Kobe Courtship Defies Logic

Is it just me or have NBA general managers proven themselves to be the dumbest executives in professional sports this summer?

Not even two months after the Pistons made it a perfect 4-for-4 in favor of Team Concept prevailing over Dream Team, NBA GMs are breaking the bank and throwing the kitchen sink, dishwasher and a lovely washer dryer set at free agent stars, most notably Kobe Bryant. Maybe I’m missing something fairly significant here, but didn’t Kobe just lose to a relative group of no-names in the NBA Finals, despite the best “supporting cast” of all-time. Maybe they started their summer vacations early and didn’t pay attention to that earthshattering final heard around the world. And if they missed that, they probably missed the Tampa Bay Lightning winning the Stanley Cup, and the New England Patriots winning the Super Bowl and the Florida Marlins topping the New York Yankees.

But as owners and GMs from all of the major sports are following the model of cheaper, team oriented clubs, rather than compiling rosters of high profile superstars, those in the NBA are dishing out mega-deals to even marginal “stars” like Carlos Boozer, Steve Nash and Manu Ginobili. And that means that the true superstars like Kobe are going to demand contracts above even these inflated deals. But since there’s a salary cap, teams must come up with alternative ways to stroke the egos of these stars. Enter the outrageous demands of relocating home games, private jets, hotel suites, etc. All of this to pursue a strategy that recent evidence says doesn’t work.

Every local hockey fan knows what happened with Washington Capitals owner Ted “Left Hook” Leonsis brought in high-priced prima donna Jaromir Jagr. Rather than breaking through the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since their 1998 run to the finals, the Caps failed to make the playoffs at all in Jagr’s first year with the team. The next season Jagr’s offensive style of play clashed with the disciplined defensive approach of head coach Ron Wilson, so the Caps canned Ron and hired uber-moron Bruce Cassidy. So all told Teddy E-mail spent $77 million on Jagr and fired a coach to win using the Dream Team model. Now Jagr plays to crowds on Broadway for the Rangers, Bruce Cassidy was canned before the ’04 season ended and Ron Wilson led the San Jose Sharks to the Western Conference Finals using the neutral zone trap that cramped Jagr’s style.

Leonsis finally wised up during the course of the season and made the difficult decision to sell off his high priced talent for some valuable future parts, a course of action validated by the Lightning’s Cup victory with a payroll less than half of the superstar-laden Detroit Red Wings’ league-high mark of $77.8 million.

The same holds true in the NFL where the Patriots surpassed the season’s co-MVP tandem of Steve McNair and Peyton Manning en route to the title. This despite cutting their most recognizable defensive player before the season (because of attitude problems), a complete lack of a running back and a starting quarterback who was taken with the 199th selection of the NFL draft.

In Major League Baseball the lesson again holds when the Marlins, who were mentioned in contraction talks just a year earlier, beat the best team money could buy in the New York Yankees. Just a quick glance around the league and you can see the ever-increasing subscribers to the Moneyball theory. Of course in the salary-cap-less world of baseball, the Yankees and other big market teams still have an inherent advantage. But the Marlins proved that chemistry still counts for a lot, just as the Yankees of ’96 and ’98 did, and the A’s do by winning the AL West with a ridiculously low payroll every season.

But despite all of these lessons, including a significant one learned by the Lakers last season, teams are still adamant about bringing in top-named superstar no matter what the cost.

Maybe NBA GMs refuse to heed these examples because individual players have a much larger impact in basketball, as was seen with Magic Johnson and Larry Bird and Michael Jordan. But how many titles has Allen Iverson won? How about Kevin Garnett? Vince Carter? Tracy McGrady? Reggie Miller? Paul Pierce? Dirk Nowitzki? Chris Webber? Wait, wait, wait, Steve Francis must have won one, after all his nickname is The Franchise.

But no, not a single championship between them. And yes, I concede that the Lakers won three titles in a row, but the finals MVP of those three series wasn’t Golden Boy Kobe Bryant, but Shaquille O’Neal.

So why the heck are teams letting Kobe Bryant, who is a credible witness away from a prison sentence, not only command top dollar on the free agent market, but get his coach fired, the coach he prefers hired, and possibly compel the Clippers to play 10-12 games at an arena closer to his house. Why are teams so desperate to land a player who chafed his teammates so badly, that Shaq demanded to be traded from a team rife with superstar talent to a rebuilding franchise in the Miami Heat?

And when all is said and done, the one who will reap the highest reward will be an alleged rapist, further proving the wisdom of sage Dark Helmet from the cinematic masterpiece Spaceballs.

“Evil will always triumph, because good is dumb.”