How to Deal With the Super Team Dilemna

Reasonable proposals about how it's not about creating an artificial parity system have plainly been posted in this thread. There's already enough parity in the sense that your team is what you have either built yourself or bought into. We're not talking about stealing food from your mouths here or gradual world destruction, it's a competitive sport for your entertainment.

Imagine opening a movie theater then being penalized because you're the most profitable one. What if there were a city wide or nationwide law passed so that all your profits in excess of some subjective formula made it so you had to give money to failing theaters? Would you feel it just then?

I even see a few posts here and around the net creating pseudo math to create parity based on punitive actions against the successful. I don't remember this kind of outcry when we had franchise players in our team. Where was the pity for the cellar dwellers then?

I have an even more radical idea but that'd be another topic altogether or at least another post.

TLDR?:

Hope for the FO to do a better job running your team along with some luck or go for insta-gratification and root for a team you think is currently better suited to you. Nobody's saying you have to go through the rebuild.

 

Once they've earned that right - to a certain degree YES. But that's after years of no other option but to play for the team that drafted you into the league. It's not as if Howard or CP3 didn't pay their dues before deciding
that they wanted to play somewhere else.

Is it really too much to expect that the team you've played with for years will honor the principles of the arrangement and try to get you to a preferred destination whilst they seek compensation in return? As opposed to dumping you off to Siberia and over complicating your life during the final year of your contract?

If not then the only way it's ever going to be fair for a player is if teams can't trade players who are in their last year of a contract.

 

I would rather watch our youngsters become allstars.

 

I don't know what everyone is talking about here. We are the only superteam in the NBA. White, Jones, and Lamb are on our team guys!! The are better than Howard, Bynum and such!!

 

I'm just glad that we are tanking in the year that I lost interest in the NBA.

I agree with glynch. Send Kevin Martin, Lull and cash to OKC in exchange for whatever they want. Play super-aggressive basketball against big market teams, tank harder against small market teams.

 

This loser mentality is the new norm for so called rockets fans. Tanking doesn't work anymore because u will suck for Yearssssss before above average players look at teams as possible destination. I am glad Morey has plans instead of setting Houston up to be the bobcats of the west

 

The only way to truly get parity in the nba is a hard cap.

The texans this off season show exactly why it is necessary. Mario Williams had to choose between being on a contending team or getting paid by a lesser team. This would never happen in the nba because the texans would have used his birds rights to resign mario, and he would get to stay on a contending team.

 

Thats the spirit! Don't forget to include DMo.
This will be the superteam of the future. Thats if they can keep them around.

 

I think you're missing the point. As far as I know, nobody is complaining about the fact that some teams will be much better than others in the short run. For example, nobody's calling for the Thunder to be broken up. What people find objectionable is the fact that, over the lifetime of the average fan, there are five or six teams that can safely be expected to win most of the championships for reasons that have nothing to do with the skill of their management.

Perhaps this doesn't bother you. Perhaps your outlook is that people should just accept whatever circumstances they find themselves in and do their best. You're perfectly entitled to that opinion. But keep in mind that this is really unhealthy for the NBA as a whole. If most of the fans in most of the cities come to believe that their teams only exist so that the Celtics and the Knicks have someone to beat for the 82 games before the playoffs, they'll lose interest in professional basketball, and that screws everybody - even the Celtics and the Knicks.

 

then they are NOT role players .... there aint no allstar role players
Either super duper stars, stars, specialists or role players, or at the end the borderline league players

 

Those 5 or 6 teams exist in EVERY SPORT! All teams cycle through winning and losing for a period of time. Throughout that cycle, management play a very big role with Drafting, Scouting, Trades, Player development etc. Just ask the Houston Texans =)

 

A contract is a contract. It's not free agency. In free agency, of course a player can do whatever they please. Paying dues doesn't earn you the right to negotiate on your team's behalf. It bothers me to see a team like Orlando take pennies on the dollar for Dwight's value because he tried to run the show.

 

In this week's edition of "If only..."

If only Jeff Van Gundy remained as the Rocket's coach
Yao Ming stayed healthy
TMac got them past the first round

Then we would be a super team too :grin:

 

I feel like you've missed my point. I can't speak as to your age regarding your comment about a person's lifetime, but the last time knew of the closest thing to more teams competing for a championship was in the 70s. I honestly get that variety can be a compelling model. Having said that, that's up to each organization to get to that level.

Since you brought up OKC, it would only be fair to mention that they too are in that super team bracket that you're despising. Nobody seems to dislike them primarily because of the homegrown talent and clean image, but make no mistake, if OKC were to need an additional superstar and made the necessary roster provisions, they'd be a favored destination just like the few teams that actually have superstars that can compete for a championship.

Most people are not satisfied with mediocrity ,myself included, save for the die hard minority, if they're invested in their team as you're suggesting. You say that well managed teams are to be put in check because of their leverage, I suggest the exact opposite. Cull the celler dwellers that are content to be profiting without actually competing. Set performance guidelines with benchmarks over time that instill constant competition rather than complacency with profit. What's unhealthy for any sport is the propagation of unfit owners that complain but regularly put out a sub-par product.

