Pretend you can come down the mountain with the NBA's next CBA etched in stone tablets. What would you do to make the league perfect? Myself: Institute a Franchise Tag rule, but learn from the NFL: This should be a rare tool for the teams to break out, not an unfair loophole to screw a FA when negotiations go poorly. It should be for the "Face of the Franchise" not every player that has a promising year. To qualify, the FA must be with the team for at least 4 years prior and won an MVP, led the league in scoring/rebounding/or assists, or made the All-NBA first, second, or third team twice in those years. The team can not use the tag more than once every three years. The tag comes with a forfeiture of that team's draft pick and a player early termination clause after one year. The team may not trade the player for at least two years if the player signs the franchise deal to stay. Other teams can negotiate a S&T for a franchised player (only exception to below), but the contract can only be equal to a FA contract by that team (less money, years, as in normal FA signings) and the original team has the right to accept or decline the offer. No more "here's some belly button lint, a TE, and a draft pick in the high 20s" compensation. Original team still carries high risk that the player walks after a year and can not franchise him a second time to ensure compensation. Player at worst loses the free agency for one year but is then able to still leave with no strings the next summer or can accept the security of a max deal. Player can't sign the max deal and subsequently demand a trade with the bigger contract in hand (for at least 2 years). Kill the S&T. Period. I've mentioned this before, but the S&T has been a major culprit in a lot of what's wrong today: a means for players to hold franchises hostage and a disincentive for teams to keep their budgets at/near/under the cap. It squashes the entire point of the Larry Bird rule and undercuts the financial incentive stay with the original team (able to offer a bigger contract). The only argument for S&Ts is so teams aren't left with nothing when a guy leaves...but that's part of free agency. Killing the S&T puts those advantages back in place. Make the MLE biannual and the LLE annual. They got the frequencies backwards. Most of the regrettable contracts out there are the MLE deals. Cut them back and limit their size to 3 years and eligible only for outside FAs. Double Luxury Tax Despite the owners going on and on about how they can't afford player salaries, they've always been their worst enemies. The Luxury Tax worked. The top end of the payrolls shrunk immediately and significantly and half the league is openly terrified of crossing the tax line (75% are below it). They are talking about a hard cap, but I think that would be awful for the league. Maintain your flexibility - don't join the NFL in teams forced to cut valuable players each offseason over contracts. Let teams on the cusp make the extra push to go for it all. Employ a second, double, tax line. $2 per $1 over it. The current tax line is set at ~ 21% of the cap, so put the double tax at 42% (This year: Cap at $58M, Tax at $70M, 2Tax would be $82M...five teams are above that) This also is a mechanism to increase revenue sharing and cut down on the ability for high revenue teams (Lakers) to spend their way over low revenue teams (Bucks). Lemon Law...or the Elton Brand rule The other common way teams kill their finances is handing out a max contract and watch the player immediately fall off a cliff. Everyone jokes about the guys that murder the league in a contract year only to sign a max deal and show up fat and lazy in October. The NBA wants reduced salaries and 3/4 year limits....but that's unfair to the already underpaid franchise guys (Kobe, LeBron) and makes it tougher for teams to nail down their stars long term. I say, add in Lemon Law Clauses. Contracts above the MLE may be bought out for 40% of the remaining value after 2 years. If the player missed more than 20 games due to injury, the buy out may be for no less than 70% of the remaining value. Lemon Law buy outs remain on the cap for at least one additional season. Enhance the NBDL and Snuff out One&Done College Kids Work with the NCAA - kids that accept a scholarship are ineligible for the NBA draft for 3 years, even if they don't stay with the college team for whatever reason. NBDL teams given a major ($150k) and minor ($70k) annual salary exception (currently, salaries are capped at about $26K), both being one year deals and only partially guaranteed ($10K buyout clause). NBDL easily makes back its higher payrolls with significantly increased box office appeal. Kids that aren't meant for college don't have to go. They can get better prepared going against lower-tier NBA talent, have NBA style coaching, and have at least a year of not being coddled. Players are free to sign with agents and pursue marketing deals fro additional income. NCAA can be more "pure" as a student athlete league, reduce violations, and offset individual talent loss with 3 year commitments. NCAA gets away from coaches (Calipari) recruiting one&done uncoachable prima donnas. NBA receives 19 year olds with better preparation and maturity or college players that are more developed. Kill the "Trade, Waive, Recycle" Loophole (Barry, Ilgauskas, etc) Players traded and subsequently bought out can sign with any of the other 29 squads after 1 week (vs 30 days), but if they return to their previous team they are ineligible for the playoffs.
