As revenues are increasing, the salary cap is increasing and salaries are exploding as a result. What once was a max contract in dollar terms is now an above average contract, etc. What I am thinking is that instead of thinking of a player's salary and worth in terms of $/year, perhaps we should all think of it in terms of %cap/year. And sports sites should do the same on a regular basis. So when a player's deal is annouced, it should be Player X has a 3-year 20m/year 20%cap/year deal. When you analyze it like that, I think it brings a lot more clarity. Player X is now thought of in terms of a 20% cap player or a 40% cap player rather than a $20m or $40m player. In fact I think everyone should always translate all player contracts into a %cap/year basis. And in that regard, what about just negotiating players salaries as %cap/year rather than $/cap per year? If this were the case, the Durant situation could never happen. Because players are paid $/year, a cap increase meant that already signed players' %cap/year went down and opened up room to sign Durant. But if players were signed for a fixed 20% of cap, that can't happen. At the same time a %cap/year contract wouldn't cost the owners any more money because there would still be salary caps. I know this probably will never happen but its an interesting thought.
I mentioned something similar around Durant signing (or maybe just the cap smoothing conversation). for some reason, I remember everyone thinking it was too complicated like nba gm's don't have Excel spreadsheets. or the players would want the certainty of fixed raises even though all sorts of things (like overall free agent money, max contract extensions, etc) are already tied to the cap and the effect would be a small part of the overall contract in exchange for a more equitable distribution of salaries where every team's cap situation isn't hugely affected by what the cap does (i.e. huge cap spike makes old contracts good, flat cap makes old contracts bad). contract raises are already intended to mimic cap raises, why not just write it in stone?
The complexity is what does it mean to have % salary/year in a Soft Cap world. What is the % off of, since teams can exceed the cap by a large margin. Seems like this requires a Hard Cap, with no Exceptions....is that what you are suggesting,,,,a Hard Cap ... because % off of a Soft Cap does sound rather complicated to me.
Will not happen because, "Curry agrees to supermax 5 years 35% of the cap" or "Harden gets largest extension in history of 4 years 35% of the cap," is not sexy enough for breaking news headlines and player bragging rights. Plus, Americans are generally terrible at math, case in point: A&W's third-pounder burger.
While the cap isn't hard, there is still an actual single cap amount each year. The %cap would simply be a percentage of that amount regardless of final payroll. If a player is signed to 35% next year and the cap is 100m, he gets 35m. If due to exceptions, the total payroll is $110m, it just means the total cap percentages add to 110% that's all.
You wouldn't eliminate the amount, rather you would emphasize the %cap rather than $ per year. So if cap is 100m, you'd say Curry signed a 35% cap deal worth 35m. And when players ask for a 3 year 60m deal, it would instead by framed as a 3 year, 20%cap/year deal worth 60m. And actually although people are bad at math, especially fractions, they tend to be very good with percentages. If you say a role player wants or is being paid 25% of cap, that actually puts into stark clarity that a player wants to take up 25% of team payroll, not including exceptions. That's actually better than just saying he is getting a 25m/year deal.
I don't really get it...the cap changes every year right? This can result in a lot of variance for players when the cap rises or shrinks. Like for example in Nene's case he wanted 5M a year for 4 years. Right now the salary cap is 94.14M so that would be a salary of 5.3%. But next year the cap is 99M so if he is still making 5.3% he will get 5.2M, oth if the salary cap decreases he will also make less for that year despite signing the same contract. An extra 200k a year variance is too big IMHO to leave it up to chance. The point of a contract is security, like no matter what happens you will be paid this amount unless the league is dissolved. This goes against that security because players don't know exactly what they will make during the course of their contract. For superstars that won't matter but for 3M players and below it can have a big impact on their actual salary for the year, they could end up making 50% more or 50% less in dollar amount of their original contract value. It will also complicate the salary cap calculation every year. Right now I don't know who decides what the cap amount will be, like it's a group of shady suits somewhere who do calculations and just announce "Ok, the cap for this year is 100M" and nobody really has a problem with that. But if all the salaries of players are % tied to the cap, then the NBA union will probably get in there and fight for every dollar increase in the cap every year. Imagine you are an active player like Nene, and you already inked that contract. But if the cap rises by just 5M you take home another 200k without you doing anything, you think players won't fight to raise that cap as much as possible? For the owners, it will remove any benefits for raising the cap, right now owners want a raised cap because it will allow them to pay more players, like in KD's case GSW was able to fit a new max salary because of increased cap so even if the owner pays more he is ok with it. But if the salaries are % based, then now there is 0 incentive to raise the cap by even 1 dollar, because the owners will pay more money for the same roster. So with players wanting to raise the cap because it all benefits for them and owners wanting to lower the cap because it is all downsides for them you will have a situation where a CBA needs to happen every year. This is why the % salary will never work.
