The NBA Offseason Winner To Loser Spectrum

This 2019 NBA offseason saw the biggest player movement in recent memory.  The chaotic scramble revealed NBA players, front offices and sports writers’ worst and best impulses.  In this series we’ll place those moves on the spectrum.  One on the spectrum is the biggest loser and 10 is the highest degree winner of the summer

Jordan is often overlooked on the list of the worst NBA team owners and he’s easily in the same tier with the Suns’ Robert Sarver and the Knicks’ James Dolan.  As a player, Jordan was an outspoken griper/advocate for his fellow players to take a higher percentage of NBA team’s revenue.  A little over a decade later he led the league’s most “hard-line” team owners arguing to limit the percentage of revenue players can earn.  All without a hint of self-awareness or irony.  Planetfomo.com has no pity for the fact that the whole generation of post-2000 born youngsters know Jordan not for being a Chicago Bull and greatest basketball player ever, but for the crying Jordan meme they see everyday on the ‘gram.

For eight seasons Kemba Walker was Charlotte’s one shining prince.  He was the only person in the whole franchise from top to bottom performing above basic competence and the only thing keeping the Hornets remotely relevant.  Not only was he a great locker room leader, but consistently a top 15 player in the NBA.     

Ironically, because of Jordan’s mismanagement, out of all 30 teams in the league Jordan’s Hornets could have benefitted the most from a higher salary cap allowing them a higher budget for player salaries.  For the entirety of Kemba’s eight-year tenure with the Hornets, Jordan knew Kemba would become an unrestricted free agent this offseason. 

Despite this easily foreseeable situation tortoise-ing closer on the long-term calendar, Jordan approved the habitual collecting of awfully large, untradeable and undeserving contracts for scrub players.  Guys like Cody Zeller making $14 million and Bismack Biyombo are still making $17 million per year thanks to Jordan.  He clogged the team’s cap space with so many stinkers, there was no possible route for him to offer Kemba a max contract deserving of a franchise star.  Instead of negotiating with a novice plumber to help clean up the mess, Kemba decided to just buy a new house in Boston, where he’ll play for the anti-Jordan named Danny Ainge.  A dude so stingy he’d trade his sick mother to Russia without warning before giving her a penny more than her market rate.

So, Jordan did not prepare enough cap space to offer a decent contract to Kemba this offseason was terrible foresight.  Even worse foresight was that Jordan easily could have traded him last season so Charlotte wouldn’t lose such a valuable player for nothing.  Seems like such a successful businessman like Jordan would better understand how to handle assets.        

Predictably, Jordan responded to Kemba’s move by panicking and making a historically bad contract offer.  A backup “point guard” named Terry Rozier with a bad attitude and bad passing skills will now make $58,000,000 over three years to play for the Hornets.  Scary Terry, who averaged nine points a game last season, has a scary contract, making for a scary future in Charlotte.    

Jordan the intern plumber will keep on plumbing and his Hornets will keep on losing to the dismay of a North Carolina fan base that will keep on crying.