Of all people, Celtics coach Brad Stevens may have, indirectly, crystallized a big problem facing Major League Baseball.
“The NBA,'' said Stevens during a week when speculation about the future of New Orleans forward Anthony Davis ran rampant, "is what it is because of the scuttlebutt … it captivates everybody’s attention for 12 months out of the year.''
What Stevens was saying was a variation on the old maxim: "There's no such thing as bad publicity.'' Getting media -- and by extension, fans of the game -- talking about potential player movement, possible trades and projecting where stars are going to play in the future helps drive interest in the game.
Such talk amounts to free advertising for the NBA. If fans are talking about the game, it reflects mainstream interest. They're invested in the rumors because they care.
(Some may suggest that this has been taken too far in the current NBA, with the game's highest-profile players plotting "super teams,'' like some schoolyard pickup games, but that's a discussion for another day).
The bottom line: the NBA benefits from such -- as Stevens labeled it -- "scuttlebutt.'' When the paying customers are interested enough to discuss who's going where, that's beneficial to the bottom line and the overall popularity of the industry.
Contrast that interest to what's happened in baseball this winter, which is to say: virtually nothing. And it's hard for fans to be talking about player movement that hasn't happened.
February has now arrived and two 26-year-old superstars are, so far, without teams for 2019. So, too, is the best closer in the game over the last half-dozen or so years, and a perfectly healthy 31-year-old starter who won a Cy Young Award just four years ago.
What's wrong with this picture? Well, virtually everything.
The Hot Stove League, which used to burn from November through the New Year, has been reduced to a few flickering embers. In a matter of months, we've gone from predicting who would land the first $400 million contract to wondering if either Manny Machado or Bryce Harper will be in some camp or another when pitchers and catcher starts to report to Florida and Arizona in 10 or so days.
And let's forget, for a moment, the financial parameters. No one is suggesting that players are owed record-setting contracts every winter. Eventually, Harper and Machado -- and Craig Kimbrel, Dallas Keuchel and others -- will get their many millions. No one will start any GoFundMe accounts to help them make their next mortgage payments.
But the lack of activity through the entire industry is alarming.
Consider: as Jayson Stark of The Athletic noted, 16 (or more than half) of the 30 teams had not signed a free agent to a multi-year deal. And only seven teams have signed a free agent to a deal longer than two years.
This is the second deep freeze in as many winters for baseball's free agent markets. Last year, J.D. Martinez had to wait until almost March before getting a bel0w-value deal with the Red Sox and All-Stars seemingly in their prime were similarly frozen out and had to accept one-year deals.
You can look at the slowdown one of two ways: as evidence of collusion, or, simply a new discipline on the part of owners and executives who took notice of the many disastrous deals signed in the recent past.
In all probability, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Thanks to the rise in analytics, teams have become more disciplined in their evaluation of players and less willing to commit mega-million deals with longer term.
That's smart business and probably should have been done long ago. Put another way: how different would the Red Sox bullpen look right about now if the Sox weren't still obligated to pay $30 million combined in 2019 for Pablo Sandoval to play in San Francisco or Rusney Castillo in Pawtucket (even if Castillo's salary doesn't count for luxury tax purposes)?
But the lack of interest in two stars just now entering the primes of their careers is puzzling. If Harper and Machado aren't in demand, what will happen to Nolan Arenado (two years older than Harper and Machado) next year? Or Mookie Betts after the 2020 season?
Somehow, in a business which generated $10 billion in revenues this past season, there's no money lying around for some of the best players in the game?
Without player movement, interest begins to wane. That's not the case in the NBA, which nearly managed to upstage the Super Bowl this past week as rumors swirled about Davis, the trade of Kristaps Porzingis and the comments from Kyrie Irving.
Baseball is already under criticism for failing to adequately promote its stars. Now that teams are showing disinterest in obtaining the stars themselves, those complaints are getting louder. And off in the distance, if you listen closely, you can hear the steady building drumbeat of a possible work stoppage when the current CBA expires after the 2022 season.
If you think things are bad now, imagine what it will be like if baseball's claim of almost 25 years of labor peace comes to a screeching halt soon.
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