On the latest Mortcast, Jeff talks about the overwhelming "filthy" amounts of money in the NBA. How this Lucre and the firing of Monty Williams prove that the NBA we used to know is gone. It's awash in money to burn.
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CSG Podcast
CSG #683: Monty Williams firing and how the NBA is awash with Lucre
At your job, do you ever have to deal with a nose roller? How about a snub pulley? Well, if you're installing a new conveyor belt system, dealing with the different components can sound like you're speaking a foreign language. Luckily, you've got a team ready to help. Granger's technical product specialists are fluent in maintenance, repair, and operations. So whenever you wanna talk shop, just reach out. Call clickgranger.com or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] What is up, everybody? Thank you all for joining me on the latest more cast part of the CSU Network. Of course, you're host, Jeff Morton. Today, I'm gonna be talking about the firing of Mottie Williams and what the sex vessels in 1996 described as Filthy Luka. How the NBA is awash in money and how maybe things are not what they seem all at all times when we talk about sports and how that affects our perception of these things. And it's going to be an interesting subject, because it's kind of nebulous. And my thoughts kind of aren't that organized, but I'll try to put it in this typical more cast order. But first, I want to talk to you about Bet Online. Bet Online is your number one source for all your sports betting needs this season from baseball, golf, soccer, right up to the fights in UFC/MMA and boxing. Every stat, every matchup, and even live odds and spreads. Well, the games are being played one-stop shop for your everything you need to do at Bet Online. And an example of that is that you can go over there and get 150 slots games. So it's not just sports betting. It's like all the other things that you would participate in gambling are there right at your fingertips at Bet Online. When the games overhead on over there are online casino and getting in on the game of Blackjack or poker or Unwind in one of their over 150 slots games. Head to the website today and get in on the action. Use promo code BLEAV all in caps for your 50% welcome bonus on your first deposit. That is promo code BLEAV all in caps for your 50% welcome bonus on your first deposit. Bet Online, the game starts here. When Money Williams was fired, first of all, I was surprised, but I wasn't surprised. Money Williams did a terrible job. And in fact, I would say that the job that Monty Williams did as a coach of the Detroit Pistons was subpar. And you could make an argument that Monty Williams coaching the last two years has been really bad. And he kind of wore out all he could probably do as someone, you know, as a coach in the 2021 or 22 Phoenix Suns run, I think I was 21. And then it was exposed when they were curved stomped by the Dallas Mavericks in 2022. Monty Williams was an okay coach. Everyone seems to like him except for Deodorating. And, you know, this is not necessarily about Monty Williams, the coach. This is about the money. And the money that was thrown at Money Williams to essentially come to Detroit. Troy Weaver is their former general manager. He is not there anymore. Trajan Langdon is. Many old heads will remember Trajan Langdon. But he was persuaded to come there with a ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous, 80 million. I think it was 80 million dollar offer or something along those lines. It was an insane amount of money for coaching for a six year deal. And he was basically, it was a, please come your deal. I think Monty Williams had no intention of coaching this last year and he said so himself. And one thing led to another. He gets this enormous offer. He ends up going to Detroit. Now, irony of ironies, despite getting paid 65 million bucks to not coach or do anything. From all the reports, it sounds like Monty Williams is actually very upset that he was fired and was looking forward to staying there in Detroit. All that aside, the massive offer that he got and the amount of money he got is very curious in a lot of different ways. Because coaching is, and particularly the salaries you pay coaches has gone up considerably. Where this doesn't reflect like in the NFL, like in the NHL and any other professional sports is it doesn't reflect on the salary cap because it's not considered part of basketball-related income. It's not split with players. So, anything that comes from the coaching pod is separate, completely separate. I don't know what a Deitch team's income and revenue is calculated differently. And I'll get to this in the second half when I talk about a certain anecdote about the players' union auditing the Denver Nuggets about 10 years ago. But there, since the coaches aren't paid in the same pie, from the same pie that players are, there is a... There's no market to correct. There's no standard. There's no max salary for a coach. It's kind of like a general manager. There's no max salary for a general manager and there's no floor. I can tell you, as a matter of fact, the Denver Nuggets were notoriously cheap when