Derek Fisher's Trade Shows the High Price of Unproductive Leadership

A former boss of mine likes to say that the easiest thing in the world to do is someone else’s job. In contention for that title, though, is spending someone else’s money. Plaschke determined that Fisher, the head of the NBA players union and a five-time champion with the Lakers, is too smart, too clutch and too selfless to quantify with such trifling commodities as the $3.4 million or so that the Lakers pocketed. “The money dump is obvious,” Plaschke wrote. “It’s the same thing that Jim Buss did to Lamar Odom. For the first time ever, the Lakers are clearly being guided by economics, one of the greatest franchises in sports suddenly reduced to tripping over relative pennies.”

Later in the week, an interview with Buss, the Lakers’ executive VP of player personnel, illustrated just how that seven-figure spare change gets magnified under the league’s new collective bargaining agreement. Some of these figures, in fact, are wild:

"The Lakers will try to parse down their hefty payroll of approximately $85 million for this season, which is well above the $70.1 million luxury tax level. While they will owe a dollar-for-dollar penalty to the league office at the end of this season of approximately $15 million, it will be much harsher in two seasons when all the terms of the new CBA kick in. For teams $0-$5 million more than the luxury tax, there will be a $1.50 per dollar penalty; $5 million-$10 million over is $1.75; $10 million-$15 million is $2.50; and $15 million-$20 million is $3.25. If a team finds itself above the luxury tax four years out of any five-year period, it will owe a repeater tax which would apply an extra dollar to every increment (i.e. if a team was $0-$5 million over, it would have to pay $2.50 instead of $1.50 per every dollar above the line). … The Lakers also will be affected by the new revenue-sharing model the NBA has adopted. Buss estimated the Lakers, who used to dole out approximately $4 million-$6 million a season in revenue sharing, now will owe anywhere from $50 million-$80 million in revenue sharing each season."

Not to say that Fisher was going to make it another couple of years, necessarily. But the Lakers are clearly thinking more about those relative pennies than in years past, if Buss is honestly looking ahead to sharing the equivalent of a lesser franchise’s entire payroll and forking over the equivalent of yet another just in luxury taxes and overages. Maybe it is humbling for the Lakers brass to have to regard their five-time champions with all the suspendered suspicion as the Bobs. Six points, three assists, a couple of boards a game … Derek, what would ya say you do here? But $50 million here, another $40 million there, and pretty soon you’re talking some real money.

The dude is old — 37, in fact, not far from playing against guys half his age. His new jersey number in Oklahoma City is 37, all the better to remind the Lakers, if they do play the Thunder in the playoffs, that they’re losing to an antique. Whatever he accomplishes with the Thunder is, for his career, just gravy. If he hits a big shot late, super. If Westbrook matures and pushes the Thunder past L.A., Fisher will get a dose of reflected credit. If Los Angeles out-Kobes the Thunder in May, his role will be too modest for him to catch any blame. In effect, Fisher has found a no-lose situation. It’s what leaders do.