It’s all about money with today’s NBA

DALLAS – The numbers sped past at a dizzying rate.

I was about to turn to the person next to me and protest the price of gas until I thought about how much New York’s James Dolan is paying Stephon Marbury to be a petulant pain in the butt. I remembered the financial hit Mavericks owner Mark Cuban absorbed all so Michael Finley could go to San Antonio and win a title.

It put my complaint about gas at $3.17 a gallon into perspective.

You think you have it bad? Pity the poor NBA owner when you bemoan the cost of your gingerbread latte or peppermint mocha.

OK, poor may not be the best word. After all, these guys have enough scratch to dish out more than $2.03 billion to their players this season. That falls between Armenia and Niger on the list of gross national income.

This is a league where 27 of the 30 teams treat the salary cap as a nuisance more than a hard cap on spending. This is a league where a salary of $13.5 million won’t even gain you entree into the top 25.

Sorry, Sacramento’s Mike Bibby. Maybe next season.

Salary figures obtained by The Dallas Morning News provide a glimpse into the business of the NBA for the 2007-08 season. The numbers show:

The luxury tax, not the salary cap, drives fiscal responsibility.

The trigger is $67.865 million. Every dollar over that amount requires the owner to put another dollar in the pot.

Since 12 teams are over that figure, you can argue it’s not much of a deterrent. But nine teams are within $7 million of the threshold and four of those are less than $3 million over. The Knicks, Mavericks and Denver Nuggets are the only three that obliterate the mark, and each of those teams is working its way back to the number.

The Mavericks will be able to push their payroll costs to less than $80 million next season if that is Cuban’s wish.

The big winner on the free agent market was Rashard Lewis. The small forward who helped lead Seattle past the first round of the playoffs only once in his first 10 years in the league signed a six-year contract worth $112.76 million.

The extension San Antonio’s Tim Duncan recently signed will pay him $18.83 million in 2010-11 and $21.16 million in 2011-12. It includes an early termination option in the final season and is roughly $11 million below what Duncan could have received.

The Mavericks’ Devin Harris is one of only six players from the class of 2004 who agreed to an extension before the start of this season. His salary will jump from $3.9 to $7.8 million in 2008-09. The five-year extension weighs in at $43 million.

That means the Mavericks nucleus of Dirk Nowitzki, Josh Howard, Jason Terry and Harris is locked in place financially at least through the 2010-11 season.

Five players – Grant Hill, Jalen Rose, Eddie Jones, Vince Carter and Larry Hughes – dropped off the league’s list of top 25 salaries. They have been replaced by Orlando’s Rashard Lewis, Milwaukee’s Michael Redd, Phoenix’s Amare Stoudemire, Houston’s Yao Ming, Utah’s Andrei Kirilenko and Memphis’ Pau Gasol.

Yes, I know that’s six players. But the contracts of Kirilenko and Gasol are an identical $13,735,000.

The only thing average about Greg Oden is his salary. The Portland rookie makes $4.66 million this season, putting him closer to the league average of $4.65 million than any other player in the league.

Trenton Hassell, now with the Mavericks, owned that distinction last season.