The only reason that the Knicks and Celtics seem to be historic landing spots for big names is because of the willingness of the those organizations to put out competitive teams on the floor. Even then, they've been passed on by other good players, including their own players, to smaller market teams that have recently been better run. Even those supposed preferred destinations have all had their down times where you couldn't get a franchise player to join if you paid them max. Ultimately, the fodder teams are there because of the management and/or cyclical changes, not because there are arbitrary destinations. Competitors will go to competitive teams.

 

5 pages and only one post pointing out the painfully obvious that all of you seem to miss.


The Salary Cap does not exist to create some sort of balance in the league, but to literally share the wealth of the larger markets like LA & NY or wealthier owners like those in Dallas & Portland. I'll repeat - the salary cap was never designed to restrict the wealthy teams from gaining a competitive advantage, this is about sharing their wealth with the other teams who collect millions in luxury cap money to supplement their revenue stream. The businessmen who own these teams want to make money more than they want to win.

If you had a hard cap, teams like LA would still be able to assemble the team of stars they have today because those players would take whatever less was required to play for LA because the endorsement money outside of the rules of the league in a large market is MUCH better than the salary money within the league. LA & NY would still maintain a competitive advantage over teams like San Antonio but the small market teams would not be able to collect on the spoils of the wealthy and thus you would have a real problem with some owners in small markets not able to afford their teams.

I think contraction is the most intelligent answer to solving the problem of a relatively diluted league. In a perfect world there is at least one star on every team but right now there just is not enough talent in the league to support that idea for a league of this size. Obviously these types of things are cyclical but I think Stern was way too ambitious expanding the league by 8 teams since 1980. By my count there are at least 12 teams in the league who don't have a franchise quality player - that's nearly half the league. That's why it's so disgusting to see the Lakers & Heat with 7 by themselves and over half the All Star game participants come from only 6 teams out of 30 (the Lakers, Thunder, Clippers, Heat, Celtics, & Nets).

My solution(assuming contraction is just not possible) is to assign "star" status each year to the top 30 players by vote determined by coaches, sports writers, and fans and place restrictions around how those stars can be combined on one team from free agency and trade scenarios. Maybe a team with no star can offer a "star" a 6 year deal(4 guaranteed - the last two partially) but signing a new star would limit the length of the deal they could offer by let's say half. So let's say Wade could get a 6 year deal but Lebron could only take a 3 year deal at the max if Wade's deal was already final and let's say a 3rd "star" could be added but the team could only offer a 2 year max deal. This would prevent long term dynasties and would provide clear incentives to stars to join teams with no stars.

Let's say it also restricts trade scenarios too so for instance if Wade had 5 years left on a 6 year deal and Cleveland wanted to trade Lebron to Miami, they could do that only if Lebron had a 4 years or less on his deal because two star teams can't acquire more star years than 9 years(6 max for star one + 3 max for star two=9 years). If Bosh were to be signed or traded in that scenario(and Lebron had 3 years left on his deal), then Bosh could sign a three year deal(6 years for one star + 3 years for two star + 2 years for star 3=11 years) because Wade would have 5 years + Lebron 3 years left=3 years left they could offer Bosh.

...it would be interesting too because players could fall in/out of star status each year so if you had a #30 star player and they fell off one year, you could conceivably have more flexibility for one year to sign another big star and not be subject to the rules above until your player ended up back in star status again in which case it would just hinder your FA/trade efforts for a star player in the years when your contracted star player is "on the list" so to speak.

I know it's a little far fetched but it's no more confusing than existing cap rules and it solves the competitive balance issue by preventing multiple max guys loading up on one team and creating a dynasty.

 

The players union would never accept a proposal like that. What you're proposing is essentially NO FREE AGENCY for SUPERSTARS except under the most restrictive arrangement.

 

Nobody said a contract isn't a contract. But when a SUPERSTAR pays his dues to a franchise it ought to result in a team making a best effort to get him to a desirable destination whilst being adequately compensated in return and in most cases, that's exactly how it works in this league.

OTOH, if it's okay for the team to ignore any aspect of loyalty and complicate a SUPERSTAR's life by sending him to a destination that is clearly undesirable, then the SUPERSTAR and his agent should make sure that the other SUPERSTARs and their agents around the league are fully briefed as to what sort of treatment they can expect to receive in similar circumstances from that team's front office.

Oh and I'm pretty sure it doesn't bother you that Orlando, who in your opinion received "pennies on the dollar" in return for Dwight as much as it does that the Rockets weren't the benefactors of that arrangement.

 

That's not true - it just limits the contract length a team can give you if they already have a 'star. You can keep resigning with a team forever if you wish and I wouldn't effect the amount of money a star makes. It just gives star players a real incentive in terms of long term job security to join a team to build a winner and hurts stars who would rather join an existing winner by not offering them long term security.

The only place where its more restrictive is you wouldn't be able to trade to add stars if you already had one or more unless the contract length fit the formula. In this scenario, a soft cap is still in place too.

 

JVG had healthy Yao and TMAC and they could not even pass the first round...
That was an epic-fail team.