Hard cap with the max contract being 50 percent of max. That way each team can only afford one max guy. No more superfriends. Teams can release players and have them not count against the cap. They would still have to pay them though unless they get a contract from somewhere else. Rookie contracts end after two years. Edit:
Franchise Tag: Max contract for one year, cannot give to same player in consecutive years, can only use once per offseason. Must be at least 20 years old to play. A player who enters the draft coming from another league must be bought out if his contract is not expired. That way we don't have guys like Rubio staying in Europe because he didn't like what team drafted him. I liked what you had about the buyout after a trade rule, so I'd have it. I like the lemon law too. I'd also impose a hefty penalty on teams that fail to make the playoffs in a certain time span.
i think it should make it to where you can only have two max contracts. two max players arent guaranteed to make a lot of noise or win championships. 3 is a different story. plus there's too many all stars to just be 1 per team.
Just because you're an all-star doesn't mean you pay them 30 million a year. That is what a 50 percent max contract is. Its reserved for guys like Kobe, Lebron, and Duncan who can carry a team on their own.
I agree with killing S&T. Franchise tag doesn't work. To reduce franchise player movement, make all FA restricted until the player has played for the same team for 7 years. To prevent player collusion, I advocate a Pyramid pay scale. It goes something like this. Four contract tiers: (All salaries are in annual average for the duration of the contract; The numbers are somewhat arbitrary. The scale can be determined yearly according to revenue, similar to how they currently determine the salary cap.) Tier-1 20M - 30M Tier-2 10M - 20M Tier-3 5M -10M Tier-4 <5M (including rookie contracts) Each team can have no more than ONE tier-1 contract. Each team can have no more than TWO tier-2 or higher contracts. Each team can have no more than SEVEN tier-3 or higher contracts. Get rid of the salary cap. You can trade players anyway you want (no need for salary matching) as long as you keep the Pyramid intact. (So conceivably, a team like the Clipper can trade a Blake Griffin for a LeBron James straight up.) The Pyramid is design to limit teams from having anything more than a Batman-Robin tandem. Of course, if a superstar is willing to sign a tier-2 or tier-3 contract in order to play with another superstar, then good for him.j But that will make him think real hard.
Hard cap with no exceptions. The MLE and Bi-Annual exception are gone. No salary matching for trades. Max Salaries can be up to 50% of hard cap. If the max salaries are allowed up to 60% of hard cap, there is no need for a franchise tag. 2-3 max players won't team up, unless they are willing to give up lots of dough. The best players don't get undervalued. The roleplayes contracts won't artficially be inflated with the MLE. They will actually get less money, because the superstars will get larger contracts. It even allows the small market team to pick up a superstar, since the Lakers, Celtics, Heat will only have one superstar. The superstars will want to leave to make more money.
No long term guaranteed contracts, only the first year can be guaranteed. No signing bonuses to avoid this rule. No exceptions for injury. No maximum or minimum salaries. The players can make as much as the owners are willing to pay them and as little as they are willing to work for (though I suppose minimum wage laws would still apply). Hard salary cap and hard salary floor (something in the neighborhood of 65 and 45). No limitation on roster size or number of active players. If you want to play 30 guys and can fit them under the cap, that is fine. No salary matching in trades, if both teams can work the trade with their caps, the trade is fine. Draft picks may be traded freely without restriction, if you want to trade away your next five first round picks like the Wolves, that is your business.
Move the trade deadline up to late December, early January closer to the half way mark of the season. Having it in late Feb. is too long.
I had posted something similar in another thread. A fan of a Hard Cap. Sort of. A team could re-sign their players on roster at the end of the previous year and go over the cap. If over the cap, all players not on team last year must sign for league minimum. A team must sign their own "free" agents first or forfeit the ability to go over the cap. Lemon Law Agree. Team gets the option to take hit over life of contract or all remaining dollars the following year. A contract bankruptcy of sorts. Off season trades have to fit under the salary cap and must be completed after team has signed their own free agents or forfeit rights to sign them going over cap. Trades during season would be similar to current structure. If not, I think trades would be too hard to complete which I like the trade possibilities.
