is particularly insightful. Many citizens criticize the DC height-restriction as crippling to the city’s ability to obtain critical mass while artificially boosting rental prices due to limited space. The height-restriction is legislated proportionally to the width of the roads and not to the symbolic Obelisk, nevertheless resulting in both wide lanes and epic aerial vistas (i.e. dunks). Not surprisingly, a negative externality of this civic decision is that DC has some of the country’s heaviest traffic congestion.

Once again, if we superimpose this logic upon the discipline of basketball management, it counterintuitively suggests that teams spreading the lane with small ball lineups will end up having increased traffic in the paint, resulting in maximum points off of inside shots. Would you be surprised to learn that the Warriors lead the league in this statistic last year? Thanks, 82games.com! Daniel Burnham, father of the City Beautiful movement and architect of DC’s Union Station is famously quoted as saying: “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will not themselves be realized.” As applied to athletics, focusing on statistics while ignoring the aesthetic is simply hemostatic.


As a discipline that focuses on human interaction with spatial and social elements, it is no surprise that the concepts of urban planning and architecture translate quite well to basketball. Accordingly, a few more brief attempts to synthesize these ideas might yield some interesting results and help us understand the continuing evolution of the League. But, first, we should familiarize ourselves with some historical context to better understand the juxtaposition.

In its infancy, basketball was actually a low-scoring (9-3!) game played in armories, smoke-filled halls, and barns. There were no 7-footers. Interestingly, the 3-point line was first introduced in a college game in 1945 in order to limit the effectiveness of taller players. The rule adjustments were voted on by the crowd at halftime. In general, the rules, though basic, were applied inconsistently from court-to-court, thereby discouraging interaction on a wide-scale basis. Basketball had not yet become civilized, but rather existed like isolated hamlets. Such inefficiency significantly thwarted the transcendent communal aspect of the sport, and caused an alarming number of injuries to players. Theodore Roosevelt was concerned about this and suggested the formulation of a governing body in 1910 to standardize the rules, thereby giving birth to the modern basketball era. The parallel developments of architecture and basketball in the early twentieth century, though somewhat non-euclidean, suggest that we could possibly anticipate future movements of the sport by analyzing the history of innovative building schemes.

Le Corbusier, a founding father of the modern architecture and urban planning movement, actually enjoyed playing weekly games of basketball as early as the 1920s, suggesting that the game had begun to go global. When he planned cities, he envisioned towers. He once proposed razing much of Paris and replacing it with 18 sixty-story buildings. He disliked congestion and preferred hyper-focused, specialized, regimented zones. Le Corbusier would have drafted Shawn Bradley.


Ebenezer Howard had a vision at the beginning of the 20th century for “Garden Cities”, which essentially lead to the conceptualization of suburban society. (As an aside, Howard enjoyed giving speeches in Esperanto, an invented universal language—which seems extremely Free Darko. Although, that might kind of be like if Phil Jackson insisted that the Lakers played FIBA-rules basketball just because). Howard illustrated his idea in a famous diagram titled “Three Magnets.” These “Town-Country” cities would combine the benefits of Town (opportunity, crowds, amusement, wages) and Country (beauty, fresh air, low rent, lack of society). Similarly, the NBA features a triangular tension between purists, innovators, and hybrid strategies. I would venture that the attributes of both Town and Country translate fairly well when describing basketball.

An imprecise proximation of the embodiment of Town, Country, and Town-Country for those subscribing to the Free Darko ethos might be transliterated a bit like the following:

TOWN: Kevin Garnett, New York Knicks, Vince Carter, Los Angeles Lakers, Baron Davis, Allen Iverson

COUNTRY: Kevin Durant, Memphis Grizzlies, Tyrus Thomas, Portland Trailblazers, Gerald Green

TOWN-COUNTRY: Amare Stoudemire, Chris Paul, Phoenix '04-'05, Josh Smith, Gerald Wallace, Dwight Howard


At the very basic level, both basketball and city planning are typically governed by rules— limitations agreed upon by lawmakers. Some rules are functionally utilitarian (e.g. green lines and 3-point arc placement, the 3-second rule and rent-control, the hand-check rule and city bonds), while the excessive arbitrariness of other rules can frustrate and undermine the very purpose of the establishment (e.g. the NBA dress code and Post-Giuliani Times Square). Nostalgia persists throughout many circles of NBA fans, a zeitgeist for consistent and stylized triple-digit scoring. A livable city. A productive society.

Progress has been made. The previously mentioned 3-second rule and the hand-check rule have been tremendous innovations for the League and enabled not just a transformative style of play, but statistical efficiency as well, thereby pleasing traditionalists and basketball modernists. In an extremely informative 2007 interview with Stu Jackson, Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations for the NBA, he explained precisely how such rule realignments calibrate the entire system:

Because our rules are more focused on keeping the middle open and offering more opportunities for players to cut and penetrate the basketball in the middle of the floor, the quality of our perimeter shots has gone up and we’re also getting more higher-percentage shots inside.

Field Goal Percentage increased steadily from 2003-2007, and we assume there was a direct correlation to these executive planning decisions. The logical extension of this analysis into the realm of urban planning and governance would be to consider rule changes like fuel-efficiency standards, building code regulations, tax breaks for developments achieving LEED standards, etc. In an artificial market, being an early adopter to such progressive innovation before government dictates your competitors to comply significantly decreases your overall potential for success; however, if you can foresee sudden shifts in the market, you sometimes stand to win as a first-mover. I would contend that teams like the Memphis Grizzlies and the Atlanta Hawks that have focused on an untraditional and potentially cost-effective approach of versatile and athletic players could benefit greatly if their vision of the League materializes; otherwise, pictures of their rosters could appear on paleofuture.com.

