When you look at all the effort and negotiations it took to make sure stars remain with their respective team and no super teams are being created etc.... the current CBA has done absolutely nothing to change that. All it has led to is average players like Otto Porter or Jrue Holiday etc. getting max deals. Its hard to imagine that Otto Porter makes more than Kobe per year. I remember when Kobe signed his huge 7 year 136 mio. contract...these days Harden gets 228 mio. for like half the years. The NBA really needs to find a solution because every player that averages 12/4 expects a max offer somewhere...I know it will cool off once all the salary is gone. But this wasn't supposed to happen in the first place and now a lot of teams are stuck with awful contracts. Also I want to add restricted free agency (oxymoron in itself) is like the most bizzare concept in all of sports. You are restricted and free...lol. I know Silver is doing a lot of small changes for the good of the game but there is a lot of work to be done. Right now the current system is broken IMO.
i've said it a million times, and even a few in the press have said it: the max is the problem. they've half-assedly recognized this by creating the supermax and such devices, but that won't do it. in terms of actual value, half of otto porter's money needs to go in lebron's pocket, but the players' union doesn't like that, as every team would look like the houston rockets in terms of salary structure. the owners won't allow the complete removal of max salaries because they simply can't trust themselves not to be stupid with their own money (which is crazy, right?!). if you keep the current cap/tax structure and simply remove the max, i think the market makes more sense. anyway, if lebron or steph curry or kd could make 60 million (or more) per, you wouldn't see three of them on the same team. which would mean milwaukee might have a shot at one of them. or at least milwaukee might have a shot at grabbing two or three second-tier players instead of watching them all join up with the first-tier players elsewhere. i think the forced trades are also problematic. the chris paul deal (both!) stunk to high heaven. just reeked of malfeasance, and the league and the press just turned a blind eye (or even resorted to cheerleading in the case of the latter). anyway, yes, the new cba fixed nothing except putting more money in owners' pockets. but all the rhetoric about it being in the best interest of the game was hogwash.
It also succeeded in allowing other teams to build Laker-like success literally at the expense of the Lakers! Don't forget that... I'm still bitter... I might always be bitter about the last few years...
abeer the problem with removing all the limits is that the richest teams will be the most successful. There needs to be a playground where all teams theoretically can compete. If you remove all barriers, then there will always be a desperate owner with deep pockets who will pay whatever it takes. A guy like Steve Ballmer or Paul Allen would then put their financial might into the equation and come out on top. The problem with bad contracts is that there is always one competing team ready to do the stupid for whatever reason. And also it isn't always about the owners not being disciplined. The problem is that basketball has become the only sports where the players are mightier than the owners. Where players dictate who they want in the front office, who they want to coach them, what players they wanna play with and what the owner needs to do in order to keep them. In no other sports are the star players as mighty. Imagine LeBron putting the gun to Gilberts head and saying "spend a billion or I'll be gone". Its easy to say "good riddance" but the truth is the fan base etc. doesn't accept the business aspect of the game. This is more complicated than just a simple way to figure out. I also absolutely think for competitiveness of the league there needs to be regulations involved. Deeper pockets should not lead to a definitive competitive advantage. But right now, it makes all no sense. Even DRose was expecting a max offer this off-season...like REALLY?
i said keep the soft cap/lux tax structure as is, just remove maxes. the league's done a good enough job with the punitive tax (and some of its non-financial ramifications, like no s&t, etc.) to keep teams from totally abusing it like in the past. they just haven't been able to prevent the superstar team-up. lebron, wade, and bosh only had to take like, 1.5 million per as a paycut. durant took a few million less, which i'm guessing will be returned to him as soon as next year. what if instead of going from 30 per to 26 per for your superteam, you had to go from 50 per to 30 per? you might start to see some different choices--not to mention that teams already paying super duper salary to one guy will never be on the FA market in any serious way. i think if pretty much all rules stayed the same and the max was removed, a team like milwaukee has a puncher's chance to compete. right now, they don't. because giannis is going to get paid the same as lebron, and thus might end up his teammate in a more desirable location. no max means it's VERY difficult to fit two players of that level on the same roster, no matter how much they might want it. team banana boat would be spread across 3-4 teams instead of the likely one or two.
hey at least the current CBA killed off the lakers for a while! the rest of the NBA has loved every second of that. i get that this CBA was supposed to give smaller market teams a better chance at competing, which it did for a while, but then how do you explain how the NBA has become a two team league the past few years? i mean, just look at the state of the EC at the moment. it's embarrassing that next year's finals matchup is already a given and will be the same matchup as the past 3 seasons
injuries can change this, but your point stands: the fact that injuries are the only reason to expect different finals participants speaks volumes about how little the new cba did for parity. now, parity in basketball is a lot harder to achieve than in other sports, but we could still do a better job than we do.