I think a franchise tag is dumb if somebody doesn't want be there why force him. Personally F the pitts and Green bays of the world. If you want to live in crappy cities don't expect your team to be good.
Interesting ideas. Personally I think the NFL has it pretty close to correct. Hard Cap- You can't exceed for any reason (that's the definition of a hard cap). No exceptions - Since you can't exceed the cap then exceptions make no sense. The only trade rule is that at the end of the trade you must be under the cap. Franchise Tag - Allow teams to franchise a player and automatically retain them but they must pay them the average of the top 3 salaries in the league. The NFL pays the average for a certain postion but that would be too hard to determine in the NBA. The pay by position in the NBA also isn't as important because there's not a dramatically different payscale for various positions as there is in the NFL. That's really all you need. Everything will work itself out. You don't need to dictate non-guarenteed deals because if you truely have a hard cap then they become a neccessity. Teams locking themselves into long term teams take the chance of killing their cap for years. Also, the relaxed trade rules will require you to have the flexibilty to easily cut players if you make a 2 or more for 1 deal. Since the NBA has fewer players and one guy can effect things more than they can in the NFL you'd still see some guarenteed deals but those would be the exception. Lebron, Howard, Paul and such would get guarenteed money but most everyone else would get partially guarenteed or non-guarenteed deals. That would be required to mitigate a team's risk. This would guarentee that a team can retain their stars if they are willing to pay the money. Is it fair to the star that they can't move to a new team? I'd argue that it is because the player is getting paid a huge amount of money. The top end superstars would make that money anywhere they go so it's less fair to them but still a good deal. Other good players who are important to a team could get franchised but their team would be overpaying to keep them. So for the vast majority of the league it's more than fair and everyone still gets paid (which seems to be the #1 priority nowdays). Would guys complain when they are franchised? Sure they would, everyone would like to be paid the most they can and also play where ever they like, but unfortunately there's trade offs. A guy like Duante Robinson can be angry that the Texans franchised him but at the end of the day he was making $14 M per season which is way, way over his true market value. A hard cap would force teams to make choices. You have one high salary player and you want to sign/retain another. Ok, that's perfectly legal but now you'll have to clear off enough salary to do it so that means that you might end up cutting your next best players in order to have the money for the signing. Without exceptions that's a pretty big trade off and is much less of a no-brainer than it is in today's NBA. Do you want two stars and not much for complementary players or do you want one star and really good complementary players? It's a tough choice.
Do you also think that the draft is dumb? Should guys from college just become free agents? Unless you level the playing field how to you expect the league to be competitive? Should they contract the league down to a 10 team league? What's the point of having NBA versions of the Pittsburg Pirates that can't compete?
ban lebron and melo for being drama queens and vanity wh*res. In all seriousness, the player should get traded by league/ a team's means as opposed to their own liking
Mitigating a team's risk is the prime objective?! No guarantees! What about the player's risk of getting injured. Man, you guys are really trying to rape the players. Not ONE person in this thread gave any concession to the players. Just take, take, take. I know we are trying to play "God" here, but man, the only players y'all care about is the franchise players; yet, even still, you won't let them become free agents ever, until they are over the hill. Everyone else gets screwed, just like football players get screwed. 3yrs and out, with no guarantees. sigh Good thing there is a union to prevent Stern from being "God." I do agree with Lower Max Shorten Max Length Eliminate MLE maybe only one Larry Bird per year, which I think is better than Franchise, since it isn't just for Max players. But when I look at that, I know I need to give something back to the middle class players, who the NFL doesn't really care about. btw: don't just want to b****. I do have a cool idea that I'd like to post, but I have to flesh it out first. Basic idea is a Profitability Exception, based how much profit the owners made in a year. Fiscal conservatism is rewarded not just when you get under the cap, but as an exception of some sort when you are above cap but below tax. more later when i have time to think about it more. I'm thinking of changing the BRI profit sharing to balance how the elimination of old CBA stuff makes owners more money.
What about the minimum salary exception? Are you taking that away, too? Anyone at the cap would have to purge a player then. Have less players?
