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This reminds me of something I read a few years ago about how the Philadelphia 76ers were using contracts to essentially sell their players extremely expensive insurance.
IIRC, players in the NBA get an automatic 4 year rookie contract whose terms are dictated by their order in the draft. When the contract is up they become a free agent. At that time, if the player has become an established starter, he will earn a massive payday. But if not, he will get at best a marginal contract or maybe even get bounced from the league.
The 76ers leveraged this uncertainty by offering guaranteed extensions far before the expiration of the rookie contract. The offer would be much less than the expected value of the contract, in effect charging the player a huge premium to remove the uncertainty of becoming injured or playing poorly. While theoretically a win/win, the rules of the league prohibited other teams from making similar offers, so the 76ers had a defacto monopoly on this type of insurance. And naturally the 76ers could, in theory, tank a player's value by refusing to give him playtime or a role in the offense. So, for a player, it would take a lot of guts to bet on yourself instead of taking a much lower guaranteed payday.
Indeed, and it more or less worked with the Embiid contract and more or less backfired with the Simmons contract.
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Baseball teams have started doing this as well. Sure guys go from career earnings of say 400m to 150m but after the first 50m does it really matter?
With how tax brackets work, I wouldn't be surprised if the "low" earners in these sports might actually have more expected value from a longer insured contract than a shorter uninsured one. $1m/year for four years is easily better than $4m for 1 year if you think that is the only contract you'll ever get.
I almost wonder if teams and players would be better off negotiating pension style deals rather than big single year payouts. I guess the rules on how many "players" you are allowed to pay probably prevent something like that. But I don't know why teams can't offer something like "team ambassador" or nonsense coaching positions for retired players.
A lot relates to the CBA’s signed. With that said, famously Bobby Bonilla I think is still paid by the Mets. Likewise, Ken Griffey Junior is I believe the third or fourth highest paid player on the Reds and he hasn’t played in about what seven years?
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