I think the Hornets will be trying to shed salary like crazy in the next few seasons. The seem to be less able to ride out financial distress due to their small market (39th in the US) and middle-of-the-road attendance.
Some of the players thought to be no-brainers to opt out of contracts early may in fact decide not to do so. It would be awfully hard to walk away from $17.7 mil as in Amare's case when it is questionable if he could get that much in a new buyers market. The only certain max out that I see is Lebron. The others, if they opt out will be fighting for the scraps. Wade, Bosh, Amare and Carmelo are no longer locks to get the huge max deals they were anticipating. Those guys all have some sort of problem associated with them. Wade has injury concerns, Bosh leadership/number one option concerns. Amare and Carmelo both have character issues. Even Kobe, who van opt out after this season should probably not do so.
IMO the salary cap does need to go down. How many rumors of owners on the brink are there out there? I know the players think they are entitled to a big share of the pie, but without the owners, there are no teams. It makes sense in bad ecoomic times that the cap go down, not up.
New Orleans has never supported an NBA team sufficiently, which is why the Jazz left in the first place.
