The Bratwurst - Milwaukee Bucks Blog

ESPN.com’s Chad Ford is reporting that the Golden State Warriors are trying to get the Bucks to part with Yi Jianlian, and he suggests that a proposed trade might have Brandan Wright and the #14 pick heading to Milwaukee. Apparently, the Warriors made the Jason Richardson-Brandan Wright trade in the first place because they wanted Yi and thought he would still be there at #8.

Note that Ford doesn’t say that is a proposed trade so this is all 1000% speculation, but if G-State was to make an offer, that is pretty much what it would have to be. Technically the Warriors only have five guys under contract right now (not counting Baron Davis who is unlikely to opt out of his contract, and they also hold an option on Andris Biedrins) so Yi-for-Wright is about the only logical trade.

If this trade is offered, from the perspective of wanting a better basketball team in Milwaukee, do I take it? Absolutely yes.

From the perspective of wanting the Bucks to be in Milwaukee a few years from now, do I take it? No way. Not for at least another year.

I’ve pretty much soured on Yi as a player. I’m convinced that he’s at least 24 years old, so he’s not going to get much better. His rebounding ability — while actually better than I feared — doesn’t really scare anyone. He couldn’t guard physical power forwards, leaving that job to Bogut. He couldn’t get his shot off in traffic. He’s got that beautiful jumper, but any defense will let the best shooter in the world take all the 20 footers he wants because he still won’t make more than 45% of them. And forget about Yi eventually becoming a 3-point threat, he shot about 20% from the shorter international 3-point line his last year in China. Also, forget about moving him to small forward — when I think about how players will fare as NBA small forwards I picture them trying to guard LeBron James. Would they just get made to look bad or would they get comically embarrassed? Just think about Yi guarding James for a second.

Meanwhile, Brandan Wright didn’t play very much last season, and as a thin seven-footer with a “toughness” question mark he brings many of the same issues as Yi but without the deadly jumper. However, he posted a better IPM and Defensive IPM than Yi while playing for a team that was fighting for the playoffs all 82 games. Plus there is no doubt about Wright’s age — he’s 21. Wright might be a better player now and is almost certain to be better a few years from now. Not to mention, this draft is pretty deep and having two top-14 picks would be a nice coup.

But then there’s the money question.

After seeing what is going on with the whole Seattle-Oklahoma City debacle, I really worry about the long term viability of the Bucks in Milwaukee. Obviously David Stern doesn’t care about teams moving on their owners’ whim. But instead he looks the other way while the Grizzlies head off to flounder in Memphis, the Bobcats bomb so badly in Charlotte that the owner calls the local newspaper to bitch about local corporations not buying enough boxes, and the Hornets’ move to New Orleans was such a disaster that George Shinn forced the city into a lease that has an attendance-based escape clause two years in. You’d think that since the league hasn’t had a successful move or expansion in a decade Stern would want his teams to stay put, but instead he has been a steady proponent of the Sonics move, despite the fact that it has become crystal clear that the Clay Bennett-faction was negotiating in bad faith (I don’t know if Bennett’s actions make me proud or disgusted to be a CHK shareholder. I guess proud, since I started buying the stock at $3).

In a very insightful post at BlogMaverick, Mark Cuban wrote about why the NFL owners would have opted out of their collective bargaining agreement (he “no longer writes about the business of the NBA” on the blog, but it is easy to see the parallels in his post). His thesis was that the economics of the salary cap — where a huge chunk of revenue comes from the national TV deal, but the big-market teams have an unfair advantage in pursuing local revenue — are squeezing the small market teams to the point where they can no longer compete. Basically, the big market teams can sign lucrative local TV deals, start their own reigonal sports network and — most importantly — finance ridiculous new stadiums. Cuban is talking about the Cowboys’ and Giants/Jets’ new stadium in particular, but it’s pretty clear that the $500 million the Nets have raised for their Brooklyn stadium plays a part in his thinking too.

