Truehoop: We are losing a season over the FEELING of competitive balance

Yes, absolutely. It's very telling that owners aren't pushing for a franchise tag. What small market owners are essentially saying is that they don't mind big market teams having an advantage as long as small market teams can make a nice profit.

This is something the player's union did a very poor job of explaining to the public, that without a more robust revenue sharing between teams, all their talk of competitive balance is smoke and mirrors.

 

I said that in the other thread, if you can't get true competitive balance, than the profit is the next best thing.

The Haves need the Have nots to keep the league viable.

DD

 

If it's purely about profit, we'd have a deal because the owners wouldn't care about system issues. They aren't pushing a "franchise tag" because it's a "blood issue" to the players that is a complete non-starter.

Just because system changes won't 100% of the time prevent players from switching teams doesn't mean there should be changes that would affect some.

 

By and large the owners' provisions are trying to
A: eliminate the ability of teams in the luxury tax to match offers made by teams with cap room to OTHER TEAMS' free agents (whether that be by MLE or S&T/E&T),
B: Strongly discourage spending over $10M past the tax line.

I would argue that there's nothing wrong with attempting A, and attempting B isn't needed if you do A right. Does A limit player movement? Yeah. But it limits it in what I think is a necessary way.

Players try to paint it as the owners locking them up from signing anywhere. Nope. You can sign anywhere you want. You just might make less money by joining a capped-out contender/glamor market team than by joining a young lottery team or sticking around to actually use the Bird rights with your own team. Isn't that kind of the way a soft salary cap is intended to work?

Despite the fact that I actually do think most points of the owner's proposal would improve the game, I agree that at this point they're more concerned with kicking the players while they're down than actually creating parity.

 

The luxury tax really isn't about the players, the players are the collateral damage of what is essentially a coordinated strike by small team owners against large team owners.

The real problem comes from the player representative, he's the embodiment of the luxury tax, he would go from costing jerry buss 7.4 (3.7 x 2) to 16.65 (3.7 x 4.5), the latter value way beyond anything Buss would be willing to pay for him, and hence lead to him having to find a new home outside LA.

Even a Supreme Court Justice would excuse themselves in negotiating a condition due to the massive conflict of interests present, but instead what you had was the not so smart, but smartest guy in the room talking to a bunch of idiots representing each team, that's how religions get started.

People keep saying money doesn't win championships, but then when you ask, how many nba finals have been played by and won by teams a fair chunk over the luxury cap, you end up with about a 75% hit rate despite there only being 3 or 4 teams that even qualify for those conditions.

 

75% hit rate for the years LA and Bos became relevant again. Dallas is included in that. Miami isn't, along with the 2 of the other 3 conf final teams from this past year. The Spurs weren't when they won, and neither were the Cavs when they lost in 07. Was Orlando when they lost to LA? I don't believe Miami was in 06. I'm sure we could go back in other seasons and find other contending teams that were close to a title that weren't either, such as the 02 Kings.

 

I think if we worked out a system where teams can literally trade excess cap space for draft picks, it might just work.

For instance, let's say the Lakers have spend more then the limit and Cleveland has cap space they don't plan to use.

Cleveland trades the space to LA for their next draft picks, unprotected.

LA may benefit in the short term, but after constantly having to trade picks they'd eventually have to blow up the roster to get under the cap. This also works because teams over the cap would have trouble trading for star players w/o picks.

Furthermore, instead of Cleveland having to waste cap space on bad deals to reach the minimum amount of salary(Pistons '09) they can add some youth to the team.

I realize it will never happen and that the idea is kind of crazy, but I'm interested on your take.

 

Exactly. The biggest incentive for a team to sign players in spite of a luxury tax is to push for a title run. The team is already good and making money.

I guess what really bothers these small market teams is that its so hard to attract or keep free agents when there are teams that are 1) more competitive, 2) in a bigger market, and 3) so profitable that they'll increase demand for a player even though they're above the cap.

The players are correct when they say the owner's proposal is intended to inhibit movement of free agents, which will affect player salaries. It's a definite double-whammy when combined with a reduction in the BRI split.

So, you've got a league-wide cap on salaries through the BRI split, then you've got a per-team cap that is so firm it's practically a hard cap, and you've got an individual player cap with the maximum salary restrictions. Everybody will be coerced into spending BRI/30 plus or minus so many dollars, get to keep whatever profit they can squeak out, and any losses will just get passed to the employees through an escrow return? Wow, talk about gambling with the house's money! Vegas isn't this rigged!

I think better revenue sharing is the better answer here. These small market owners want to slow down the spending of big market teams, but none of them want to give up their share of the revenue windfall if they luck into the next big super star and suddenly become profitable. It's a lazy fix, for sure. It doesn't address any competitiveness imbalance, and I'm not even sure the owners want a more balanced league. They want to limit their losses but keep all their own profits. You can't lose!

 

Would you like to point out to me where I said that they did? Fisher is the very epitome of what the target was, which is where the conflict of interest arises.

Gasol isn't something you want to use as an example though, the Lakers acquired him simply because they spent money, it was a complete garbage giant expiring that was the reason they got him.

The owners have accepted you can't stop talent from coming together, what they've decided the target should then be is surrounding that talent with anything much better than the warm bodies Miami put forward last year.

Oklahoma has a bunch of talent, will their owner actually be able to play the $90m+ a year metagame required for that last hurdle for most teams? probably not, if that metagame gets forced into one where after $70m, acquiring additional talent can become prohibiting, to the point where even the Lakers balk at pushing over $80m for the 4th straight year, then it doesn't become a case of buying championships.

Money doesn't guarantee then win, it just makes it more likely.