Henry Abbott wrote yesterday on why the league is attempting to create parity in vain:
With the money essentially agreed to, the entire season is in jeopardy because of a nasty fight over “system issues” the NBA says it wants in order to give 30 teams a shot at the title, but that the finest experts insist would do little if anything to get that done.
The players fought hard on system issues because they have real things at stake — from the ability as free agents to join a team where they’ll be happy to the years of guaranteed income they’ll be able to secure.
The owners, though, are tanking the season in the name of a victory that would make owners of also-ran teams
I recommend reading the entire article. It delineates why the mechanisms the owners want to employ to create league-wide parity won’t work.
And with that said, I’m gonna go draw a bath, stick my head into the water, and scream for the next twenty minutes.
abbott’s 100% wrong. this is what comes of working in life’s toy department. you forget it’s a business.
here’s a link that talks to why. i’m fatigued at repeating it and consistently amazed that i’ve yet to read a sports journalist who gets it.
but there’s no doubt that competitive balance is the most important thing for the owners. they can plan around revenue splits. they cant plan around their superstar deciding for a jet-ski town and they cant sell a chronically non-competitive product.
I’m a little confused by this article. The only proof provided is that the Bobcats drafted badly.
Intuitively, it makes sense. There is no way Miami could have got the big 3 last year if there were no max contract ceiling. People stress they took less money, and other players will do the same. They took a haircut of like 1M a piece per year, which is partially reimbursed because florida has no income tax. Its not like they took a 50% cut. It was like 7%.
On the open market, Lebron would have got $30M easy. If Wade takes $20M, you think Bosh would have got for $10M? You would have a hard enough time convincing Wade to take $10M less and be a 2nd banana.
The problem is no one will fight for this. Not the players, because of the rank and file. And not the owners, because of people like Dan Gilbert, who think more player movement is a problem.
Straight luxury tax or cap with no exceptions is the way to go. The league could pay 1% of a players contract for every year a player Is with a team, if you want to incentize teams to resign their own guys. But need to strongly deter superteams.
There are many diffent angle to trying to create more parity in the league. Obviously drafting well and making good trades is a primary lever. However, being able to hold onto players is just as important. I think the salary cap has influence too, but if you don’t draft well and can’t keep your players then the salary cap is a third or fourth biggest impact. I like the idea of an NFL like franchise tag a team can place on a player. This would/could at leaset ensure a team can keep at least one ‘superstar’. Additionally I think all teams should ‘have’ to spend at least 90% of their salary cap. If the contracts don’t add up at the end of the season, it should be divided among to the players – this would hopefully prevent some owners from being ‘cheap’ and encourage them to spend on the best players they can get rather than just have their superstar drive ticket sales (kind of like what AI did in Philly).
I’m not sure if getting rid o a salary cap would accomplish anything, because the wealthiest/biggest market owners would just continue to spend, so maybe a true hard cap would make a differnce. As a fan it would be nice to see teams stay together for several years, so you can really be a fan of the team versus a fan of a player who may move 3-5 times during his career. At the same time I think players should have the right to leave. So making more restrictive rules about player movement, but not eliminating it altogether makes sense. I just think this last offer by the owners was a bit too restrictive and limiting to players market value.