| International Basketball |
By Chris Ekstrand SportsTicker
Marc Cornstein is a bright, young basketball agent based in New York City who specializes in guiding promising European basketball players into the exciting, high-paying and occasionally perplexing world of the NBA.
Despite his apparent youth (he's 34, but looks younger), Cornstein must look like a veritable St. Peter welcoming the youngsters from Europe to the proverbial Pearly Gates of the NBA.
Among many other players in the NBA and in top European leagues, Cornstein's Pinnacle Management Corporation represents Slovenia's Primoz Brezec of the Charlotte Bobcats and Beno Udrih of the San Antonio Spurs, Serbia's Aleksandar Pavlovic of the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Detroit Pistons' Darko Milicic. He is also the agent for newly-minted multi-millionaire Samuel Dalembert of the Philadelphia 76ers of Haiti.
Cornstein does represent a few American players, like 2005 first-round draft pick Julius Hodge of the Denver Nuggets, but he has made his mark on the NBA by serving as a conduit between talented European players and NBA teams.
In a wide-ranging two-part interview, Cornstein discussed some aspects of the NBA's new Collective Bargaining Agreement, their possible impact on his clients and the difficulties in negotiating buyouts of European contracts for players who wish to come to the NBA.
Q: What impact do you think the new NBA rookie salary scale, with just two guaranteed years followed by two option years, will have on players?
Cornstein: I don't think it's going to change things that dramatically. There is now a (higher) age limit for entry into the draft (19 years old), which wasn't in place in the last Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), so a lot of the very young players, kids coming straight out of high school or a player like Darko (Milicic) wouldn't be able to be in the draft at that same stage.
Even if they were, hypothetically if there wasn't an age limit, I still don't think it would have much of an impact, because by the time a team would need to make a decision on that third (previously guaranteed) year, I don't know that they would have enough information to make a decision. If you are taking a Kwame Brown, would Washington have given up on him after two years? I don't think they would.
With the rookie salary scale, you are talking about salaries that are well under the NBA average. I think for what the risk/reward in retaining these players is, it won't have that much of an impact. The biggest impact it will have is if players get injured, there is one less year guaranteed. I think that's a bit of a shame.
Q: Another change in the new CBA raised the limit NBA teams can pay towards a buyout of an existing international league player's contract to $500,000 from $350,000.
Cornstein: It's something that a lot of the international agents lobbied for. I think it's important. I think it's a good change that will benefit not just the players but the teams as well. The European teams are pretty clever. They have caught on to some of the ways to maximize these assets they have and get the most value out of them when they are sold to the NBA.
What had started to happen and what I think will continue to happen with this $500,000 number is the $350,000 number was a starting point. It was an assumed number that was coming in for that team. That was the zero sum number. My guess is that to a degree that will continue to happen, just now at $500,000 as opposed to $350,000. But a $150,000 difference is a significant difference.
I still think there needs to be a lot work done on the relationship between FIBA and the NBA on international buyouts. There is a lot of gray area with these international players signed to very small, very long-term contracts, who are then held up for ransom (when they want to go to the NBA).
You have international players that are making $10,000 or $15,000 per year that are locked into contracts for six, eight, even 10 years. Teams overseas have decided that this is the way they are going to increase revenues more than by sponsorship, or ticket sales or other team revenues. They say, 'If the NBA wants this guy, we are going to hold them over a barrel.' And I don't like saying so, but you can't totally blame them. That's business.
What I went through with Darko and his former team (Hemofarm Vrsac), as much as it got at times acrimonious - and I won't say it was always the most ethical situation - from a business standpoint, I got it. Where were they ever going to see this kind of payday again? This was the goose that laid the golden egg. They were going to be as patient as they wanted and they were going to ride this out.
Every year you are seeing more and more cases of that. It's something that needs to be addressed, where FIBA teams can't just be raided by the NBA, but conversely, you can't have these kids coming to the NBA where the whole first year of their contract is basically being paid to their former team in Europe.
We have already started seeing buyout numbers get so large and so unruly that players who are drafted in the first round and this year even a lottery pick (Fran Vazquez, picked 11th by Orlando) who decide it is better to stay in Europe than to go to the NBA.
I think the assumption in the NBA has been that if we are going to draft someone in the first round, nobody would ever turn that down. People thought: 'We are the NBA: who wouldn't want to be here?' That's not necessarily the culture, the way of the world anymore. In Fran's case, just from a bottom-line standpoint, he will make more this first year in Spain (with Girona) than he would have in Orlando. You couldn't say that in the past.
Q: Have enough years passed now that word has filtered down to some of the young European players to make sure not to sign a 10-year contract that takes away all your rights for not a lot of money?
Cornstein: I think every year, players get a little more savvy, read a little more and understand a little better, just as the teams do, just as you and I do.
I think the difference is when you are 14 or 15 years old and you have nothing, you can have all the knowledge in the world, but you want to eat and you want your family to eat. It has nothing to do with ignorance: it is a case of survival. The money we are talking about that seems like nothing, $10,000 or $15,000, that might be five times what a family is making for a year. The poorer the country, the less sophisticated the country, the more you see this. And unfortunately I think it will continue.
That's why I wish FIBA would take more control of all the national federations. There should be a maximum length contract. You should not be able to hold a player for 10 years, or have some astronomical buyout. There should be some type of formula where the buyout number bears some sort of relationship to the salary. If there were a formula, the team would know, if we want to sell this player off, this is what we would get. And the player would know.
NEXT WEEK: In Part II of the Marc Cornstein interview, Cornstein addresses the recent progress of Darko Milicic, tells the story behind Primoz Brezec's breakout year in Charlotte, and discusses the future of basketball in Serbia & Montenegro.
Chris Ekstrand is a freelance writer and former editor of the NBA draft media guide. Please send questions or comments to cekstrand10@aol.com.
Used courtesy of: Sports Ticker |
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