The effects of waiving players - Lebron got his wish

The way buyouts work is currently broken and needs to be fixed. Teams should not be allowed to buyout a player mid season, they should be allowed to waive them and then other teams can bid for them based on their current win/loss with the highest loss teams getting first choice. If no team claims them then the team that waived them should be allowed to buyout the contract and make the player a free agent but that player shouldn't be playoff eligible for the current season.

The way buyouts currently work only benefits the super teams and I think if the league wants more competitive balance they need to squash this or else its only going to get worse.

The Cavs basically got Bogut and D-Will for nothing. Didn't have to give up anything of any substance and were over the cap too. Which is just insane if you ask me.

 

Are you really speaking because you are concerned about parity or do you just hate Lebron?

1) The Cap has been around before Lebron started playing in the NBA. While Cavs do indeed have the highest payroll what they're doing isn't new in the history of the league.
2) Lakers won 2 rings thanks to having a highest payroll in the NBA. They had Kobe, Bynum and Gasol making the max and then odom and Artest making a hefty chunk of change. Celtics who were their rivals had the same if not more expensive payroll, with the big 3 making the max. In fact Lakers and Celtics were the reason why the luxury tax were reworked, these two teams were paying 90M in salary when the tax was 60M. So those teams were 30% over the limit which in comparison to what the Cavs are paying now is just chump change.
3) Cavs arent even the most ridiculous team in the league today, it would be GSW with 4 all star players. Now KD gets injured suddenly it's all about Lebron getting what he wants? Why weren't you complaining about this when GSW signed KD and then got Pachulia, Mcgee and David West?

The reality is contenders will always get vets on a discount because these guys want to win a ring. Making all sorts of rules is just taking away their rights to sign with the team they want when they're already willing to get penalzied by making the bare minimum. The Rockets themselves have benefitted from this, the past couple of years they had Josh Smith, Jason Terry, Prigrioni and Ty Lawson signing for the minimum and this year they had Nene signing for the minimum. To turn around now and complain about Lebron "getting what he wants" when contenders have been doing this for years just tells me you're a Lebron hater more than anything else. How many vets have Spurs signed on vet minimum again over the past 10 years?

 

TL;DR

Please love my Lebron.

 

Check mate by Lebron, much better GM than there are some actual GM's.

 

Dude Lebron doesn't need your love, he has 3 rings. 4 MVPs and 3 Finals MVPs to keep him company every night.

 

That's great but I never took you for a Cavs fan. Oh well, at least we know your true colors now.


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Yes, I would be in favor of changes to the rules.

It's already lame enough that we have super teams, it only gets lamer when solid to good vets join on after the deadline to play backup roles for peanuts.

It's like we are playing nuclear war and the Warriors are the US, Cleveland is Russia and the rest of the teams get to be third world countries trying to figure out strategies to upset them like Afghanistan.

Oh, Lebron isn't happy with his roster with three hall of famers, a former all star coming off the bench and a bunch of guys he handpicked getting paid big dollars? Let's just give him another hall of famer past his prime and another former #1 pick for the minimum!

 

The Union will fight hard for the Right to Work, so not much use to saying players who clear waivers aren't playoff eligible (as @Tha_Dude suggests) which effectively limits their choices. Maybe a compromise is after clearing waivers, teams over the Tax line can't use an exception other than the Injury Replacement Exception to remain playoff eligible; and no one can use the minimum exception, since the player is already still getting paid at least that, and he's the one who agreed to the buyout to begin with. He can still sign for minimum but forfeits his playoff eligibility.

This rule would only get triggered by a buyout, so players cut without a buyout like TJones are unaffected.

Question would be, would owners object to this since it will hurt their ability to negotiate a buyout to begin with. I'd argue,,,tough luck, you are the one who accepted the contract. You could soften this by saying any buyout before the season begins is not affected by this rule change.

Love this analogy. Rockets are the terrorists no one wants to face who embrace a highly-volatile strategy of bombing away at unprecedented levels.