(photo: Jill Allyn Stafford)


It doesn’t take a social scientist to figure out that the way in which Howard’s vision was applied in reality was extremely flawed. Le Corbusier’s “modern” architectural work, in retrospect, has been criticized as isolating and monolithic. New urbanism is on the rise, and coaches will continue to experiment with lineups to achieve pareto optimal results. This is not the death of the big man, nor is it the birth of a new guard.

This is athletics as architecture. Sport as city.

FD Guest Lecture: Dribble Down Economics

A very timely guest lecture, courtesy of Atticus Van Zandt.

A bad NBA player with a large contract is basically bad debt. It's an asset that's worth significantly less on the open market that what you paid for, and it sits on the books restricting your ability to manage your organization. Zach Randolph is, essentially, an illiquid asset, and there’s not much that separates NBA franchises from investment banks. During the past decade, the NBA saw an explosion of bad debt. The arms race of contracts made the competition for free agents explode and suddenly even mediocre players were getting contracts far greater than their actual worth. While such contracts had always been present in the system, during this time, they threatened to overwhelm it.

Everybody makes mistakes. It’s when everybody makes mistakes at the same time that you get gridlock (and unintended pregnancies).Sometimes this gridlock can be resolved by somebody simply taking a step back so that somebody else can step forward. You admit your mistake, pay your penance and somebody who made better decisions benefits.

Most NBA fans understand the mechanism through which bad contracts are typically resolved is trade. However, when a large number of franchises are burdened with the same kinds of albatross contracts, trade is suppressed. I can't trade you my Antoine Walker (even if I sweeten it with a David Lee) if you've already got a Big Country Reeves on your payroll. The system breaks down, nobody gets resolution and otherwise healthy franchises whither. To whom do you pay penance when everybody has sinned equally?

In exceptional times of collective mass lapse in decision making– when you can’t take a step back because the guy behind you followed right into the same mistake– resolution is much more complex. You need a central figure to facilitate progress. Sometimes it takes a hero. But just as often, it takes a goat. Someone who’ll not only eat everybody else’s trash, but do it willingly, because that’s what he was made to do. When extrapolated to a larger scenario, that goat takes on an almost messianic quality.



What you need is one place where everybody can dump their bad debt, even if it's just for pennies on the dollar, to get it off their backs. With all the troubled assets collected in one place, you have one severely struggling entity, but the overall community actually improves. That’s where the goat steps in. And since at least 2003, there’s been no bigger goat in the NBA than Isiah Thomas and the New York Knicks. Steve Francis, Starbury, Eddie Curry, Jalen Rose, Penny Hardaway. Jerome Williams. Not only did they take on contracts that nobody else would (or could) touch, they re-signed depreciating talents to new contracts, thereby keeping them off the market indefinitely. You don’t think somebody else would’ve signed Allen Houston if the Knicks hadn’t re-upped him? Maybe nobody else would have paid quite the same premium, but he would’ve become a drag on a payroll nonetheless. The same goes for Jerome James.

Hank Paulson is obviously an NBA fan in the midst of bringing the Knick theory to the financial world. Essentially, what the Treasury is proposing is the creation of a government-sponsored Fail Corporation—a financial markets version of the Thomas Knicks, who's job it is to collect all the bad debt from the open market so that the otherwise healthy organizations can get their illiquid assets off the books and continue to operate and trade with each other. The Treasury will play the role of James Dolan—a pocketbook that’s limits are matched only by its tolerance for under-performance. It’s unclear who will play the role of Isiah, who in a brilliant stroke of irony has himself turned into a bad contract sitting on a balance sheet.

However, the real lesson of the exercise is to rewrite the legacy of Isiah in the NBA. Had he not come along, would the league have suffered the same crisis as the credit markets? Would troubled franchises like the Hornets or Trailblazers have ever seen the relatively quick recovery they’re now enjoying? Where will the Zach Randolphs go now in an Isiah-less league after even the Grizzlies and Chris Wallace have turned up their nose?



Just as the collective greed of the American banker hasn’t increased significantly in time leading up to the credit crunch, neither has the intelligence of the NBA general manager leading up to this time of prosperity in the age of Isiah. There are still going to be marginal players signed to contracts far in excess of the actual value of their ability that will clog payrolls for years to come. The question is, how will the league manage this bad debt in the future? Instead of one huge debt dump, you might see a smaller collection of mini-Knicks spring up to fill the void, but such a four-quarters for a dollar approach would surely lack the efficiency of one central institution. You could even see a slight shift in regulatory controls, such as we have already seen the NBA move toward with the limited contract forgiveness.

However, the role of Isiah may have been little more than an anomaly that helped to prop up a fundamentally untenable system in need of a drastic change to its structure. The Knicks, like the government bailout, may be a disservice by merely delaying the inevitable collapse needed before a real cure can be found. As the Steve Francises of the future accumulate across payrolls, the league will stumble inevitably along to stagnation. Without an Isiah to relieve the pressure, the NBA will be forced into places that would previously be unthinkable. Other leagues have seen such desperate times before, and that’s why NFL players don’t have guaranteed contracts.

Men are generally praised most for actions that are against their instincts- by doing the things they know will cause them harm, but will benefit others. The difference between a goat and a grenade jumper is that the jumper has to overcome his basic wiring to perform his task. That’s the action of a hero. The goat’s action is actually driven by his instincts and performs his task the same way he breathes air. While it may not be heroic, there should still be some appreciation for something that simply functions the way it was intended– like Rain Man watching the dryer spin. And it’s in that simple appreciation, that Isiah should find his legacy. In the meantime, the financial world, and the country as a whole, unknowingly waits for a goat to perhaps save them from the real, painful change they need.