No Salary Cap Smoothing. Huge Cap Increase Set for 2016 [ESPN]

Should give it to the fans in ticket relief. Therefore all parties win

 

The "struggling teams" argument went up in smoke when the Kings were sold with a valuation over $500 million. Player reaction to that sale spoke volumes. Players clearly feel they gave up way too much in the last CBA.

At first, I was glad the owners "won" last time, but my stance has changed with the Kings and Clippers sales. I don't buy the "poor" team argument anymore. That's a bunch of garbage.

Owners are just as "greedy" as the players and there are no losers on either side. The players want the owners to return the pound of flesh they gave up last time and I don't blame them. Expect a long lockout if the owners aren't ready to make big concessions.

 

Except for the players and owners? Again, the NBA is a BUSINESS. It is their job to earn more and more money for themselves.

 

1) Only the fans win
2) Ticket prices are not tied to player salaries. This is a huge economic myth among fans. Teams will charge as much as they can for tickets until they hit that point where the fans stop buying them in enough numbers for it to bend the curve the other way. Sports leagues put a lot of research into making sure the ticket prices are at the right point on the curve to maximize revenues. You could cut every player's salary by $1 million each and the teams wouldn't lower ticket prices.

Onto the issue at hand, the rank and file are letting the stars screw them.

 

Regardless of this, they're still on the road to a lengthy work stoppage... players union is finally getting the balls its always lacked (ironically, they're now being led by a woman), and they're not going to bend over anymore.

While a salary cap increase sounds nice, it means nothing if the max contracts don't go up along with it (or do away with the "max" contract concept). Also, an across the board increase really doesn't change what teams will end up doing... just the relative value of all contracts should go up proportionately.

 

The max is tied to a percentage of the salary cap isn't it? So it would go up proportionately with a massive cap increase. That's the whole point. Guys like Lebron who can be a free agent that year are opposed to the cap smoothing because they want to get a mega max that year and then say a big f you to the other players and the teams who will have to deal with that later.

 

Yup. This is going to create an absurd situation with all the players in 2016 Free Agency getting mega contracts, and then a lockout/strike happening for 2017 that probably will try to correct everything again and create more balance. Everyone who signs before 2016 and after 2016 probably won't get so lucky.

This also creates some absurdity in team-building of the next years with 2016 having teams with bizarre amounts of capspace and 2017 probably going to a complete different and unpredictable system.

 

Well, ultimately Lebron and Durant do not want a max cap on contracts... even though a salary cap league that has things like "bird rights" and "luxury tax" always will have a degree of how big a contract can be.

But, they figure that the game is flush with cash... and not enough of that is going to the players... and they're probably right.

 

All of this because Lebron James pitched a fit about not being able to make $30 million.

I normally side with players in labor disputes, but on this particular issue, the NBA players are STILL being stupid and getting screwed, they are just taking it from their own side this time.

 

This isn't what the cap smoothing is about.

They can't break the existence of a max contract in time. Instead, they are going to go into free agency in a year where the Max explodes along with the cap. But don't be fooled about it being "not enough going to the players." One of the options the league was willing to do was basically doing a marginal increase of the cap but then distributing the rest in even amounts to ALL players. That would still guarantee the same percentage of revenue went to the players. The problem is that Lebron wouldn't get enough.

This is ENTIRELY about the stars getting a big payday in one wild offseason. That's it.

 

Hopefully this helps us keep Brewer

 

I know what cap smoothing is... and I'm saying that regardless of whether its one big pay-day or a small increase... they're still heading for a work stoppage in-part due to the issues I mentioned above.

Again, any increase with a huge cap increase is still just a relative increase. The stars get paid more, but so do the scrubs.

Stars (the mega-super stars that "carry" the league) want to be paid at an exponential level to the rest of the league.

 

The scrubs aren't going to end up making more though, that's the thing.

The league's idea would have seen the excess money that wasn't included in a cap hike distributed evenly to the players. A scrub would make more THAT way. This way, the biggest chunk of the money will go players who are free agents, particularly stars. The vast majority of players won't get to be free agents that year so they will see no benefit.

 

This is exactly it. The big free agents in 2016 are going to get all the benefits of this. All the other players generally get screwed, in one way or another.

 

But the problem the players union will have is that they should... with an overall max contract value still in place (even if increased)... and every team still has room under the increased cap, there's going to be more money that teams need to distribute on all players that according to you, may not happen.

The players union feels the salary structure, no matter how you slice it, its flawed (role-players want to reap the benefits of the TV money, and stars want to make an infinite amount)..... hence the work stoppage rumblings.

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-partner="tweetdeck"><p>Based on current cap projections:
Kyrie Irving's max extension: 5 yrs, $89.5M
Anthony Davis's max possible extension: 5 yrs, $145M</p>&mdash; David Weiner (@BimaThug) <a href="https://twitter.com/BimaThug/status/576091875783745536">March 12, 2015</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Just look at those numbers.

Got darn.

 

But there will still be a max contract value in place... so even though big free agents will have their overall salaries go up... it still needs to be a certain percentage of the cap.

 

But the player's union could accept the smoothing proposal, give ALL their players some extra money, and still have a work stoppage to address longer term issues. Instead, all the extra money in 2016 is going to go to a small number of players. Conveniently, both the President and VP of the NBAPA can free free agents in 2016.

 

Correct, but it's a one time explosion in the max value. Most players will be under contract and won't get to be a free agent that offseason. So for them, instead of getting an even cut of the pie from that year's huge revenue explosion, they'll watch the majority of it get gobbled up by stars that year.

This is why cap smoothing is better for the rank and file. For most of those players they will never get to benefit from the cap explosion, but with smoothing they'd all get a chunk.

This would be like if Clutch decided to give the board $100 million dollars but we got to vote on how it was distributed and the majority of us voted to only give it to people with Hakeem status instead of taking equal cuts. You are voting against your own financial interests!

 

Yes, agreed... I said a work stoppage is going to likely happen regardless.