it, well, we're, and still are. They're notoriously cheap for spending on their front office. And when work and team, Chapman and Barrett were no longer part of the management picture in 2010, the Nuggets interviewed David Griffin very famously. And this is pre, this is when Woj was still at Yahoo. And right after David Griffin was interviewed by the Nuggets, he went directly to Woj and complained about the offer that he got from the Nuggets. It was very low. In fact, it was historically low. I don't think anyone has ever been offered anything that close to something that, as low as David Griffin was offered at that time. And therefore, McSaw you jury was not making that much money by the time he left Denver in 2013. The Nuggets just were not paying that. But anyway, that has nothing to do with this. When we talk about coaches and we talk about what the money that's thrown around, it really flies in the face of all this, of all the, you know, if an owner will plead property, very, very, very, very specifically, if a Tom Gore's who owns the Detroit Pistons later ends up complaining about money, you can go back to this and say, listen, man, you just gave money in Williams $80 million or six years in order to coach your team and then you fired him with five years left on your deal, on his deal. And you owed him 65 million bucks and you let it on fire. You lit that on fire. And that sort of thing is something that I think we need to start really internalizing as just sports fans in general. Because we have a tendency as fans to look at the lens of sports through our own lives. When that really, not only is that not fair to us, but it's not fair to sports. Well, my friend Scott Hastings has said over and over and over again, sports is not real life. What you're seeing there is not any, in any way a reflection of anything else in society, sports is different and we can't make it the same. We say that we, there are people who always say, well, you're playing a kid's game, blah, blah, blah. And at an elite level, elite level, you cannot play the game the way these guys hand. Nor will you bring the attention that these people will. Nor will you do any of the things that make stars and elite NBA players what they are. So when we look at these sports from the angle of people who just live every day lives, it's hard to comprehend getting 65 million bucks to sit at home. Essentially, like I said, lighting your thing on fire. The contract you signed with Money Williams is like, here are 65 million bucks go away. It's amazing and it is fascinating to watch and see how people kind of don't overreact to coaches being fired like that. And for some reason, a player getting a certain amount of money people rail against. It is fascinating to look at and the way we look at money and the way we approach money. We all know on a just base level how different sports are and how different you can't compare your own life to it. Everyone knows this. Even people who make those comparisons online, you cannot compare your life to their lives. The circumstances are different. A lot of these players retire before they're the age of 40. And think about that. Being retired before you turn 40. It is no other profession when you'd be doing that sort of thing. You can't take what happens in your life and apply it to anything else. And then you see what happens with Money Williams. On the merits, Money Williams probably deserved to be fired. He was a terrible coach last year, terrible. And has been for probably about three years now. But that is not the point. And when it comes to taking a match and just throwing it in on a pile of money, it kind of reframes the context here. Now, Tim Connolly left Denver for four years, $8 million per year, it was $40 million, it was five years. The nuggets didn't come close to the same offer. Now, there was some dispute about the cold equity thing as famously what people remember. That didn't come to transpire. And from what I've been able to determine, most people understand that that thing was an idea that was floated and was discarded pretty early due to Taylor basically in saying that no. And owners would not approve that sort of thing because they don't want to set the precedent that you'll be able to co-own a team with them. It is something that is, they like the accountability to lay with the front office and not have to be spread amongst ownership. It's a very hairy kind of thing and it would be hard to fire someone who has equity. It's a long thing. But anyway, Tim Connolly left for $8 million a year. Nuggets didn't even come close to that in their counter. And you look at this sort of thing and you think, okay, he left for that much. But that's the market. And it's a market set from a different pie that is what the players are getting given. And then you think about how easily these things come to pass and how frequently front office people are fired. And you think about how much the salaries have risen for front office people and coaches. And then you start to wonder, at least I do, hmm, the NBA is a wash and money. There are very few poor owners in the NBA. I believe the bus family is among the last of the really poor ownership. Family owned. Dr. Bus