SACRAMENTO – In less than 300 days, baseball’s collective bargaining agreement expires. As major league owners meet this week to strategize, the powers that be will consider a possible push for a salary cap. Argument in favor: If teams are limited in how much they can pay players — that is, if the Dodgers can spend whatever they want — fans in smaller markets may believe their team can win.
Tell that to Sacramento’s biggest fans.
The Kings have the worst record in the NBA. In a league with a key salary, and where most of the teams enter the finals, Amakhosi have played qualifying matches once in 20 years.
Whatever this is, it is not equality.
I wanted to ask the Kings how much a salary increase helps a small market team given the difficulties they are facing. The Kings have declined to discuss anything related to salary, because they own the Sacramento minor league short-lived Athletics. Kings owner Vivek Ranadivé would like MLB to consider Sacramento as an expansion team.
So before last week’s game, I asked Kings fans about the merger: Why can’t the Kings win a league with a salary cap designed to help them win?
“I don’t think it’s a salary issue,” said Cheyenne Merced of Sacramento. “I think it’s the owner’s problem.”
Said one fan, Devin Pasua of Sacramento: “The Kings don’t know how to spend money.”
In Sacramento, the city’s stadium and surrounding entertainment district are fun and energetic without fans being frustrated by the sound and light assault, and the purple beam that goes up into the sky when the Kings win is a nice hometown touch.
Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadivé before the 2024 game against the Philadelphia 76ers in Sacramento.
(José Luis Villegas/Associated Press)
That beat the other way: The Kings almost left town, first to Anaheim and then to Seattle, before Ranadivé bought the team in 2013.
“I’m glad I did to keep the team in Sacramento,” said Kings fan Colin Hutchison of Woodland. “The stadium is beautiful. I like to go to the games to get a chance to see the beam. Good food options. Good time.
“I think sports fans just want to have fun and want to see competitive games. The Kings are doing one thing right. They are not doing the other thing right.”
In the 20 years it has played one playoff game, Amakhosi still has ten coaches, and three temporary coaches. None of these head coaches lasted more than three seasons.
Eric Musselman, Sacramento’s first coach in that tournament, lasted one season. He is now the head coach at USC.
“In the NBA, there’s a salary cap and, for the most part, the same teams win every year,” he said.
Does that mean Oklahoma City, last season’s champion and the team with the best record this season, is a small-market team that warrants the NBA’s salary cap?
“Oklahoma City doesn’t win because they have a salary cap,” Musselman said. “Salary cap or cap, Oklahoma City will win as long as Sam Presti is around.”
Presti, Oklahoma City’s general manager, is basically the Andrew Friedman of NBA managers. Dodgers owner Mark Walter lured Friedman to Los Angeles and, now that Walter owns the Lakers, he may pursue Presti to run them.
Oklahoma City isn’t the only small-market success story in the NBA. With Gregg Popovich as head coach and RC Buford in the front office, the San Antonio Spurs won five NBA championships and made 22 consecutive playoff appearances.
“It’s not a cap,” Musselman said. “It’s having Tim Duncan and David Robinson, and having an owner and a coach and a GM that goes hand in hand.
“You have to find the right coach and get along with the coach and roll with him.”
In 13 seasons under Ranadivé, Amakhosi have had six head coaches and five managers.
“They have no one to blame but themselves for their vanity,” said Grant Napear, the television voice of the Kings for 32 years and now a sports talk show host in Sacramento.
Napear cited the same statistics the commissioner’s office now likes to cite: the last small-market team to win the World Series was the Kansas City Royals, 11 years ago. In baseball, he believes, a salary cap would be a good thing, given the income gap between teams.
“Can you really have a game where two-thirds of your teams have no chance of winning?” he said. “Is that a good sports league model?”
So, in the NBA model, why do the Kings seem to have no chance of winning?
“The salary cap gives a team like Oklahoma City and Indiana an opportunity to do the same thing as a franchise like the Lakers and Knicks,” said Napear, “if you have smart management, if you write well, and if you do good jobs.
“The Kings play by the same rules, for all intents and purposes, as big market teams, they’ve been mismanaged, they’ve made a lot of horrible drafts and horrible trades, that’s why they’re where they are: they’re always firing coaches, they’re shutting down their general managers.
“They have an owner who has been here for a long time and is not doing anything right.”
As an owner, it’s not hard to do the right thing: hire the best people you can, support them as much as they need, and get out of their way.
MLB owners can consider ways to reduce the revenue gap without the salary cap. However, if MLB gets the salary cap — and there’s no indication the players’ union is interested in discussing it, let alone agreeing to it — then the commissioner’s office will say it’s leveled the playing field.
Neither team is guaranteed to win, but neither team can point the finger at the Dodgers. If player pay is roughly the same for all teams, success will depend more on the wisdom of ownership and management.
But that kind of creativity isn’t evident among every team in the NBA, and certainly not among every team in the MLB. Can Rickey Branch come back to life to manage the Pittsburgh Pirates, with autonomy and resources from ownership?
If you’re a fan of a small-market baseball team, and you hear your owner say that your team could win if only MLB had a salary cap, our friends in Sacramento can give you a three-letter answer: LOL.
