A Moment Of Truth About NBA Free Agency

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From The Root, of all places:

Teams and fan bases are all lathered up, especially in New York where New York magazine has taken to calling 2010 the Summer of LeBron, and both the New York Knicks and the New Jersey Nets (a team that hopes to move to Brooklyn in the near future) have based most of their personnel moves on their ability to lure free agents a year from now. The Los Angeles Clippers and Atlanta Hawks have made this summer’s free agent signings dependent on having sufficient cap room to attract James or another big-name player.

This is all a bunch of hot air, however; cornerstone players rarely change teams and even fewer move through free agency. The league salary rules encourage this kind of stability. A player’s original team can offer a player a larger total package—one more year at a maximum salary—than a new team. While standout role players such as Rashard Lewis or Hedo Turkoglu
occasionally change teams, superstars rarely do, especially not in their prime. Of the league’s 50 Greatest Players, a list compiled in 1996 to celebrate the league’s 50th anniversary, 33, or fully two-thirds of the players, played their entire career with only one team or moved late in their career when they were
past their prime (Michael Jordan’s Washington Wizards phase or Hakeem Olujawon’s Toronto Raptors season, for instance). Of the 17 players who did move, only Shaquille O’Neal’s move from the Orlando Magic to the Los Angeles Lakers and Scottie Pippen’s move from the Chicago Bulls to the Houston Rockets were facilitated by free agency.


In Washington's case, they lucked out because (1) Arenas' contract with the Warriors and (2) he wasn't as coveted as Wade, James and Bryant. And even now, it's hard to argue that Arenas is in their class. I guess the bottom line is: franchises are better off concentrating on player development than landing a big-time, big-name Free Agent.

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