Well, I have a special treat for you today. Doubtful most of you heard about Grizzlies Owner Michael Heisley's interview on The Chris Vernon Show earlier this week. If you did, then you can ignore the rest of this post. If not... this will be the best post in the short history of In Your Eye NBA I promise you that. You don't have to care one iota about the Grizzlies or the players involved in the discussion to find this story incredible.
First some quick background information...
Heisley bought the Grizzlies in 2000, moved them to Memphis in 2001 and the team has been to the playoff three times in the last ten years. He's resided over every personnel decision, draft and front office hiring. He approved the Pau Gasol trade and pulled the trigger on the Hasheem Thabeet draft in 2009, but also hired Jerry West as GM in the beginning of the decade and this past summer forked over $84 million to Rudy Gay when it was widely believed the restricted free agent would sign elsewhere.
The current issue with the Grizzlies and Heisley is the negotiations with former Kansas Jayhawk Xavier Henry, drafted 12th overall this past June, and former Maryland Terrapin Greivis Vasquez, drafted 28th overall. The first year salary figure for the 12th pick in this year's draft was $1.6835 million. Under the current CBA team's are allowed to negotiate down to 80% of that figure and up to 120% of that figure. In addition to the team and the player, the agent also plays a vital role in this since agents do not get a commission on non-negotiated salaries. In other words, if a player is drafted and signed 80-100% of his scale figure, that player's agent will not get paid on that deal. As you can imagine, most teams just 'negotiate' the salary to 120% of the scale figure because that improves relations with the agents in the league, and the player is happy they got the max offer allowed. In essense, everybody wins at the 120% figure. Everybody that is... except Michael Heisley.
Every first round draft pick in the 2010 draft has been signed this season except for Xavier Henry and Greivis Vasquez. The reason is that Heisley has included performance metrics into each of their contracts, rather than just rubber stamping the 120% figure for both.
In his interview with Chris Vernon on 730 Fox Sports Memphis, Heisley discussed the situation with Henry, the Thabeet draft, signing Allen Iverson, and even admits to never had read the Collective Bargaining Agreement. (Pulled from http://sportsradiointerviews.com/)
When asked why he is the only owner of the only team that hasn't signed its first round picks Heisley replied:
“That’s fine! I’ve got plenty of time to sign the rookies. We’re negotiating. There’s nothing going to happen for the next 30 days or 60 days. I’m sitting here, they didn’t come to summer camp, OK.”
Here's Heisley on why he would deviate from the widely accepted practice of giving every first round rookie a 120% scale contract
“I guess the good question is why doesn’t the rest of the league do it? They negotiated it. It’s part of the collective bargaining agreement. I assume it was put in there — I don’t know, I was not part of that negotiation — but normally you don’t put something like that into the wage scale thing unless you intend to have a performance criteria. Obviously other teams have chose not to use it. There have been teams that have used it. There are teams this year that are using it. But there’s absolutely no question the vast majority of teams have not used it.”
It gets better yet, when pressed to answer how he thinks trying to include performance criteria will be viewed by agents and incoming rookies in the future:
“If you do that and every time you turn around, if you run around saying ‘I’m not going to do anything because I don’t want to piss off, as you say it, piss off current players, other players and so on in this league. Let me tell you something … what we ought to do, is just, according to you, is just call up Arn [Arn Tellem, Henry's agent] and say ‘Tell me, what am I supposed to do?’”
And finally my favorite... when asked repeatedly by Vernon where the idea of including performance clauses came from in the first place, Heisley went off:
“I’ve never seen the collective bargaining agreement.” What? “I’ve never seen it?” How is that possible?: “It’s very possible. Is there anything that you haven’t seen in your life? I don’t own an NBA franchise: “Well what would you do, study the collective bargaining agreement? … I’ve got a bunch of people that work for the Grizzlies. Some of those people have been working with the collective bargaining agreement in this league for 20, 30 years. I basically pay those people.”
If you have 35 minutes to blow I HIGHLY recommend listening to the full interview which you can find here on Chris Vernon's blog. If not I hope the synopsis above has shocked and awed you as much as it did me. The arrogance - that really must be heard to be believed - with which Heisley speak is truly surreal. He refers to Vernon as 'son' multiple times even though it's clear to anyone listening that Vernon is controlling the conversation and painting Heisley into some difficult corners. The best is saved for last when Vernon offers his opinion on Heisley's tenure as owner and basically tells him 'you thought this would be fun at first, then when the team didn't win in the playoffs, you severely cut back and hired a bunch of yes-men that have ceded control of the team to you.' It's really high comedy to hear how defensive and hypocritical Heisley becomes.
The next time you find yourself thinking you can run and manage your favorite team better than the current GM or Owner... you might just be right. (Yes, I'm talking to YOU fellow Knicks fans!)
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