 

It also pisses me off the players don't go to the highest bidder. Like I get they want a title but if you look at the guys who got bought out and the teams they went to its just kind of like a "come on man" situation.

 

Lol that's what I don't understand. All those contracts they handed out was supposed to handicap them but they never did

 

Why would a player agree to a buyout if he didn't have the freedom to go to any team he wanted? He might as well just dare the team to waive him. What could be done is to forbid midseason buyouts. If buyouts happened only in the offseason, teams would have more options and resources to compete for these players. They would essentially the same as any UFAs.

 

That's kind of what I was saying. My recommendation wasn't to limit player freedom to go to the team they wanted but to limit their eligibility for that season with the team if they were bought out mid year.

 

Attach compensation to it. You sign a player that gets a buyout post trade deadline you forfeit your next available second round pick. If you have no second round picks available in the next two drafts, you aren't eligible to sign a player who was bought out post trade deadline.

 

It's been around so long but this year it's egregious.

Calderon got paid almost 500k for roughly 2 hours of "work" by gsw just to be released to sign Matt Barnes.

Cleveland is insanely above the luxury tax and we're the only team to not post a profit last year and here they are booming it up some more.

I like the idea of the waiver process first. If no one claims the player then a buyout can ensue. But their has to be a competitive balance between the super teams and the other playoff teams.

Maybe something like being over the luxury tax means you can't provide a full minimum salary but rather something like half or 200k or something. Or impose further cap ramifications, something steep, like the repeater tax is considered.

But honestly. It's whatever, if your not the super teams you have to be super smart to try and gain an advantage. Credit to morey for recognizing this and clearing more cap space to offer than any other playoff teams in hopes of outbidding. Didn't work but a valiant strategy and effort.

 

I'm in agreement that it's just gotten too egregious.

To be clear though, a bought out player DOES go through waivers, just for his fully salary. And the problem with any sort of additional waiver system is the same thing as what happened with Bogut and Deron this year. Once bought out with the intention of signing somewhere, is another team going to risk adding an angry player to their team?

I think a system where it costs you something is required. Even cutting what they can offer doesn't matter as proven by every one of these signings ever. (morey definitely misread the situation thinking more money would matter)

I think my second round pick system would work.
Sign a player that has received a buyout AFTER the trade deadline but before the playoff eligibility deadline and it costs you a second round pick unless you have an injury waiver approved. (meaning if a player on your roster who plays a certain % of games or minutes gets hurt, you can get around the 2nd round pick cost). You could amend this a little to say the 2nd round pick penalty only applies to players signed for the minimum, meaning teams that have cap room aren't penalized for it. You could take it further if you wanted to be punitive against teams in the luxury tax and do something where for luxury tax calculations, the player's FULL SALARY for the year counts into the equation. So a team below the luxury tax might go into the tax by signing a guy in this circumstance and a team already in the tax would have substantial cost associated with it.

Example would be Bogut and Deron. Adding those two players would cost Cleveland 2 2nd round picks plus for luxury tax purposes it would be like they added $20 million to their payroll. The last part perhaps is too punitive, so maybe you make it 1/2 the total salary they received in the year counts to the luxury tax.

Once the playoff eligibility deadline has passed you can sign guys without penalty for regular season depth or future deals, etc. but they aren't playoff eligible.

 

I don't have a problem with the current system other than the fact that a traded player can return to the team that traded him within 12 months in certain circumstances. For example Bogut could have returned to Golden State as it turned out.

Otherwise the players go through the waiver process and teams have the right to claim them at their existing salary. For all the complaining about LeBron getting help; how good are Bogut and Williams at this point? Bogut is out of shape and isn't likely to consistently play more than 10 minutes a night. Williams is a bad defender, poor shooter and no team would deal for him at the deadline.

 

justtxyank has got this figured out. To paraphrase the late great Bill Paxton, "Why don't we put him in charge?"