The cap isn't arbitrarily determined. It is spelled out in the collective bargaining agreement (CBA). The current CBA set the cap at 51.2 percent of Basketball Related Income (BRI), a figure that can be determined transparently from things like gate receipts, TV contracts, etc. Once the CBA is in effect, the cap is set by BRI and can't be changed by whim of either players or owners. Now as for what happens if cap goes down, I've thought about that. But if you think about it, it works both ways. When the cap goes up, only new contracts get rewarded currently. With %cap the higher cap helps old and new players contracts equally. If the cap goes down however, then new player contracts are hurt while old contacts are not. Under %cap, the loss is shared by old and new contracts.
If the cap is that easy to calculate then teams would know the cap every year beforehand instead of only having projections until it is formally announced. Regardless, the BRI will still cause a massive change in salaries for players every year on the mid and lower end of the spectrum. What is the payoff for all of this volatility of their earnings? If people wanted something wherein they would lose or gain more money then they would just invest their earnings in the stock market. If the BRI% is supposed to be set for 4 years and it can't be changed then that will make CBAs far more deadly, NBA players will fight for every % increase harder because every % will represent an exponential increase in their salaries. I know your goal is to prevent KDs from happening but proposals like these that cause a ton of issues will never be considered so what is the point? Who exactly cares about parity besides the audience? The players and owners just care about 1 thing, and that is $$$. I don't understand how the bolded statement is supposed to work. Let's say Nene signs a contract that gives him 10% of the cap every year. The cap went from 10M to 11M, that means he is now making 1.1M instead of 1M. If you have 9 Nenes who all make 10% of the cap each, increasing the cap just means you pay your Nenes more money you won't be able to sign new players at all. This means unless you have an expiring contract the basketball team won't be able to sign anybody new because 100% of their cap would be taken by existing players unless they specifically blank out a certain % of their cap.
BRI includes money from playoffs. One reason the cap went down from original projections was all the sweeping by Warriors and Cavs which lowered BRI from expected. But once the season is over, it takes just a couple of weeks to total up BRI which sets next season's cap. This year it was officially announced as $99.093m on June 22 for the 2017-18 season.
Yeah but the problem here is contract run from up to 6 years, whereas you will only know the amount the year before. Like I said that results in a lot of uncertainty especially for low contract players because each 1M the cap is increased/decreased results in a lot of volatility for their salary. What if the NBA cap shrinks by 5M next year due to less viewership demand? Then somebody who is supposed to make 3M is looking at 20k less in their paycheck which is a huge amount for them. Sure they can also gain money in this way, but if you know Psychology people hate losing money more than they like to gain money, so once they know the implications majority of NBA players would not like to change the current system. Add on the financial implications for both NBA union and owners you will see why both parties don't want to open up this hornet's nest. It's too much trouble just to ensure KD to warriors doesn't happen. Most people who make proposals like these always do them from the audience/spectator's viewpoint. But the audience is not a part of the CBA, the only two negotiating parties there are players and owners. Without a compelling reason for both parties there is no way a change this radical will happen. That's why I always find these "parity" threads amusing because the benefits of these ideas always go to parties who are not part of the CBA. Stuff like the hard cap or no max salaries might improve parity in the league, but there is 0 chance this will even be proposed on the bargaining table because it would be like either party volunteering to shoot themselves in the foot.
The salary cap itself is an unreliable figure. Up until April, the projected salary cap was $108 million, then a month of bad playoffs and losses from TV revenue, and the cap dropped down to $99 million. This kind of uncertainty will never allow for what you and others are suggesting. There is a reason nobody uses the cap to explain player salaries because nobody can accurately project what it will be from year to year.
the soft cap number. max salaries are based on 25/30/35% of the soft cap number. i think it's not exactly the cap but some slightly different number, but it's basically the cap number we all hear about. whatever was 94M last year and 99M this year. every salary is already a percentage of the cap, we just don't report it that way. even the raises combined with cap projections make future salaries some percentage of the cap. just fixing it to the cap would remove the uncertainty. now I guess you'd still have the raises be "cap raise + 1.5%" for current team and "cap raise - 1.5%" for signing with a different team, but they would be tied together.
