August 31, 2010 12:00:00 am

LeBron’s unexpected impact on collective bargaining

By Eric Kidd

Parity, stability, and equality. These are the major reasons why three of the four largest professional sports leagues – with the notable exception of the MLB – have negotiated a salary cap into the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the league and the player’s union.

The NBA is going through an unprecedented level of player movement. Amare Stoudamire signed a six-year, $100 million contract with the Knicks earlier this summer, and LeBron James and Chris Bosch both left the teams that drafted them (Cleveland and Toronto, respectively) to join fellow superstar Dwayne Wade in Miami.

While superstars’ moving to new teams during free agency is nothing new in sports, it is a relatively new phenomenon in the NBA, where no free agent in his “athletic prime” has moved since Grant Hill and Tracy McGrady joined the Orlando Magic in 2000. Before that it was Shaquille O’Neal leaving the Magic for the Los Angeles Lakers in 1996.

The NBA has been unbelievably successful in using financial incentives, such as longer contracts and bigger raises, to keep superstars like Allen Iverson and Reggie Miller with their current teams throughout their prime.

But, like all things, change is inevitable.

The Denver Nuggets’ mercurial star Carmelo Anthony has bristled at the maximum contract extension of $65 million over three years on the table, and recently requested a trade. The Nuggets, unwilling to lose Anthony to free agency, seem likely to make a move that would involve Anthony signing his extension, then being traded for young players and draft picks.

Anthony’s agent, Leon Rose, and Rose’s childhood friend, William Wesley, aka Worldwide Wes, have turned the NBA on its ear this summer. They are also agents/consultants to Stoudamire, James, Wade and Chris Paul, and they’ve made it certain that the players are the ones in control of the NBA.

NBA owners, a group composed of multi-millionaires and even billionaires, won’t take kindly to the inmates running their asylum, and they’ll need to include tools like the NFL’s franchise tag or heavy financial burdens to ensure that it doesn’t spiral out of control.