4 Comments

1. 

   David Aldridge on November 1, 2011 at 2:34 pm

   Hi, Jeff/Answer Guy:

   Being an attention freak, I always am curious when I see my name and/or Twitter handle referenced on the web. So I read with great interest your piece today about how I am a shill for the NBA and therefore cannot be trusted in covering the lockout.
   Your evidence of my shillery (sp?) is that my work appears on NBA.com, and as every sentinent being knows, NBA.com is an entity “which the owners control,” as you put it. And, therefore, anything that appears on it must be done with the full blessing and knowledge of said NBA. This includes the piece I wrote on Monday that proves your point. According to you.
   Like many of us, I never allow facts to get in the way of a good rant. It’s cleansing. So you are well within your rights to dismiss the following pieces of information that those in the “journalism” business (I know, right?) call “facts”:

   1) NBA.com is, in fact, not run by the NBA, or its owners. It is run by Turner Sports, the parent company of TNT Sports, which broadcasts NBA games. Turner Sports, based in Atlanta, Ga. (not New York City, where the NBA is headquartered), is my employer. They pay me my salary. (I would send you a copy of my pay stub, but you’re going to have to just trust me on this. Or, call Turner and ask them if I’m an employee. They’re in the book.) All of my bosses, and their bosses, and their bosses, work for Turner.
   The NBA has no editorial control over anything that I write. Nor do they recommend. Nor do they ask nicely. I have never spoken to anyone at the league office about anything I have written in the past three years, nor do I ask permission from them, nicely or otherwise.
   The website is called “NBA.com” because the league does provide statistical and video components as part of the package and because the league still maintains a small financial–not editorial–stake in the company. (It used to be run by the league out of Secaucus, N.J. I hope you noticed the words “used to be” in that sentence.) But the talent that writes and/or appears on the website now, whether it’s myself, Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, Reggie Miller, etc., is from Turner.

   2) Turner Sports also runs NCAA.com, NASCAR.com, and PGA.com. Really. It’s on the bottom of this website:

   http://www.ncaa.com

   And this one:

   http://www.nascar.com/

   And this one, too:

   http://www.pga.com/home/

   And, of course, NBA.com:

   http://www.nba.com/home/index.html

   We like content. And page views. Just like you. But, alas, none of those sports tells us what to write on those sites, either. It’s a business arrangement we have with each of those entities, just like we have with the NBA.

   3) I’m sure you’re quite busy answering everyone’s questions, being the Answer Guy and all, so I wanted you to see additional evidence of my shilling for the NBA on NBA.com. Here’s this piece of pro-league propaganda written just two weeks ago:

   http://on.nba.com/p7QMsw

   One of the league’s central tenets for why it imposed the lockout is to restore “competitive balance” between the teams. And here I am, right in lockstep with David Stern’s talking points:

   http://on.nba.com/szZoPW

   Speaking of the Commish (which is what I call him on NBA.com; you’d think I’d be more respectful to my overlord), when he sat down for an interview with me on NBA TV, boy, did I throw him a bunch of softballs down the middle!:

   http://bit.ly/qiFs2I

   Of course, I really brought my slavish devotion to the NBA home when I did this Q&A column a few weeks ago(http://on.nba.com/nkTLaY), which included these Qs and As:

   2. The owners’ 50-50 proposition sounds fair. Is it?

   Sometimes, 50-50 isn’t 50-50. The league swears that its 50-50 “concept” (it is against the law in New York state, one surmises, to call a proposal a proposal) came with no strings attached and was based on the “old” BRI definition of using gross revenues rather than net revenues. It’s an important distinction, because the league has been arguing for a new BRI definition that would allow it to subtract hundreds of millions of dollars off the top before splitting the rest with the players. But the union is equally adamant that the NBA never offered an “old” BRI split. Union sources say the league offered a guarantee of 49 percent of BRI, arguing that the players’ share would actually rise to 51 percent over the life of the CBA because of an expected rise in revenues. A source says part of the league’s reasoning was that Orlando’s new building, Amway Arena, and the renovation of Madison Square Garden — sorry, they like to call it “the transformation” up in Gotham — will bring in hundreds of millions of dollars of new revenues alone. (The “tranformation” is expected to be completed by 2013.)

   And the union claims that the only 50-50 discussion involved the league taking $350 million in expenses — for arenas, for the development of programs such as NBA China, and other deductions — off the top of the BRI pot. Then, the league would split the rest equally with the players. But after that $350 mil comes off, the union argued, its actual share of revenues in the proposed CBA would be 47 percent, not 50. And that would be about $400 million less per year in salaries than the players currently take home.