What happens is that the salary cap keeps going up because these big market teams can expand their local revenues so much that they significantly raise the leagues’ average revenues without the small market teams actually seeing any of that gain. Then the salary cap goes up, and since the cap is supposedly in place to make the small-market teams competetive, they are forced to keep spending up to the cap despite the fact that their costs are going up faster than their revenues. If they didn’t fill their cap then the fans and media would call the owners cheap and attendance would drop.

It all means that eventually the salary cap grows to the point that the small-market teams cannot realistically pay their salaries without running a deficit. Which means there can only be two types of small-market owners — those like Herb Kohl (who have seen their initial investment in the team grow so much that they don’t mind running an annual deficit) and those like Clay Bennett (who know darn well they are going to lose money, but want to own a team simply so they can say they brought professional sports to their backyard).

The problem, as I see it, is that no matter how hard Herb Kohl looks, he might not be able to find another buyer who isn’t like Clay Bennett. And David Stern — who was just recently putting Milwaukee on notice that we had better pony up for a new stadium within five years, or else — has made it clear that he is fine with that.

Which gets us back to the idea of trading Yi. Basically, as the league is currently structured, in order for Kohl to be able to retire and sell the team without all of us sweating them moving they will have to make more money. It will be much easier if this team has positive cash flows. It will be infinitely easier if the brand name Milwaukee Bucks has some international cachet.

I don’t have any insight into the teams’ finances, but I can’t imagine they are making money. I have very good seats at the BC and I don’t pay anywhere close to face value — it would cost me over three times what I pay to get the same seats at the United Center. I have Brewers tickets too, and let me tell you — dealing with the Bucks and Brewers’ reps is like night and day. The Bucks ticket office will bend over backwards to help you out, while the Brewers guys will kind of shrug their shoulders and tell you whether or not what you want to do works for them. It really seems like the Bucks need my money much more than the Brewers do.

Just doing the math, it doesn’t add up. The Bucks make around $30 mil/year from the national media deal. They drew about 600,000 fans last season, and if their profit is $30/ticket, then that is an additional $19 million. That covers their two major sources of revenue, but they paid $62 million in salaries last season. According to Herb Kohl’s personal financial statements, the Bucks’ gross revenue was $79.5 mil. Is that enough to get into the black for the season? Maybe, but it’s close. These numbers don’t take into account any expenses, and that is after Yi arrived this season.

Maybe they could make money — but only because of Yi. Kohl has said that they have taken operating losses in the past few years, and no matter what there is no way the Bucks made more than a couple of million last season.

The Chinese-language advertising makes a difference. Over time, selling a million officially-licensed Bucks jerseys in China might bring back $10 million in royalties (of course, they won’t get paid for probably fifty million unlicensed ones). At the very least, Yi’s effect on the bottom line helps close the revenue gap that simply must exist for the Bucks. The team has to milk that for all it is worth, and if it means passing on a decent prospect and a mid draft pick, that’s fine. John Hammond has to be creative to fix this team, and if keeping Yi is part of the package, then so be it. Just find another way.

But there is one caveat about this — the Chinese aren’t stupid. If Yi doesn’t turn into a good player soon then any interest in him is going to disappear as quickly as it started. His fans don’t want to cheer for him simply because he is in the NBA — they want to cheer for him because he is good. If Yi doesn’t pan out in the next year or two — and maybe even simply if he looks lousy at the Olympics this summer — then his fans are going to be gone, on to the next big-time prospect. There’s always going to be someone else to root for.

Hideki Matsui may still have 50 Japanese journalists following him everywhere he goes, but don’t forget that Kaz Matsui came to New York with almost the same amount of hype. And once Kaz didn’t become a star, he was forgotten.

So my guess is that the whole “Yi as a marketing tool” thing has one more year left unless he really busts out this season. I want to keep him around until the money well runs dry.

The Bucks need him too much to trade him now. As Bucks fans, we need him here for the financial health of the franchise. Hopefully he can hold up his end of the bargain on the court.