NBA player tampering

STOP the malpractice or else… the National Basketball Association (NBA) is coming after you with a more hefty punitive action.

The days of player tampering may be over after the NBA Board of Governors unanimously approved last September 20 (September 21 Manila time) a tougher set of measures that will upgrade fines for tampering by club “governors” (instead of using the word “owner” that some players like outspoken Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green despise of) or team officials and among the players themselves, disgruntled players publicly seeking a trade and other issues like violations of the salary cap and free-agency moratorium that NBA commissioner Adam Silver considers a circumvention of league rules.

While teams may be apprehensive about enforcing the new tampering rules, Silver said, “we need to ensure that we’re creating a culture of compliance in this league and that our teams want to know that they’re competing on a level playing field and frankly don’t want to feel disadvantaged if they are adhering to our existing rules.”

The crackdown on player tampering by teams will result in the fine being increased by a hundredfold from $5 million to $10 million.

The NBA sent a memo to all member clubs last September 13 regarding the new amount of fines in response to what the league called a “widespread perception that many of the league’s rules are being broken on a frequent basis” when it comes to tampering, salary-cap matters and the timing of free agency negotiations.

The NBA is raising the amount of the fines partly to reflect the 600-percent increase in league revenues and the 1,100-percent increase in franchise value since the current fine maximums were last approved in 1996.

According to an NBA memo obtained by the ESPN New Services, fines for tampering with players and team personnel can go as high as $10 million, which is double the current limit.

Should a club enter into an unauthorized agreement with a player, it could be penalized up to $6 million in fines – and the aforementioned player could also be fined $250,000.

Statements or conduct detrimental to the NBA could come with a $5 million fine now, up from the previous limit of $1 million. Moreover, a rule violation with no SPECIFIC penalty could result in a $10 million fine (Wow!) – up from $2.5 million, which was the amount that Silver fined former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling while banning him for life from the league in August 2014 after he was found to have made racists remark in a sleazy TMZ wire-tapped recording.

Sterling’s wife eventually sold the franchise to Microsoft co-founder Steve Ballmer for a then-NBA record $2 billion.

The NBA also has other penalties for different matters, such as forfeiture or transfer of draft choices, suspensions, voiding of contracts and disallowing teams from hiring the person they tampered with.

As early as July, at the start of the free-agent sweepstakes, Silver already sought changes in the free-agency negotiating process. He was alarmed that several deals were clearly consummated even before the negotiating period officially started.

Theoretically, teams could not talk to free agents before 6 p.m. EST (Eastern Standard Time) of June 30 (July 1, 6 a.m. Manila time) which would have meant that striking deals only hours later would have been impossible if no prior discussions were made.

That agreement by Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, formerly with Golden State and Boston, respectively, with the Brooklyn Nets was so quick on real time – minutes past 6 p.m. of June 30 to avoid any semblance of a violation of free-agency rules, Nets general manager Sean Marks publicly (and foolishly) declared that he did not have any previous contact with KD and only learned of K.D.’s decision through the latter’s Instagram post, a statement that drew a lot of laughter from other teams and caught the attention of the league officials.

In the first 90 minutes of free agency this summer, at least $1.4 billion in player contracts were agreed upon by NBA teams. Additionally, a combined $4 billion were spent on more than 150 free agents in the month of July.

For the last few years, the NBA has been virtually powerless in enforcing the time frame allowed for free-agency negotiations. But this summer, it seemed that things have gone awry and out of control as each team looked to one-up over the rest in the race for the topnotch free agents.

With the increase in penalties on tampering and circumvention of other league rules, the NBA hopes that such malpractices will be curbed, if not totally eradicated.

That would appear to be wishful thinking as NBA teams have so much money on their hands so much so that $10 million (for tampering violations) is just a drop in the bucket. Forbes Magazine in its most recent reports that all 30 member clubs have a franchise value between $1.2 billion (Memphis Grizzlies) and $4 billion (making the New York Knicks, which owned the league’s worst record during the 2018-19 regular campaign at 17-65, the most valuable NBA team for the fourth consecutive year). For the first time ever, the average NBA team’s value – pegged at $1.9 billion (up 13 percent from last year) – is above that of the average major-league baseball team ($1.7 billion).

What’s an NBA tampering fine of $500,000 for the Los Angeles Lakers, who are the league’s second-most valuable franchise at $3.7 billion? In August 2017, the league fined the Lakers that much on tampering charges arising from Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka’s contact that summer with the agent of Paul George (who was then under contract with Indiana for another season but had publicly sought a trade from the Pacers during the offseason) for a possible transfer of George to the Lakers. Worse, the Pacers eventually shipped George to the Oklahoma City Thunder, where he played for the past two seasons before again demanding to be jettisoned to the LA Clippers this summer to team up with Kawhi Leonard (who had powered the Toronto Raptors to the NBA title last June before entering free agency).

The NBA investigated on the matter on the request of the Pacers. It was the second-largest tampering fine in NBA history, next to the Minnesota Timberwolves’ pursuit of Joe Smith in 2000 that cost them $3.5 million and the loss of three first-round draft choices.

Again, what’s another $50,000 NBA fine against the LA Lakers in February 2018 for violating the league’s anti-tampering rule after then-Lakers president of basketball operations Earvin (Magic) Johnson (he resigned from his post in April 2019) made some flattering comments on Milwaukee Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokuonmpo during a media interview. Not much to the billionaire Johnson.

Even the players have a lot of moolah to spend (from fines for technical fouls to public trade demands), certainly when some are earning $30-$40 million annually. It won’t even be long that the first $50 million player will have been established.

What’s an NBA fine of $50,000 to then-New Orleans Pelicans meal ticket Anthony Davis, when in late January the latter – through his new sports agent Rich Paul of Klutch Sports Group (which also represents the LA Lakers’ LeBron James) – publicly demanded a trade to the LA Lakers? That’s peanuts compared to his salary of $27.1 million for the 2019-20 season.

Well, Davis eventually got his wish and officially a Laker in mid-July following a trade agreement with the Pelicans on June 15. And Davis, who is in the next-to-last year of his current pact, is set to command a full five-year, $203.6 million maximum contract extension from the Lakers in the summer of 2020 on a starting pay of no more than $35.1 million or he can discard the 2020-21 player option (worth $28.7 million) on his existing pact to become a free agent in July 2020 for any other team to bid for him.

Only time will tell how effective the new NBA penalties are.