According to ESPN and the rest of people “in the know,” the odds of there being an NBA season starting up in a few months are nil. Evidently, the players and the owners are extremely far apart on reaching a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) for the future. The owners want shorter contracts, a larger share of revenue, and a fixed salary cap since they are claiming to be bleeding money. They also want the fixed cap to avoid the creation of superteams like the Miami Heat and to keep their own star players from leaving and destroying their market. The players don’t want a change in the system, but are willing to compromise a bit on some of these issues.
Both sides are being slightly ridiculous. Yes, the owners should want to stop the creation of superteams. It is bad for the NBA if the star players are on only a handful of teams, leaving 25 other teams that range from mediocre to terrible. Look at the NFL - parity can be a good thing. But for the owners to cry about being taken advantage of by the players is profoundly dumb. The owners were the ones who set a minimum market value for Mike Miller at $5 million a year for five guaranteed seasons, or signed an injured Elton Brand to a five year, $80 million contract. To be fair, the players have to realize that even though it is unfair that they should have to compromise and receive less compensation going forward because the owners are too stupid to spend wisely, things do have to change. There are too many average players receiving too much guaranteed money for too long a period of time. One would also assume that the players realize that the superteam concept is a serious issue that needs to be addressed going forward, as it puts too many teams at a competitive and financial disadvantage.
The owners want a hard salary cap, as opposed to the flexible cap set at $58 million last season and a luxury tax threshold of $70 million. In prior seasons, a team could spend $58 million on player salary and could go over that limit in order to resign its own players. Then, if the salaries went over $70 million the team would have to pay a dollar for every dollar that they were over that threshold. If you were wondering, this is why there are so man sign and trades, as opposed to just a regular signing. When LeBron James announced he was going to Miami, he didn’t directly sign with the Heat. He re-signed with Cleveland in order to get the maximum amount of guaranteed years and better salary and then the Cavs traded him to Miami. This allowed the Cavs to get some draft picks and compensation in return for losing LeBron, and it allowed Miami to go over its salary cap to sign him. This is how nearly every team lands a free agent.
In the future, the owners want the cap to be $40 million, no exceptions. The players are obviously opposed, as it would lead to considerably less pay for them. This is where a solution is easy, if both sides would quit being babies. Under the current rules, a team can go over the salary cap to sign its own players and are allowed to offer more guaranteed years and more money per season. The problem lies in the flexible cap and the sign and trades. The sign and trade negates the concept of a team being able to offer a better deal than the rest of the league. It also allows larger teams like New York, Miami, Chicago, and Los Angeles to pick up nearly anyone they want because they bring in enough revenue that paying the luxury tax doesn’t matter, as they can still turn a profit either way. Teams like Charlotte, New Orleans, and Sacramento can’t compete with that and this needs to change. There are two ways to do this.
The first would be contraction, an idea I support. The NBA should eliminate two teams (at least) from each conference and put all the players on waivers. This would cut a large chunk of that disputed $300 million loss the owners claim to have faced. Get rid of the Hornets, Timberwolves, Bobcats, and the Raptors. It helps to solve the problem of teams being diluted because of expansion and cuts losses from the bottom line. Besides, are there normal people really clamoring to see the Bobcats and T-Wolves on TNT or ESPN? No, but contracting the teams and disbursing the players means that you could potentially see someone like Kevin Love grabbing boards and catching passes from John Wall or Chris Paul lobbing alley oops to Blake Griffin. You could see Demarcus Cousins running and gunning with Steve Nash or Tyreke Evans playing the shooting guard off Deron Williams. Automatically the teams that add these guys become more watchable and therefore more profitable.
The other way is to have a hard cap and eliminate the sign and trade if it puts a team over the cap. This cap should be somewhere between the owners’ proposal of $40 and the last season’s $70 million threshold. Let’s split the difference and set a hard cap of $55 million, not far off from the salary cap last season. Keep the Bird Rights, where a team can resign its own player even if it puts them over the salary cap, but eliminate them on a sign and trade. If Carmelo wants to go to New York, he has to sign for the most the Knicks can offer and not sign the maximum allowed from when he was in Denver, then having that transferred via trade. If a player wants a max deal and wants to go somewhere else, too bad. This would eliminate the superteam dilemma from a financial aspect. Now, if two stars wanted to team up together they would have to give up money and show that they are actually serious about winning. LeBron James would have to sacrifice and accept the best Miami can offer, instead of taking a pay cut from $20 million to $17 million a season by doing a sign and trade and taking a little less so that the he can claim to be unselfish. If a player really cares about winning and playing for a champion above all else, let’s see them leave $15 million a year for three to five years on the table. A $55 million cap gives players a lot more than the $40 million cap (an average of $1.25 million for a team composed of 15 players), but also negates throwing out massive contracts to schlubs like Eddy Curry or Erick Dampier.
A punitive cap and blaming the players is a bad move by the owners. People pay to see Kobe Bryant or Derrick Rose, not to see Jerry Buss or Jerry Reinsdorf. If teams are losing money, it is more often than not on the part of poor business planning and financial management, rather than greedy players sucking teams dry. The only legitimate gripe is that small market teams are hurt by the luxury tax and the movement for superstars teaming up in larger markets. But the owners are claiming to be taking it on the chin as businessmen and are choosing to blame player greed for that. In reality, the players are just taking advantage of a system set up by the owners. Wouldn’t that be considered smart business, not some kind of malicious dealing? If anything, the owners should be embarrassed with themselves for acting like spendthrifts and doling out stupid contracts left and right. While some changes in salary structure are necessary, as there are a lot of players seriously overpaid, casting all the blame on the players and trying to punish them is not a good faith negotiation and for that the owners should be castigated.
Changing gears abruptly, the other part of the lockout equation is revenue sharing, a concept I don’t fully
know all the particulars of and am not nearly egotistical enough to solve. All I can say is that both sides need to sit down and get a deal done, lest they lose all momentum from one of the most exciting and memorable seasons in the NBA since I started watching over 20 years ago. If the 2011-2012 season ends up getting cancelled, both sides will only have themselves to blame.
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