Luxury Tax is not meant to help the poor teams that aren't spending over the luxury tax threshold. The Luxury Tax is not levied against "super friends" or Miami 3 situation, anyway. When superstars "team up", the target team has to be below the cap to sign a superstar to max or "near-max" contract. They can only use the salary cap space or the cap exceptions(MLE, Bi-Annual). They can't use both. The Knicks and Heat are rich teams. Forget about those teams approaching the luxury tax threshhold, $70.307 mil. Even if they do make a mid-season trade, they would have to match salaries on roleplayers that take up a miniscule amount of their salary cap compared to LeBron, Bosh, and Wade. They take back up to $100k+20% in salary that is traded away. They still couldn't take back enough salary to go over the $70.307 mil luxury tax threshold. The big fun cities like Miami, LA, NY also benefit by players willing to take a small paycut to team up. That's how Miami was able to
The league is too watered down. They need to remove a few teams. I know contraction has been tossed around in the past.
While I personally don't want Miami to win because I was disgusted at the manner in which Lebron & Bosh handled the situation, I believe that people's backlash at the creation of the "Superfriends" is premature. The fact of the matter is that this is the first time ever it has happened in this manner. I know someone of you will say "but what about Melo?", but the fact is that disgruntled stars have ALWAYS asked to be traded to teams who were title contenders, meaning they already had superstars. Now if this becomes a huge pattern over the next 10 years or something, then I would agree it would be a justified to disallow it. However, it occuring 1 time is not the time to do so. There are two differences but I'm not sure either is justification for changing everything. The minor one is that all these players are younger so that they should "put in" their due work & diligence, and the possibly heartache of not winning a title while on their own team before "chasing a title" on a stacked team. That is silly. The biggest reason people have issues with the players forming "Superfriends" on their own without the GM's is that people feel that it has cheapened and undermined the legitimacy of the game. It creates a feeling for the fans that the players care more about themselves than the game, and they have manipulated the rules in a way that ensures an unfair advantage. This sullying of the game creates a similar feeling that steroids in baseball and potentially betting on your own sporting events, a la Pete Rose, do. Instead of allowing a natural selection and chance to affect team construction, the luck of the draft, having the right pieces at the right time to make the big trade, or having the foresight to sign a potential star early enough, the action by the superfriends reeks of "scientific genetic alteration" of the NBA's genetic code. It is that undercurrent that fuels the backlash against Miami. While it is a personal choice to now root for or against Miami, it is an entirely different question on whether to essentially outlaw the practice entirely.
Why would you want to stop superstars form being on the same team? No Hakeem/Drexler, no Yao/McGrady, no Martin/?.
Morey's suggestion of hard cap + absolutely no rules (i.e. no rookie/max caps) is really the best way to go to prevent "superteams". Not sure if either sides go for it. But at the very least, the concept of "max" player must stop existing. The idea's simple, pay the superstars whatever they command. If Lebron and Wade could get $30-40 mil each instead of $15 mil apiece, they probably won't care too much for playing together.
I have nothing against great players wanting to team up together. Why shouldn't they? Outside LBJ's one hour special, there was no wrongs committed here. LBJ and Bosh were not obligated to sign extensions with their former teams. They are not slaves to their former teams. They fulfilled their contract and moved on. It is not like Paul or Williams talking about being on another team. Both of those guys played through the duration of their contracts and then did what they wanted. What is wrong with that? You are acting like they agreed to an extension then backed out of it. I don't exactly respect their decision, but I can respect the fact that they did finish out their contract before leaving.
Teaming up with other players doesn't bother me necessarily, but forcing the trade years before your contract is up does. However there are several solutions the NBA is surely looking at. One of those will the franchise tag scenario. They have the NFL to try this one out for a few months to see if it allows a solution. Here comes another one that I think sounds bad at first but it makes sense if you really want to solve the issue. You do away with sign and trades. If a star player is willing to become a free agent and leave at the end of a season, the they would have to forfeit their contract extension with their current team and leave their BIRD RIGHTS on the table. Maybe they could even increase the value of Bird Rights and allow for the franchise tag to be given where it allows the team to extend out the contract an additional year. This to me makes sense because it allows the team have the control back and if a franchise player gets tagged, they are unfortunate enough to get more money then they would in free agency for at least another year when the team could trade them on their terms if they wished and get better value then a trade exception the size of Lebron's TPE.
Impossible. Every team doesn't have the same chance to initially draft a stud (the best way to acquire one) because losing/tanking teams get a better shot. Right?
And that undercurrent is hypocritical, because if it's ok for a team to tank or get over on another via a bs trade, then how can you argue that it's bad for free agents to decide to team up? Especially when at the end of the day their "superteam" is still arguably worse than the team built from bs trades (Boston and LA)?
Remove cap. Big superstars want big money. One team will not want to pay multiple big superstars big money.
I believe a hard cap will solve a great many things. But the issue that keeps coming up for me is this idea ive seen presented before whereby people comapre the NFL and NBA in respect to what makes them popular and/or makes them fun to watch and popular. The argument, as I understand it, is that the NFL thrives under parity but the NBA doesnt. That the NBA needs super teams. And the example given is the 80's NBA. Im really not sure I buy into this and really dont understand why the two have diametrically opposed philosophies for popularity, or perceived stardom. The 80's was some time ago. Sure, the 80's was a high time for basketball viewership. But is that model still applicable today? Is their concrete evidence that a NBA with parity wouldnt thrive? And by parity, I dont mean engineering the process so superstars cant play together. But rather make it more even to which teams can have multiple superstars. Or perhaps I need more clarity on the issue. Comments?
The model still works today. Super teams have been dominant in every decade since the 90s. The only difference is now players choose to form them. The end result is no different...a few teams with a shot to win. The current Heat trio isn't even the most stacked team (see LA or Boston).* As far as why parity may not work, the NBA season has a lot more games so good luck getting fans to parity every night. The league is built on stars, since this is the one sport where one or two players can make all the difference in the world.*
In a way, the sort of parity I mean is the one where every team has a chance to built a dynasty. When the players choose, this is not so. So the difference you point out between the NBA of the past, and the one of the present, is really at the heart of issue.
Because it will marginalize the money 80% of vets will see. The MLE came about because of a troubling trend of teams handing out whopper contracts to the likes of Keith Van Horn and freezing out role players to tiny deals. The "middle class" was getting wiped out. I still say the solution is to turn the screws on the luxury tax model and make it painful to cross $80M (or less, keeping all teams in a relatively small window of payroll) and usher in universal contract incentives: All-NBA, MVP, Finals MVP, DPOY, ROY, and a few other carefully chosen achievements that bump contracts up a specific percentage. Players love it, because they aren't ironed into underpaying deals. It evens things out since a Dwight Howard, Kobe, or LeBron become more expensive over time and the lux tax becomes even more painful.
