A Modest Proposal for Washington

by

The Spurs play the Wizards tomorrow night, and it’s hard to imagine two locker rooms with such antithetical reputations. The Wizards have been in meltdown mode all year, and this morning we learn that Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton recently pulled guns on one another over a gambling debt. You can find Washington’s official statement about the incident at, among other places, Truth About It.

My reaction to the story runs in a couple different directions. The first is to roll my eyes and wonder how some media outlets might paint the NBA through the filter of this unfortunate episode. From my perspective, MLB (steroids) and the NFL (rampant criminal activity) are far worse than the NBA in terms of character issues. That’s a gut assessment, not a scientific one, but contrary to popular opinion, the NBA’s players are more or less a decent group of guys. Ah, but popular opinion is king, right?

My other reaction to the story is to ask, “What should the NBA do when its players engage in this sort of activity-when one or more of its players enters into potentially criminal behavior?”

My proposal is for the next CBA to provide owners more of an incentive to terminate the contracts of players involved in criminal offenses. Obviously, I’m painting with broad brushstrokes. But look at the Wizards predicament.

Suppose Washington had released a statement on Christmas Eve that read, “It’s our unfortunate responsibility to inform you that two of our players, Javaris Crittenton and Gilbert Arenas, were involved in a dispute after last night’s game that has resulted in their indefinite suspensions from the team.” There wouldn’t have been any need to say more; the press would have scooped the details. But the Wizards would have seemed serious and in control. They would have given the impression of caring. And they could have taken time to carefully consider their next move while standing under the halo of pro-activity.

Right now the Wizards come off as a team involved in a cover up. It’s a bad spot to be in. And they’re not only stuck with Gilbert Arenas and his virtually untradable contract, but now they have a public relations mess on their hands, a mess whose only blessing may be temporarily distracting their fans from how lousy the team is.

After the incident, the Wizards must have counted the cost of releasing the information. Their cost-benefit analysis led them to conclude that attempting to bury the story was their best move. Why would this be? Or, maybe a better question is why do teams always err on the side of retaining players, even the most problematic players?

Tom Ziller sums things up nicely in this long quote:

But if recent history is any indication, the Wizards won’t void Gil’s contract because of this incident, no matter how severe the penalty from league offices.

Again, the details of the stand-off are unconfirmed — the New York Post reported that Arenas and Crittenton drew firearms during a locker room dispute over a gambling debt, while Yahoo! Sports reported only that D.C. police (working with the U.S. Attorney’s Office) are investigating the circumstances under which the Wizards and the NBA were made aware of Arenas housing firearms in his locker at the Verizon Center.

If the most severe allegations are deemed true following the NBA and police investigations, Arenas will face a stiff penalty from the league, likely a suspension of at least a few dozen games. The NBA under commissioner David Stern has worked overtime to clean up its image, which has unfairly been ridiculed by sportswriters and fans, considering the legal troubles the NFL and MLB have faced. An OK Corral styled locker room showdown is a P.R. nightmare for the league, and the league will both want to punish the players for the embarrassment and show the world it doesn’t take this sort of thing lightly. (The league really doesn’t take these things lightly. Ask Stephen Jackson.)

And while, yes, every NBA player’s contract has a clause permitting teams to void deals based on bad behavior (of which drawing a gun on a teammate at practice surely qualifies), it never happens, and it won’t here. Whether teams feel they can’t get away with voiding contracts (players can appeal, in which case the matter goes to arbitration), or whether teams don’t want the stigma attached (possibly deterring free agent acquisitions), it just doesn’t happen.

Golden State could have voided Monta Ellis’s contract last year when he injured himself in a moped accident. (The uniform player contract expressly prohibits moped fun.) Indiana could have tried to void the contracts of Stephen Jackson or Jamaal Tinsley, who were involved in a nightclub shooting. It could be argued that Jackson, like Ellis, had enough basketball value to prevent such a rash decision by the team. But Tinsley didn’t: the Pacers ended up icing Tinsley for the entire 2008-09 season, and bought out the remaining two years on his contract this past summer. If the Pacers could have shed Tinsley’s contract because of the shooting incident, it would have.

