Chewing the fat about the fattest cap chewers

Sporting News, The, August 12, 2002 by Sean Deveney

Once upon a time--and we're talking pro basketball's Stone Age here--the NBA instituted a salary cap of sorts. It was 1946, and the limit was set at $55,000.

Most of the money was evenly distributed among all players, though the Detroit Falcons' Tom King was pulling down a whopping $16,500. Of course, King also was the team's business manager, so it's not surprising he was bringing in the biggest slice of the pie, though he was a 23.7 percent shooter from the field.

It's also not surprising that with King at the helm, the Falcons finished 20-40 and folded after the season.

But King's story illustrates a proud NBA tradition. Sure, the "cap" was eliminated after that 1946-47 season, but King could be called the league's first salary-cap chewer, a title that bears special meaning nearly 56 years later. It is those cap chewers who have forced NBA front-office accountants and agents alike to ponder tossing themselves from their office windows this summer while a slew of quality players remains unsigned, and teams can't do anything about it.

Contracts are hard to come by, not because there are not enough teams with gaping holes and not because there are not enough players without jobs. No, it's because so many teams' salary caps are being chewed by oversized contracts that do not match player production.

Just about every team has at least one overpaid stiff, but let's lay ground rules for picking the worst offenders. The first rule is that the guy must be making at least $5 million per year to be a bona fide chewer of cap space. The second rule is that the player cannot have missed more than 15 games last season because of injury. These should be healthy, underachieving players, not guys with blown knees. The final rule is that production compared with pay is the deciding factor. Even good players can make the list if they have ridiculously oversized contracts.

With that, folks, the Tom King Memorial Cap Chewer's List is born.

1. Shawn Kemp, PF, Trail Blazers. Any discussion of overpaid basketball players--nay, overpaid athletes in general--must start with Kemp and those 6.1 points on 43 percent shooting he put up last year. The Blazers' tab was slightly less than $13 million for those gaudy stats. Thanks to an extension he signed in 1997 while with Cleveland, Kemp's salary bumps up to $22 million this year.

2. Juwan Howard, SF, Nuggets. For Denver, the attractive aspect of acquiring Howard from the Mavericks in a deadline deal last February was that the $20.5 million it will have to pay him this season is a one-shot deal. It's the last year of his contract, and the Nuggets will have that money available next summer.

3. Vin Baker, F/C, Celtics. Baker improved last year from his recent downward spiral, averaging 14.1 points and 6.4 rebounds for Seattle. But he is inconsistent and not even close to being worth the $12.4 million salary the Celtics will pay him this season.

4. Greg Ostertag, C, Jazz. Few players in the league are as easy to pick on as Ostertag, especially when he and Utah coach Jerry Sloan get into one of their tiffs. But Ostertag recently gave his sister one of his kidneys, so let's not pick on him now, other than to state the facts: He averaged 3.3 points last year and will make $7.8 million this season.

5. Chris Mills, SF, Warriors, and Nick Anderson, SG, Cavaliers. Officially, these guys were "injured" much of last season, and that violates Rule 2 of this list. But we know bogus injuries when we see them. The bet here is that both teams will come up with more sprained wrists, bad backs and scalp spasms designed to keep these two from using roster spots this season. They'll make $6 million each.

6. Kelvin Cato, C, Rockets. The Rockets gave Cato a $42 million contract based on how well he played during the preseason when they acquired him from the Blazers in 1999. He has done little but sit around checking his bank balance since. This will be Year 4 of the six-year deal, ringing in at $6.6 million per.

7. Damon Stoudamire, PG, Trail Blazers. Blazers coach Maurice Cheeks figured out what most NBA observers have known all along: Stoudamire is not much of a point guard. He is a short shooting guard who shot 40.2 percent from the field last season. He will be paid $13.5 million this year.

8. Penny Hardaway, SG, Suns. Maybe it's unfair to measure Hardaway against the player he once was. After all, the guy's knees have more slices than Domino's. Still, he's getting $12.5 million to sit and complain behind second-year guard Joe Johnson.

9. Ward-Eisley-Anderson, G, Knicks. There are suspicions in some quarters that Charlie Ward, Howard Eisley and Shandon Anderson somehow have morphed into the same player. All three are paid in the $5 million to $6 million range, all three averaged 4 to 5 points per game last season and all three have difficulty getting onto the floor.

10. Alonzo Mourning, C, Heat. The list, folks, is cold-hearted. Mourning made the All-Star team while dealing with a kidney disease last season, but while his return to All-Star status last year was nice, he averaged 15.7 points and 8.4 rebounds. He will make $20 million this year. Your name better include the letters S-H-A-Q for that kind of dough