Herb Kohl opens up about the lockout, franchise tags, competitive balance and the Milwaukee Bucks
Chris Paul is going to the Los Angeles Lakers. And then he isn’t. And then Dwight Howard is. And then Howard is going to the New Jersey (soon to be Brooklyn) Nets. And then Paul is going to the Los Angeles Clippers. And big markets across the NBA are all salivating over an all-you-can-afford buffet of small market stars.
That’s been the NBA this past week. At least that’s the scene that’s been unfolding before the eyes of the small market NBA fan.
So maybe competitive balance wasn’t achieved with one fell swoop. But, maybe it can’t work like that. Maybe it isn’t a system issue that can be solved with one lockout and a few rule changes. Maybe the impetus is on franchises to make smart decisions, over and over and accept that there is less room for error in a small market.
Maybe I should let someone more qualified to discuss the matter discuss it.
“Because your resources are not unlimited, for every dollar you spend you need to get value,” Herb Kohl said at media day Saturday. “And that depends on expertise and the value you get has to be able to get out there and play well together.”
“It is true, the day after we signed you had the situation down in New Orleans, the situation down in Orlando so you might say, well, the more things change, the more things stay the same,” Kohl said of competitive balance. “So there is an issue and a problem in the NBA that maybe baseball and football don’t share to the same extent.”
He wouldn’t accept that there was nothing the owners could do on a systematical level that could nudge the league a bit closer to that competitive balance the owners have been seeking though.






