A simple way of discouraging superteams: this will work

That Rocket Superteams were guys near the end of their Prime, 31 years or older. The 2 Barkley Super team basically only had one year left to do it and couldn't do it either years.

Same for Celtics, they were 30 to 31 years old, so they only had 1 or 2 years left to do it, and they did it.

Payton and Malone were WAY Past their prime.

Heats and Warriors are the only Superteam where the main guys are all around 28 years old

 

No, GSW will indeed have a Bird exception. Not the full Bird, but an exception to sign him above the cap, nonetheless. They can sign him to 120% of current salary, up to the Max ceiling.

What OP is suggesting is a Hard Cap with one exception -- the ability to sign only your own draft picks, when you are above the cap.

 

120% of KD's current salary is $31,848,120. They will NOT be using that bird exception. So it still falls outside of the OPs reasoning for keeping KD from signing with GSW.



Based on this info GSW has only about 38.5 Million committed in salary next year if KD opts out as expected to. That will leave about 63 million in cap space based on the estimate of a salary cap of 102 million next year. Part of me thinks it will be more as I think the NBA is trying to temper expectations.

KD will be a 10 year guy next year meaning his max salary can be up 35 million. He can't get there using the early bird rights. GS has been smart about their money thus far to get where they are and to be able to get KD and keep him long term, along with their core of players.

Iguodala, Curry and Livingston are FA's next summer and all will have bird rights.

So while I see where the OP is trying to go with his idea. It still does not prevent KD signing, because the benefit would still be there for Curry to be re-signed exceeding the cap, while KD is signed twice (once in FA and then again after the opt out) in available cap room. This would still not be prevented by the OPs idea.

The only thing that facilitated this situation, was bad planning on the part of the NBA in estimating their income which then leads to a huge jump in the salary cap based on that income. They tried to avoid this by trying to get the Players Association to agree to a smoothing of the increase, therefore bring us to where we are today.

 

Pipe dream.

The players union would never, EVER accept such a proposal.