But, as Ziller suggested to me by way of gChat, the circumstances in this situation could be different, if for no other reason than the sheer size of Arenas’ contract.

As I mentioned above, Gilbert Arenas has an albatross of a contract. It’s hard to imagine any owner taking it on in this economy. Arenas is owed something like 96 million dollars between now and 2014.

96,000,000.

Do you think protecting the tiny sliver of trade value Arenas possessed prior to the incident factored in to Wizards’ decision to keep the story in-house? I imagine it did. Because now the Wizards are stuck with Arenas, no matter what. Couple his contract, injury history, high maintenance personality, and underperformance together with locker room gun play and I’ll immediately present you with the least attractive player in the entire league.

If the Wizards want to free up their payroll-to rid themselves of Arenas and begin the work of rebuilding-voiding his contract seems like their best bet. But history suggests they won’t do it.

In the larger picture, the league needs to provide its owners with more incentive to exercise their option of terminating the contracts of any and all players involved in criminal activity. The owners wouldn’t be obligated to terminate such contracts, but giving them a more attractive option provides franchises with a powerful deterrent against what may have been nothing more than foolish, immature locker room bravado.

In reality, this incident is probably closer to silly and stupid than dangerous and life-threatening. Still, the potential for the incident to have been much worse is so great that owners must be encouraged to take more decisive action against the tiny band of NBA knuckleheads that occasionally make headlines. David Stern does not take these things lightly, but he could do more.

I’m not sure how the league builds in incentive for owners to part ways with such players, but granting teams trade exception money to stand in for the voided contract seems like a good start. In this economy, and with this Arenas contract, the ramifications of such a provision would be huge. But in most cases, owners would simply pocket the savings and wait until the next round of free agency, which is what Washington should do here. But in some cases, such a provision would provide opportunity for owners to immediately re-make the face of their franchise.

Suspensions are not nearly as effective as the threat to take 96 million away from a player’s future earnings. Or, in the case of Crittenton, his career.

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  • Cory Clay

    History is mentioned a couple of different times to determine that it is unlikely for Arena’s contract to be terminated/voided, but I think you are forgetting that the Wizards are under new ownership, therefore it is an unknown on how they will handle this situation. Out of their “Big 3″, Arenas would be the hardest to trade due lack of trade value, whereas teams like us, Cleveland and others would def give up expiring contracts for Caron Butler or Antwan Jamison. If you think about it this could allow the Wizards to completly start over by having a ton of cap space this coming offseason and a great shot at John Wall.

  • CGD

    Really interesting thought piece. The Wizards difficulty in determining whether to void Arena’s contract is compounded by the fact that he is consistently one of the top draws in the NBA. For a team that likely won’t benefits financially from a playoff run, the best option to sustain gate renevues is to keep an “electric” player like Arenas.

    Since the door was cracked open… Living in the DC area and following the Wiz for some time now, I have long been of the opinion that the best chance for improving the team is to part ways with Arenas. Too good of talent is being wasted here by taking the outdated approach of trying to build around one volume scorer (the “76er-Iverson model”). Sadly for me, for the reasons noted by Ziller above its unlikely a split will happen.

  • CGD

    Does anyone know who retains a player’s rights if his contract is voided? I would think the player becomes a free agent but I’m not sure.

    One incentive, however harsh, is to allow the voiding team to hold a breaching players rights for a certain amount of time. This measure would mitigate the threat that opportunisitic teams would poach the player away (at least in the short term). Alternatively, the voiding team could be granted the right of first refusal if another team tries to sign the player.

  • Rick Ashford

    The problem isn’t incentive to void the contract. There’s plenty of incentive. The problem is that there’s historical precedent that shows it’s next to impossible.

    If you recall, when Latrell Sprewell choked PJ Carlesimo back in ’97, the Warriors immediately voided his contract. If that didn’t constitute bad behavior worth cutting ties, I don’t know what is.