never really had the kind of capital in order to run a team but made it, right? But you won't find many Pat Bollens in the NBA. You won't find any more Pat Bollens in the NFL. It is a wash and filthy liquor. It is just silly, monopoly money. And it should make you think about the way you talk about the NBA and the way we all talk about the NBA. And then maybe for all involved, there shouldn't be any woe is me going on. They were able to light 65, the Detroit Pistons of all teams was able to light $65 million on fire because their owner is filthy rich. And that should make you think about that. All right, in the second half of the podcast, I'm going to be talking about our own owners, give a little history of the Denver Nuggets, and how that kind of things sort of changed about 2016. And we'll be getting to that right after the break. 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The Denver Nuggets were-- there was a report that came out of Forget Who wrote it about the Nuggets being looked into by the players' union about, well, I don't know, 2015, 2016. I don't know what came of that. But there was a provision in the CBAs that your unions were able-- the union specifically was able to select few teams and audit them if they suspected them of not being truthful about BRI, or what they-- their revenue and reporting it and stuff like that, which affects the oscillating 39% to 51% of the BRI that you get if you're in a part of the players' union. So this thing happened, and it was reported on, and then nothing further publicly came of that. But the Denver Nuggets have always been one of those teams that skirted on the edge of profitability based on the overall team success. The Denver Nuggets of 2024 bear no relationship to the Nuggets even 2013. The Nuggets-- this Nuggets team and where they are, who they are, due to Nicole Yocch, who should get-- I mean, there should be, forget, in front of ball arena-- you know, Nicole Yocch should get a statue in front of the Cronkey residents in Texas or California due to what he has done specifically for the Denver Nuggets, which has raised the profitability and the team valuation of the Denver Nuggets infinitely larger than it was before. The Nuggets are not where they were because of Nicole Yocch. Nicole Yocch is the Denver Nuggets and their financial prospects and well-being. That's the power of stars in the NBA. You know, the Nuggets' ownership history has always been terrible going back to their inception. Bill rings me who first owned the team and named him the Nuggets after his trucking company, the Rocket-- the Rocket-- Rocket Lines, I think, is what it was called. And then, you know, going through a series of owners and then having to be bought by a consortium of Carl Scheer's friends, basically, in 1974. And they were always on the verge of some sort of bankruptcy until Red McCombs bought them in 1982. McCombs ran them for three years after owning the Spurs, sold them again to his friend Sidney Schlenker. Sidney Schlenker bought them in '85. And in '85, Schlenker was like, yeah. Just what I'm going to do is make improvements to McNichols Arena and then sell the team. Then he sold them and everyone knows about the Bynum and Lee and Comset ownership of the Denver Nuggets. And then, they were sold by Ascent, which was the divested portion of the Nuggets' avalanche and then Pepsi Center that was divested. And then put-- that portion was sold to Stan Cronke in 2000 for like 400-something million. And combined, I believe, the avalanche and the Nuggets and ballerina are your several billions now in worth between the three of the properties. But it's silly money. It's ridiculous money. And Stan Cronke is the first billionaire to own the Denver Nuggets. Comset was a multi-million dollar corporation that specialized in satellite media for hotels specifically. But they were not wealthy wealthy. And that played out over the years. And when certain decisions were not able to be made because they were not wealthy. The Knights have been owned by an extremely wealthy man since 2000. We're going on 25 years now of ownership of the Denver Nuggets by Stan Cronke. And so you look at the financial landscape of these things. And then it makes you wonder, particularly after the money Williams firing, why they have tended to be so cheap on the front office and the coaching end. Michael Malone's salary is still not known publicly. And he wasn't given a tremendously long extension when he extended. And it's still not known. Owners don't like having the other ends of their business related to their teams exposed. They do not. It brings up hairy subjects. It calls into question other decisions they've made. Owners don't like that. They don't like that sort of thing facing scrutiny. And what the firing of Monty Williams does in owing him $65 million for doing nothing is what it brings up is, OK, what's the rest of your financial landscape look like? And how will this reflect any sort of reflection on when there's a big CDA negotiation? You know, NBA owners just kind of step in it a lot. They kind of leave themselves. And I would say not even the just NBA owners, NFL owners do this all the time. Arrogance, that's the arrogance