   If the league really did offer a genuine 50-50 split, it could argue, as many — okay, as I — have argued that you cannot be fairer. The players provide the talent and starpower; the league provides the venues and infrastructure that helps make the players into stars. But the players believe their skills should tilt the scales slightly in their favor. More to the point, they’ve already agreed to at least $160 million per year in salary givebacks, having offered to come down to a 53 percent average of BRI in the next CBA after getting 57 percent of BRI in the old one. (Remember, it’s $40-$42 million per percentage point.) If it were you, and you’d already agreed to that much in pay cuts, you wouldn’t be too keen on giving billionaire owners another $120 million on top of it, either.

   And, later, this:

   6. Which side has given the most so far?

   Clearly, the players. The concessions the owners have made are on things that were already in place in the just-expired agreement. For example, the owners initially wanted to roll back contracts they had already given to players. Now, they’ve relented, and won’t roll back any existing salaries. They wanted a hard salary cap, with no exceptions. Now, they’ve agreed to continue with a cap that is more in line with the one in the former agreement, though there may be new mechanisms to try to limit teams from spending. So, in that sense, the owners haven’t really “given” anything to the players; they’ve just agreed to continue what was the status quo. By contrast, the union has already agreed to, again, at least $160 million in salary reductions per year in the next CBA (see above). It’s agreed to place additional limits on the length of contracts to lower team payouts, and to allow teams to get rid of bad contracts through an “amnesty” program similar to the one in 2005. And it’s discussed some version of a “supertax” that would penalize teams even more than they were in the former agreement ($1 for every dollar they exceed the luxury tax threshold) for overspending.

   What a flack!

   You’ll be happy to know, AG, that there are other websites such as your dogged endeavor that have also exposed my devotion to the league’s owners who (don’t) pay my salary. Here’s a recap of an item I wrote about one of them a couple of years ago that appeared on…NBA.com:

   http://www.lipstickalley.com/f19/why-so-many-children-have-question-out-wedlock-wtf-210149/

   And check me out kissing up to the Hawks’ former ownership group in this piece…on NBA.com…about former Atlanta general manager Billy Knight:

   http://www.apbr.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2609

   And speaking of Atlanta, Hawks forward Etan Thomas–who is on the union’s negotiating committee that is negotiating with the owners to end the lockout–is on to my chicanery as a league-employed flackdoodle. Check out question 11 of his “21 Questions” column on the basketball website HoopsHype.com:

   http://blogs.hoopshype.com/blogs/thomas/category/donald-sterling/

   Here I am again covering up the Commish’s dirty laundry…on NBA.com:

   http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2011/10/1/2461525/nba-lockout-2011-power-rankings-dwyane-wade-david-stern

   Unfortunately, fellow traveller Tom Ziller, like me a fellow slave to David Stern and the owners (Google him), fails to stick to the party line when assessing my coverage:

   http://www.sbnation.com/2011/10/31/2527202/nba-lockout-2011-owners-50-percent

   Of course, none of this may sway you, as you have sussed out my bias because I list my website as http://www.nba.com–which I list because it’s, um, where my work can be found. Of course, you fail to point out that my Twitter handle–in fairly large print, I must say–is daldridgetnt@gmail.com. The “TNT” part refers to TNT Sports, which is, as mentioned above, the company for which I work and which pays me. Again, though, your conclusion that I cannot be trusted as a journalist based on a column in which I point out the players have no choice in accepting the league’s offer BECAUSE THE LEAGUE IS BEING SO STUBBORN is certainly yours to have and keep.

   I must, then, give you props for your sense of irony in calling yourself the Answer Guy…when you have no idea whatsoever of what you’re talking about.

   Cheers,

   David Aldridge

   • 

     --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant on November 1, 2011 at 3:04 pm

     David, thanks for that exhaustively thorough reply. I appreciate both your time and the delineation of facts you provided.

     [sound of other shoe dropping]

     That said, while I accpt that TNT “owns” NBA.COM, you know and I know that there’s no way on God’s green earth that such a statement is practically accurate. Simple reason: The NBA and their legally-trained commissioner Mr. Stern would never allow anyone including a broadcast partner to own an important, branded collateral asset. And let’s be honest: “NBA.COM” is such an asset. Similarly, I “own” domains that really belong to some of my clients, but at the end of the day … no, I don’t.

