After further reading, I am gaining more understanding of the NBA's latest free-agent shuffle. Going into it, I had expected some major players to change teams, but nothing anywhere close to what ended up happening.
To cut to the chase, the biggest negative reaction I personally had involved a free agent (Kawhi Leonard) communicating with another player who wasn't a free agent (Paul George), leading to that second player going to his employer and requesting a trade, which was immediately granted. It seemed to me that a line was crossed.
I have a rather old-school attitude when it comes to players under contract: don't force your team's hand, just because you're not happy with your working situation. (Carmelo Anthony vs. Phil Jackson is one of the few exceptions in my book.) I fundamentally believe that teams, and specifically general managers, should be the ones to build championships, and not players. Nine years ago, when LeBron James (a free agent) bolted Cleveland to go to Miami, part of what irritated me was the fact that Miami had nothing that screamed "we're a championship team!" prior to LeBron's arrival. What got me, because I'm old school, was that players created a championship team, really with almost no help from the franchise itself, and that that plan worked. It irked me because it created this new idea that a team could be terrible the year before, and two or three free-agent superstars could just decide to plant their flag really anywhere, and that team would automatically be in contention, regardless of how competent it had been as a franchise. (Really, regardless of whether that franchise "deserved" to be in contention for a championship, because, in Miami's case, it didn't appear, transaction-wise, that they "earned it.")
It is for that reason that I wasn't so up-in-arms when Kevin Durant joined Golden State in 2016. The Warriors built their team from the ground up. Before they signed Durant, they drafted Steph Curry, they drafted Klay Thompson, and they drafted Draymond Green. Yes, there was a funny cap spike the summer Durant was a free agent, a result of the negotiating between the NBA owners and the Players' Association. But, as far as I was concerned, it wasn't Durant's fault, and it certainly wasn't Golden State's fault. Was it unfair? Sure. But was Durant creating a championship-caliber team overnight from nothing simply by joining it? No. The Warriors had already built their dynasty. Just like the Celtics of the 1960s, the Lakers and Celtics of the 1980s, the Bulls of the 1990s, and so on. That's the basketball I grew up on and came to love.
To close my old-school rant, sure, behind a bunch of my thoughts, I bear in mind that it may be a very long time before the Bulls become champions again. Yes, the players themselves won the championship, but the general manager put them together. It is one thing, however, if players spurn my team because they're not winning or don't project to win for a while. It's also fine if players spurn my team because of our ownership or front office (I don't exactly have the highest opinions of them). Fine. But, what I am not fine with is the idea that, even with a team on the rise, good ownership, a good front office, a good reputation for treating players well, and we not only pull out all the stops that a player would want (but also have a lot of stops to pull out), and a player (or several) spurns us because they see another team who might not have what we have.
While I have gained respect for LeBron since his Miami years (he did eventually return to Cleveland, after all), what I still don't get is how he and Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh chose a team that had fewer assets than we had. What I don't get is how Leonard chooses to leave a team he just won a championship with, with a very good shot at repeating had he stayed. What I don't get is how he then successfully recruits someone who isn't a free agent to de-commit from his agreement with a different team, and then uses that as what leads him to choose the team he chose (in this case the Los Angeles Clippers). I also don't get how Anthony Davis still goes to the Lakers even after all the trade talk drama between them and New Orleans that came up during last season. And so on.
I stated at the beginning of this post that I've gained some understanding. I best get on to it. It seemed, at least from this article, that choosing between the Clippers and the Toronto Raptors was a genuinely tough decision for Leonard. And from another article, it seemed that George didn't demand a trade from the Oklahoma City Thunder but rather simply requested it. One of the things from old-school basketball is that when a player wished to find a way to break the relationship with his team, it wasn't usually in a nice or friendly manner. After all, Michael Jordan openly feuded with General Manager Jerry Krause for years, and almost signed a one-year contract with the New York Knicks at one point. I suppose it helps. At least from a professional standpoint, it is always better if, even when a player leaves one franchise, he leaves on good terms. (And ditto the general manager.)
The other point that came up in a phone call last night with a couple of sports-minded friends was the idea of player empowerment being a good thing. Compared with the NFL, the MLB, and the NHL, NBA players have the most rights and freedoms in terms of expressing their wants and dislikes in terms of their team, their working situation, their bosses, etc. It's not that players in other sports don't speak up or try to communicate, it's just that the culture of some of the other sports are considerably less conducive for players being able to advocate for themselves. And considering that, in many other professions, completely outside of sports, it seems commonplace actually for people who work for their bosses to be able to make requests to suit their needs and to have those requests honored. At least, that's what I hear.
My hope is that somehow there can be found a way to balance NBA players being treated well, combined with the ability for teams to still be able to experience proper reward for building their teams to become champions. When a player becomes a free agent, I would still hope that, if he's in a positive working environment where he could win a championship or several, that he would stay on the team he began with. While I understand and respect his right to choose (and to leave), I would hope that there would be some reward, as a fan, for sticking with the teams I stick with. I'm not the type to change my rooting interests year by year.