Yes, I understand this. But what are you and OP proposing as a significant change then? It you are not proposing players be paid a % of a fixed 100% total team salary (i.e. A hardcap), then you don't seem to be proposing much of a change at all. Saying lock ppl into a % of Cap under current rules, just means making flexible raises, no? Not sure why that's a profound change, because I don't see raises as much of a problem What am I missing?
You'd have players losing games on purpose in the playoffs to increase the cap. Absolutely terrible short sighted idea. We'd have a league of Pete Roses.
using %'s instead of $'s ties means upcoming BRI affects players under contract more than free agents whereas the current system affects free agents more than players under contract. this is true. but no one suggests that free agents are throwing playoff games to up BRI for the upcoming free agency period. I mean these are guys who might not even be on the team they are throwing games on so they might have even more incentive (and this assumes anyone other than the cavs and warriors is even in a position to throw a game). and roslolian, the players as a whole get X% of the cap no matter what. doesn't matter %, $, whatever you use to define raises. in fact, the general point of raises in contracts is to mimic cap increases. they are already trying to do it, this system would simply lock it in. they somewhat fixed it by lowering the raises because in the past the max raises far outdid the cap and so every salary you had on your book just kept getting worse every year, and contracts could be seven years long. but of course, what the new system didn't fix was the cap spike. everybody who was under contract last year watched guys like mozgov get $64M while their contracts stayed basically the same. I'm not sure why it's crazy to think the whole league should essentially benefit from that cap spike and not just the current free agents. in fact, last year's free agents got such a boost that it actually lowered the cap for this year from where it could have been, meaning this class didn't benefit nearly as much. that $3M guy this offseason whose contract might fluctuate between 3.05 and 3.1 next year might have gotten $3.5M instead if the whole league benefitted from the cap spike instead of just last year's free agent class. and yes, this would presumably never happen because player's might whine about uncertainty, but I assume we're arguing what system makes more sense from a cap management/team management perspective and not simply what the players or owners want. the players probably wanted a higher cap this year, which means they get more money, but instead their short-sightedness (and fixed raises) gave us KD and lower playoff revenues and thus a lower cap.
Yeah, because no one has ever thrown a game or taken a dive to make more money. It's a foolish idea to make losing a positive incentive. Integrity of the game would go to an all time low.
the only massive change there has been was last year, and it would have made everyone more money. you're saying they don't fight for every % now? based on what? this isn't really about parity. just codifying the already present system of attempting to make salary raises mimic cap raises. and in the specific case of KD, I would say the entire point of the CBA rules is to specifically prevent great teams from simply being able to outspend others to acquire more great players so that smart management, not simply market size, can create great teams. the cap spike essentially destroyed those parity-lite provisions for one-offseason and, not coincidentally, resulted in the least competitive playoffs anyone can really remember. perhaps that only portends good things for ratings and BRI, but that's still to be determined. It certainly has already been mentioned as lowering next year's cap, whatever the ratings may have been. that's already how the current system works. if you spend 100% of your cap, then go into the offseason with no expiring contracts, you aren't going to have cap room, barring a cap spike like last year. most nba contracts have raises about equal to the cap rise we just saw, from $94M to $99M. if you were at $94M last year and had no expiring contracts, you would almost certainly be right at $99M this year and wouldn't be able to sign anybody. why should a team with no expiring contracts suddenly get a ton of cap room? the risk to the reward of cap room is in letting people go.
again, I don't understand what you are talking about. I don't understand what big payoff you think there is. players could currently throw playoff games and cause the BRI to rise. that has nothing to do with fixed raises vs % raises. why would % raises suddenly make them do that? because the benefits of a cap rise slightly shift to players under contract vs free agents? any upcoming free agent would benefit from throwing games under the current system. if free agents aren't throwing games under the current system why are players under contract going to suddenly throw games. nothing is preventing individual players from already doing it and, as far as we know, they are not doing it. if you're saying it would suddenly become a scheme involving the majority of under-contract players since they outnumber free agents, then I'm just going to say no it wouldn't. you would need everyone to agree to it without giving up the secret. and that ignores that 90% of the playoffs consists of team who can barely beat each other even trying their hardest. who is good enough to throw games, assuming they still want to advance to throw more games? basically the warriors and cavs. kd and iggy and livingston could've thrown some games to help their own contracts this year. i don't know the finances of throwing games, but you could probably just go hook up with some shady people and make enough money to cover whatever slight cap rise you think there could be by throwing a game or two yourself.
The difference is a direct correlation of losing or having 7 game series and what they're paid the very next year. The current system takes that out of the players hands. Literally everyone on the team and the other team would be on the same page trying to get a larger cap figure. That is poor incentive to play your best.