of money. And the money that has gone around with things that are not related to the on court things is fascinating. And it's one that I do think-- I mean, what I've been trying to do on this podcast, specifically with me talking about business related stuff over the years, is trying to get people to understand that the business side of the league's matter. And now it's hard to pay attention to. And it's hard to really consider it to be important because it's not something that affects what you see with all play on the court, OK? Sometimes it does. And you'll be seeing this with the Minnesota Timberwolves this next year is that as this ownership chaos keeps getting worse, it'll directly reflect the on court product because we saw this in Denver in 1997 to 2000 when the Nuggets had like four different owners. Then this sort of product and the way things are in businesses are conducted can't help but be reflected in other aspects of an owner's business. And this is why I always tell you guys to pay attention to these things. Business matters. The Monty Williams firing is more of a symptom of how good the NBA is right now and how many-- and how many people-- how many wealthy owners are part of the league. And I think if you think about this back in even the '70s, there was a lot of local old businessman-owned team kind of thing. And the NBA had to spend years and years and years and years basically cycling out owners who could not afford to own teams. And now it's a different situation. It's a different scenario. You have a Golden State Warriors team that lived-- has lived in the second apron of the tax for years and years and has probably propped up a bunch of small market teams by themselves due to the money that they've had to put into the revenue sharing due to paying the tax. And that sort of thing would not have been conceivable even back in the '90s when Jordan, when he arguably-- the late '90s was the peak of the NBA when that they're absolute apex. And none of that would have ever been conceivable. Economics has changed so much since then. And you look at Monty Williams, and then you also look at Adrian Griffin being fired less than two months, two, three months, into his tenure as Bucks Coach. And then Doc Rivers is hired for a boatload of money. He reset the market too. That's a lot of money, folks. And it was given without much thought, you know? We aren't in a completely different era of the NBA. And it's going to get even more cartoonishly exaggerated when expansion happens, because the expansion fees that the NBA will be getting will be incredible, incredible. And that is money that the league does not have to split with the players. Any expansion fee is not split with the players that goes directly to the owners. It is going to be insane. The NBA is not the same place that it was even during the last years of the Stern era, where the league forced the players into a lockout, and they forced the players to give up 6.5 to 8.5 percentage points of their BRI. And massive transfer of wealth happened in 2011 when that lockout went on. So this is a different league. This is a league despite the ratings problems, but despite ESPN's problems, this is a league awash into money and filthy liquor. And I am fascinated at how this just doesn't get any sort of look at or any sort of like side-eye view. It's baked in, and it's considered to be ridiculously good that the league is just full of billionaires who throw money on the ground and light it on fire, because they didn't like money Williams coaching or Adrian Griffiths. I'm not against money, I'm not anything like that. Hell, I wish I made money. This is about how the NBA, the league, is in a completely different place. It's become a clown car of money. And we kind of don't even think about it. We don't even bat an eye. When the owner of the Pistons has the financial wherewithal to not to fire a coach with $65 million left on his contract, we got to sit up and take notice. And we got to notice this because this league ain't the same as it used to be. I mean, famously, Stan Cronkey refuses to fire a coach unless he has one year left on his deal. He hates-- he hates paying coaches not to coach. And that was something that probably will never happen with a Denver non-nuts. But as long as Stan Cronkey's the owner. But I'm sure all their owners are taking a look at what Tom Gore's did with the Pistons. And they're like, what are you doing, dude? We don't want people to know this. We don't want people to be thinking, oh, this guy's a billionaire. He can just do this if he wants to do it. That's amazing. Same thing with Matt Ishby. But he's a no other kettle of fish, as the British would say. All right, well, thank you all for this kind of rumination on the NBA and the money involved. And I hope you all enjoyed it. All right, thank you all for joining me on the latest more casting. We're going to be back on Monday with another episode. Goodbye. 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On the latest Mortcast, Jeff talks about the overwhelming "filthy" amounts of money in the NBA. How this Lucre and the firing of Monty Williams prove that the NBA we used to know is gone. It's awash in money to burn.