    Unfortunately, however, the player’s union immediately filed a grievance and the contract was eventually reinstated. They claimed, as I recall, that the incident wasn’t egregious enough to warrant terminating the contract.

    Since then, nobody’s really tried it, and I think it has a lot to do with the fact that nobody thinks it’ll stick unless the player actually goes to jail over the incident (and even then, it would have to be a serious charge).

  • Rick Ashford

    Whoops. Hit submit a little too soon.

    I think the question isn’t giving owners incentive to terminate the contracts, but giving them means and conditions whereby they’re allowed to do them.

    The NBA’s guaranteed contracts are to blame in this situation. If there are clear means to terminate a contract for specific behaviors (or groups of behaviors), you’ll see this happen more often.

    Some of the behaviors I would put in this group are:

    1) Committing a felony
    2) Recklessly endangering your teammates/coaches
    3) Physically unable to perform

    In the case of the last one, I mean a player signs a contract, then immediately loses all incentive to work out, try, etc (I’m thinking Mark Blount, Eddy Curry, etc).

    The players union will, of course, fight anything like this tooth and nail (as they should), but perhaps a compromise could be worked out. For example, maybe future years of a contract could be voided, but not the current one.

    Another alternative would be a means to have a contract be “terminated”, in that it no longer counts against the cap or luxury tax, but it still gets paid (perhaps over a longer period of time, say 10 years). If the player signs another contract during that time period, that amount would get deducted from what the terminating team owed them (this would be nice for folks like Cuban, who paid Michael Finley 50+ million dollars to play for us).

    The factors that need to come in here, then, are not incentives, but making it possible for them to do so (without worrying about the termination being voided, then having a locker room cancer with no trade value on their hands). If they give themselves some general tools for getting out of bad contracts, this could help as well.

  • Dr. Love

    As long as bad boys draw at the box office, they’ll keep playing. Allen Iverson has been caught out acting the little thug over and over again. He had a conviction already in high school, and still made it into Georgetown, and doesn’t seem to have matured much since. Arenas and he have a lot in common.

  • Cory Clay

    It is written in contracts that if a player is convicted of a Felony, then a team can void his contract.

    And Arenas may be a draw but there is no way that anyone would offer him a contract close to the $96 million that he is due, especially with this situation and an added knee surgery that has taken place since that contract was signed.

    Like I said the Wizards would be potential big time players in Free Agency very easily if they do have the opportunity to void Arena’s contract and do decide to salary dump Butler and Jamison.

  • krista

    Dr Love, it’s not fair to bring up AI high school infraction. As I recall he wasn’t the instigator and racial bias was at play. (I don’t like the race card, but from what I remember, it is appropriate in this instance.)

  • Dr. Love

    Had Iverson led a moderately respectful life since his high school conviction, then I would agree with you that it would be unfair to bring up that youthful transgression. But that turned out to only the first of Iverson’s convictions and many run-ins with the law and polite society.

  • Rick

    I thought the felony bit was in there, but wasn’t 100% sure. Thanks for the info.

  • Cory Clay

    A.I. is one of the most misunderstood athletes of his generation. I can’t wait for his 30/30 doc on ESPN this year, Bill Simmons has said it is unbelievable!

  • Spursfanfromafar

    I find it incredulous that the Wizards wouldn’t want to invoke the bad behaviour clause to terminate Gilbert Arenas’ contract in this case. If Arenas’ performance thus far has been so underwhelming and his showmanship has only earned him the sobriquet of a buffoon, and all these have made him virtually untrade-able - the logical conclusion is that the Wizards should be even more inclined to void his albatross contract. The mitigating factors such as free agents’ loss of confidence in the Wizards as a destination, possibly lengthy arbitration, player union angst and reaction etc, in my opinion do not weigh more than the potential benefits of a voiding.

    But again these are the Wizards who have kept their dysfunctional core intact and are the same team which paid Arenas so much in the first place. No one in the right frame of mind ever imagined this team to go beyond the hump of a middle-range (L)Eastern Conference team, and yet this franchise is paying heavy duty luxury tax to keep high maintenance mediocrity on its payroll.