     OK, so now we’re at your opinion versus mine. As proof of the validity of my position, I point you at these two URLs:

     http://whois.domaintools.com/nba.com and http://www.nba.com/help/fan_relations_faq.html#fanfaq26

     The first is the ownership information for NBA.COM. It names an entity that sure does appear to be The National Basketball Association. The second is what the NBA says (albeit also at NBA.COM) is their official address. And it matches the address listed for the owner of NBA.COM. So unless TNT is operating as “NBA Media Ventures, LLC”, and at NBA Headquarters, I think we can assume that no, TNT does not own NBA.COM. I presume you were misled, rather than that you attempted to mislead me.

     Here’s where I’d like this conversation to go:

     I was not questioning your personal integrity, and I praised your skills. I not only accept but believe that you believe every word you wrote and represented your position as you saw it By my definition that makes you a journalist of the highest strata. However, had you seen things the other way around I believe the NBA would have either refused to publish your piece—or if TNT is “in control” of the NBA.COM web site, have ripped the piece down or demanded that it be removed from NBA.COM.

     In other words, my piece wasn’t about you or your position. It was about the changing face of business and journalism, and I wrote it both because I had an immediate visceral reaction, and because it was timely vis a vis the point I made about journalistic integrity and what readers of random Internet stuff can believe, also yesterday.

     You, sir, were merely the innocent bystander caught in crossfire. And I apologize for that.

     By the way, I’m reproducing the information I cited above, here, just in case someone at either the NBA or at TNT sees this and decides to revise history:

     FROM http://whois.domaintools.com/nba.com, 11-1-11:
     NBA Media Ventures, LLC
     C/O Domain Administrator
     645 Fifth Avenue .
     New York, NY 10022

     FROM http://www.nba.com/help/fan_relations_faq.html#fanfaq26, 11-1-11:
     Contacting the NBA
     26. What is the address to the NBA league office?
     The National Basketball Association
     645 Fifth Ave
     New York, NY 10022
     Attn: Fan Relations

2. 

   David Aldridge on November 1, 2011 at 4:48 pm

   Jeff/Answer Guy:

   Silly me. When someone writes

   In short, if you trusted David Aldridge before, you can’t any longer. Getting paid by the NBA to write a piece siding with the NBA is a conflict of interest for someone calling himself a journalist.

   and says there cannot be any question

   … David Aldridge is now just a shill for the NBA and its owners…

   I, for some strange reason, take that as an attack on my personal integrity.

   I gave you no fewer than seven examples in the last two years of pieces that ran on NBA.com, mostly in my weekly column, The Morning Tip, that were critical of the league or its owners. I quoted Sactown Royalty’s Tom Ziller–who is, by any stretch of the imagination, no fan of David Stern’s–who said on Monday:

   In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find a duo more willing to report criticial on the league’s stance than Aldridge and (NBA.com reporter) Steve Aschburner, no matter where their byline appears.

   You say now that you weren’t attacking my integrity and that “my piece wasn’t about you or your position.” Thank goodness, because when I see a headline that (still) reads “NBA Basketball and the Corruption of Journalism,” and I’m the only journalist mentioned, I take that kinda personal. But I accept your new position, and I accept your apology.
   Yet you continue to maintain the argument that a) the NBA has to have control over what I write and say, and b) if I had written a piece critical of the league, the NBA would have demanded it be pulled before it ran. (The story you cite as proof of this was not, by the way, a pro-league piece. It’s not like I said ‘these greedy players need to shut up and accept the beneficence of the humble, hard-working owners who have, out of the goodness of their hearts, offered the undeserving lout players a fair wage.’ The focus of the piece, again, was that the union has no choice but to accept the league’s offer, because the league was being so inflexible. But, whatever.)
   Your evidence for the league’s secret control of the website is, I guess, the fact that the domain name address for “NBA.com” is the league’s office in New York. Unfortunately, nearly everyone who edits, contributes, designs and otherwise makes the site look good works in Atlanta, at…Turner Sports, for Turner Digital. As noted before, the NBA provides certain content for the site, just as NASCAR, the PGA and the NCAA do in our agreements with them to run their websites. But the NBA has no editorial control.
   Of course, you can choose to ignore all that and stick with your position based on absolutely no information whatsoever. Your website.
   By the way, until 2005, you know who controlled 64 percent of the Oakland Raiders’ franchise? That’s right–E.W. McGah, Barbara McGah and Sherratt Reicher, who had 31 percent of the team, and other partners who controlled another 33 percent of the team. So who “owned” the Raiders? Most people would say Al Davis, who actually owned just 36 percent of the team until he bought the McGahs out in ’05.
   Sometimes, a domain address doesn’t tell you everything.

   Cheers,

   David Aldridge

   • 

     --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant on November 1, 2011 at 4:51 pm

     David, I once again appreciate the lively debate. I’m not sure I’m worth the amount of time you’re putting into me, but I’m honored. Seriously.