http://basketball.realgm.com/src_wiretap_archives/64370/20100130/league_wants_hard_cap_in_2011_cba/ Chew on this for awhile.
That would certainly lessen our advantage of having the richest owner in prosports. But they've been talking about this for a while, and nothing significant has resulted from it. Even if the league wants it, the NBAPA would raise a stink, and make it nearly impossible to actually carry out.
The Union is going to raise hell over this. I like it, though. It'll prevent this kind of trash: Jermaine O'Neal: $22.9m this season Shaq: $20.0m this season Tracy McGrady - $23.2m this season AK47: $16.4m this season
Russian billionaires are cheering everywhere.... "Hey Lebron! Come over here for (only) $18 million tax free! Live in one of the owners mansions, pick out 2million dollars worth of cars for your driveway, and a driver, cook, masseuse, multiple mistresses. and a private jet at your disposal. Or you can chill in Cleveland for 8 million taxed to death and media that scrutinizes your every move
There are a lot of things like this on the owners "wish list". I can't fathom how something this drastic would happen. I think some form of non-guaranteed contracts is slightly more likely but definitely something that could provoke a long strike/lockout.
A hard cap would by necessity create non-guaranteed contracts with massive up-front bonuses. When you cut a player, any non-amortized bonus would accelerate to that year, thereby adding "dead cap" money. In other words, it would be the NFL model with a rookie scale. That being said, it's not going to happen.
Yeah, it wont happen. With prominent owners overseas I could see the 'good' players leaving for higher contracts, maybe not necessarily the stars (for the competition they think is in the NBA) and it'd really waterdown the league.
Why not just do away with guaranteed contracts? A team should have the right to kill any contract it chooses between, say, July 1st and July 31st. If you did that, team salaries would drop pretty quickly. And even if you were one of the stars who gets cut, at least you got a year of your fat contract before it got axed.
I've been saying this for months. Stern is certifiable, and most of the owners have either no cajones, or are blinded by greed. The 11-12 season is going to be wiped out by a lockout, and what emerges from the other side will not be the NBA we know. This, along with PA's health, is why I am so frustrated with the "let it bake, wait till next year" type argument. If the Blazers don't win the 2011 title....they won't win a title...period.
It's pretty clear the NBA has peaked in popularity, and really has nowhere to go but down. The greed of team owners will be their downfall. I expect another league will eventually be formed by a consortium of players to provide a choice for players who do not wish to go overseas to be paid fairly. European ball will continue to draw more and more talent to their leagues.
They should have a "grandfathered in" clause, so that way the teams who do have huge salary commitments don't all the sudden have to start cutting players. Like, the new salary restrictions kick in on contracts after the year 2012, or whatever. They could some kind of pro-rated thing. For example, if the cap is set at 60M, and you have 15 players, that's an average of 4 each. If you have 8 players under contract, you'd have access to 28 million dollars max you could spend for the remaining 7 players you were going to sign. And you couldn't go above the cap no matter what.
The only way this might work is if they set the hard cap at the luxury tax line, and remove the luxury tax altogether, keeping the soft cap at it's relative level. There's no way players are just going to stick around the NBA for 2-3x less money than they were making.
Yup, no way this happens. The NBA's real advantage over European leagues is that they pay a whole lot more. If the NBA artificially limits salaries, they'll kill their advantage. Players will definitely start defecting to the uncapped European leagues.