  • Kevin

    Tim, thanks for the reminder of how great this blog and it’s readers are. I don’t know of any other basketball blogs that would incite a discussion of this type (which I loved reading). I also can’t think of any other place on the internet where the comments section after a posting like this wouldn’t turn into a bunch of racial slurs and other terrible things. Keep up the good work everyone.

  • Drom John

    As if the NBA wasn’t covering up steroids.

  • wannabe_fan

    One of the low points in Spurs history was the Walter Berry-Rod Strickland-steak knife “love triangle”. Boy, the Wiz and Arenas sure beat the heck out of that!

    Seriously, Stern needs to massage the next CBA towards an NFL style roster cut. Even with out this lastest fiasco, teams are constantly stymied by players playing for contracts then tanking. Of course, there still is the problem of dumbass GMs giving out these stupid contracts. What the hell is going on there? Is someone holding a gun to their heads??? (LOL)

    As far as the Areans/Critt incident, we should wait for all the facts to come out, as they are entitled to “due process”. If it turns out to be true that they both possessed weapons on “NBA property”, I’d void the contracts of both (if I was the owner). Let the players and the union fight it out in court. What kind of sympathy will the union have in the next CBA negotiations then?

  • David

    Check out this WashPost article about Mason Jr and the Wizards’ lack of team stability and character.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/01/AR2010010101751.html

  • SpursfanSteve

    David, thanks for the article. That was a good read. Mason is one of those guys you really dont hear about, even when he’s doing big things.

  • http://www.bulletsforever.com Mike Prada

    Cory’s got it right - there’s already something in the NBA contracts about being convicted of felonies. The reason the other cases didn’t work was because they weren’t felonies - Monta Ellis got into a moped accident, for crying out loud! Latrell Sprewell, to the best of my knowledge, was never formally charged with a felony either. That’s why teams weren’t able to void the contracts - the legal case is murkier because it falls under the “bad behavior” clause, which is harder to prove.

    If Gil is charged with a felony for gun use (which is likely with DC laws), then the Wizards will have all the grounds they need to void the contract. What more incentive do you need? It’s essentially the exact same thing as what you’re proposing. The Wizards get the cap space as soon as it’s all resolved.

    I also don’t totally buy the PR cost analysis justification you used - it’s also possible they a) truly believed they could handle it in-house, b) didn’t want to come forward with something until they knew all the facts and did their own investigation, or c) decided to wait to do anything publicly until the NBA concluded their investigation. None of that has to do with protecting his trade value.

  • http://www.48minutesofhell.com Timothy Varner

    Hey Mike,

    Good to see you here.

    You might be right; this was a gut-level reaction. The reason I argued along the lines of incentive is precisely because teams already have the legal right to void contracts, but choose not to. In my estimation, that’s bad business for the league.

    Regarding the Wizards: it would seem that if the team had knowledge of Arenas’ guns being on property then they are culpable and in violation of Section 9a and b. That might be the other reason for their cover up.

  • wannabe_fan

    Well, the Spurs pulled out a road win over the Wiz…for me it was a must-win. If I had to read any headlines stating “Wizards Outgun Spurs”, I would have reached for one of gil’s guns…

    Seriously, one of the game commentators read a statement from the Polin family. I believe this is what Tim was looking for. In part, it said things like: angry, disappointing, frustrating. It went on to say (paraphrase) “we have taken steps to ensure this NEVER happens again”.

    I was glad to see this, and like Tim, I would have preferred that this come from the team’s FO instead of the dribble that came out of Grunfeld’s mouthpiece a few days ago. Out of respect for the Polin family, I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt (on the delay). The recent passing of their patriarch, the holidays, and the fact there were no injuries in the incident could have played a factor in the delay. Better late than never.

  • Cory Clay

    Another reason for Spurs fans to pay attention to what is going on is b/c if the Wizards do hold a fire sale and player like Jamison or Butler can be added to a contender for nothing that can really impact what happens on the road to the finals.