The big market teams are making it rain on some hos (in this case "hos" refers to free agents).

The baseball off-season has been slow to develop, unless your team was already awesome.  The Yanks got Granderson; the Sawx got Lackey and Mike Cameron; the Phillies traded one ace to Seattle (Lee) for another from Toronto (Halladay); the Angels got Matsui; the Mets will probably land Jason Bay; the Cardinals are desperate to re-sign Holliday.

What is the significance of these moves other than to their respective teams?  The good teams got better, and they’re all big markets except the one with the best player on the planet [Note: the Mets were not good last year, but they are a big market team with a high payroll].  That’s how it goes in recession-era sports.  Want more proof?  Here are the major NBA off-season moves:

LA got Artest; the Spurs got RJ; Dallas got Matrix; the Magic got VC; Atlanta got Crawford; the Celtics got Sheed; Houston got Ariza; and the Cavs got Shaq.

The parallels are all there.  If your team was in contention or close to it, they got better.  If they weren’t, they got worse.  Why?  Winning teams in big markets sell tickets.  Thus they can afford to raise payroll (or in the case of the NBA, afford to pay the luxury tax for exceeding the salary cap).  All of those teams who did/will contend are from big markets with two exceptions 1) Orlando is a small market, but only has one team that is well-supported and contends; and 2) the Cavs/Cardinals: both desperate to hang onto the best player of their respective sports (LeBron & Pujols) with the fear that they will leave town for a team with a higher payroll who can pay for other top players and win titles thus ultimately devastating the team and the city’s economy and perhaps lead to the team having to leave town.

Yes, these are the economics of sports in the current recession.  Yes, the playoffs of both sports will be immensely entertaining due to the arms race of talent signings and trades.  The good teams got better.  The bad teams got worse.  And we may see a series of teams having to relocate in the next few years as a result.  Just like in real life over the last decade, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  Oh, and then there’s my Chicago teams which are in the 3rd biggest market and have tons of money, and yet all of them suck (except for the Blackhawks, but nobody cares about hockey anyway).  At least my fantasy teams are worth rooting for.

David Stern talking to reporters after failing to engineer a LeBron/Kobe Finals.

yesterday in their game 6 loss to the Orlando Magic in the Eastern Conference Finals.

“I take the blame for this loss. I drew up a game-plan for my refs that I thought was an effective way to neutralize the Magic defense and present problems for their many offensive weapons, but it wasn’t enough to get the win. We have the best player in the world playing at the peak of his abilities, and his surrounding cast just didn’t step up with enough bad calls to get him into the next round.”

Stern felt that the main reason for the Cavs’ failure to advance was “the refs inability to get Dwight Howard to foul out fast enough.” He continued, “I thought that foul that was called on Howard at the end of game 3, when he clearly had a clean block on LeBron’s desperation three-pointer, was a great clutch moment for the refs. I thought that would be enough to give that game to the Cavs and break the will of the Magic, but unfortunately the refs couldn’t come up with enough plays like that in this series.”

When asked how he felt about the Magic reaching the Finals, Stern said, “You know, you work all year to get your team to the Finals, and when you fall short, well… there’s just not much you can say. I wish there was something I could take from this experience, but at this point we’re just kind of exhausted and out of ideas for getting LeBron into the Finals. I just feel sorry for all the fans who had to watch all of those terrible Kobe and LeBron puppet commercials and don’t even get the consolation of seeing them play each other for the title.  When you try your hardest to reach a goal and still fall short, well that’s hard to take.  The refs are taking this one hard.  I just want to say that they should hold their heads high knowing that they did all they could to try to win this one for LeBron and the Cavs.”

Stern concluded the press conference by vowing to start planning immediately for a Kobe/LeBron Finals in 2010. “I don’t know how we’re going to do a better job of trying to get LeBron and Kobe into the Finals than we did this year, but trust me, we’re gonna put our best men on this and we’ll make it happen.”