The article over on the General Forum regarding the Economy, the NBA, fee agents, and the "looming lockout" raises a question for me. What players on our team can we lock up to extensions before the presumed lockout occurs? Assuming both parties agree to the extension. Webster is set. I assume we can offer Joel and Travis. And I assume we can offer BRoy and LMA this summer. Is that where the cut off would be for the rookie scale? When is Greg's class first eligible? My thought is that KP can get a good deal for these guys if they are worried salary's will be slashed after the new CBA.
I guess I'd be more worried, as a fan of the Blazers, about the soft cap becoming a hard cap. If Oden becomes a UFA and there's a hard cap by then (and thus no Larry Bird exception), Portland would just lose him. Bayless, Rudy and Batum, too.
That was kind of thinking as well. i want them all locked up, before the lock out. I just don't think it is possible.
I think they may if it meant keeping franchises from folding, forcing many players to instead flip burgers, since basketball is their only marketable skill...
eh? what would having a hard cap do to prevent a team from folding.....luxury tax dollars help the league and are redistrubited aren't they?
luxury tax goes away with a hard cap, which yes, has in the past bolstered the ability of "poorer" owners to pay salaries, but the reason for the hard cap is to stop the runaway expenses of operating a successful team, so that owners that have consistently been unable to afford to attract talent required to win don't just give up as their discretionary income disappears. If you were making a killing on your w-2's and loved to gamble at Vegas even though you couldn't play poker, and then suddenly had to change jobs and no longer had the fun money floating around, those trips to Vegas become a lot less enticing. We have a situation of the owners losing their shorts in the current economy, coupled with swelling player salaries, which are forcing many owners to question if they want to play the game any more. A hard cap makes it much easier for these guys to continue to "have fun" without destroying their estates.
Instead of a hard cap I'd rather see an escalating cap; once a team hits a certain threshold the tax increases its rate, and when another milestone is hit another tax level kicks in ... it might be a decent compromise between the current system and the extreme of hard capping salaries which is not a good idea in my opinion.
Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't the "Bird" exception created so that the Celtics could keep Larry Bird? It wasn't even a rule until the Celtics were faced with losing their franchise player and then the league (IEavid Stern) stepped in and changed the rules. I am quite certain that if a new "hard cap" is to be instituted it would have to grandfather in existing contracts. To do otherwise would be to empower the Donald Sterlings of the league. While a hard cap could come to fruition, too many teams are over the cap and playing by the existing rules to be cheated.
I don't know if the rules were changed on the fly. I don't think they can be. My recollection is that the argument came up during negotiations, "What about a team like the Celtics...with a salary cap, they'll just lose Larry Bird, which isn't fair since had they known about a salary cap, they'd have budgeted differently" and so the league/owners agreed to the exception to keep existing players who have been on the team for a while. Teams that are over the cap will surely be allowed to keep those contracts which put them over the cap. That I don't doubt. They'll be grandfathered in. What isn't clear to me is that those teams will be allowed to re-sign existing players to bigger deals/extensions, if they are over the cap. Going to a hard cap would be a purposeful choice to close off the Bird exception (and the LLE/MLE). Those exceptions are what make the cap "soft."
With the current economic times with around 10-20 trillion dollars riding on AIG a whole lot of people are scared shitless. Who needs a luxery box when you could loose half your wealth in one day? That said i think there will be a soft cap buyt proabably a reduction of the MLE to 3.5 Mil and probably getting rid of the LLE completely.
I hope they do not implement a hard cap. The luxery tax is fine. I think you could get into a situation where teams eat up all their salary, and young guys start bolting to Europe because they have on chance of getting a good deal in the NBA. What the NBA needs to implement is non-guaranteed contracts. Or at least a compromise, where a team can cut a player, and only have to pay 25% of his salary.
