The Worth of a Superstar

All I know is...a LOT more than they are paid now.

The max contract is a huge advantage for teams that get max players.

 

New York would pay 50 million a piece

Morey would offer 20 million For both and ask for picks and say he overspend.

 

Ok, If you are talking the revenue they bring in and how much moeny they bring in. Lebron, Kobe and the higher echelon are like 30 million dollar players give or take a few. But at the same rate, all these guys getting 5 million or really anything else, lamar odom, even bynum. They don't bring in revenue, they are strictly for basketball.
So if you are talking about worth in revenue, stars of team should gte 90 percent of the players salary and the rest of teh guys should be minimums or close. They are still millionairs, but the way the NBA is marketed that is hwo much they are worth these days.

The NBPA wouldn't do that in a million years.

 

Wouldn't no caps mean that mediocre role players get overpaid? I'm not familiar with baseball, hence the question.

 

Baseball is a different beast from basketball. Players spend years developing in the minors. And then they get 6 year restricted status on the major league level. The inflated value of baseball FAs has more to do with lack of competition(there are only so many FAS in any given year) than anything else.

As for a superstar's worth, have a hard cap with no restrictions and we'll find out.

 

On the contrary, no cap means that superstars actually get around $50 million (if they are worth it) and the mediocre players would get less than $2 mil per year, some less than $1 mil per year. It really rewards your top players and starter level players get mid level while everyone else gets crap. Sort of like NFL.

 

I think the real question is what these guys are worth if there is a $65MM *hard cap*. Is Lebron worth $50MM if you can't surround him with any talent? I'd love to see the league with no max salaries and a hard cap with no exceptions. It would force teams to actually determine the value of these guys in relation to role players, who are also absolutely necessary to win a title.

 

I have a question for everyone who wants no max salaries or such. Are you all still in favor of the current rookie contract structure or would you want to change it to a free market system?

 

I think a rookie scale makes sense - otherwise, you see ridiculous inflation based on "potential" as you saw in the NFL, where you ended up with #1 unproven QBs like Sam Bradford or Jamarcus Russell making more than proven stars.

There's inherent uncertainty with rookies - and you're sort of forced to take them - so I think it makes sense to have caps there. But with free agents, those are totally at the discretion of the team, so I think they should open the market up. But it HAS to be paired with a hard cap or it just rewards wealthy teams, as you see in baseball.

The NFL has this already - hard cap, no max salaries - and you see a lot of good cap management by the teams.

 

I can definitely see him do just that...Offering 20 million for both players together and try to pry some draft pick while other teams offer like 25-30 million a player...

 

What about 2 year rookie contracts? That way you can try, but if they're good, you'll have to buy. Think about the fact that Blake Griffin will be 26 before he can leave the Clippers, or that Lebron wasted away in Cleveland for God knows how many years.

 

1) I would pay $100 million.
2) I would pay $100 million and borrow $35 million to cover the difference between $65 mil and $100 mil.

 

Lebron chose to sign an extension in Cleveland, so I don't feel sorry for him. I think how long I would make rookie contracts would depend on age requirements for joining the NBA. If you're drafting 18 year olds, there's no use of having a two year contract, because you'll be stuck developing him and then he's free to go wherever once he's good. If they make people stay in college for 2 or 3 years, I'd be more on board with shorter rookie contracts.

The negative to the whole hard cap / no max salaries thing is that there's no way for a team to retain its draftees - they'd be in a free market with everyone else. So to account for that, I'd let teams negotiate with their own players and extend contracts maybe 2 years before someone is a free agent. Or maybe a franchise tag of some sort, but that can get tricky. Whatever the system, there has to be an ability for a team to have an edge in keeping its own players. You could even make signing contracts with players you drafted costs 20% less against the cap or something. That effectively allows teams to pay their own drafted players more than other teams can. Once a player leaves their original team, they lose that benefit permanently - so it would be a huge incentive for players to stay as long as possible with their original team.

 

As ridiculous as it may sound, I think some team would be willing to pay him close to that amount. Some awful team would think that it's better to be an awful team with Lebron than an awful team with no star power.

And, while you need 5 guys on the court to win, do you remember the team Lebron took to the finals in 2007?? Yea....you'll do much better getting a top 10 player and finding whatever cheap players fit than trying to assemble a balanced team of good players.

 

But the Eastern Conference was terrible that year - the best team had low 50's wins and Cleveland got swept when they finally ran into a good team. And they never could duplicate that success in all of Lebron's other years in Cleveland, so it's not really a winning recipe.

But if he wanted to take the $50MM and someone was willing to pay him that, I'd be OK with it. That's where parity comes into play - if he wants to win, he'll have to do it with worse teammates than other lesser stars would have. That's fine with me - if he can pull it off, more power to him.

 

personally i wouldn't mind if they got rid of rookie contracts that artificially underpay a lot of players or if they just made them all 2 years or so (after that, if you don't wanna pay market prices, too bad). but if we're going to stick with something similar to the current system, why not just make it based on the age/college experience of the draftee? you draft a freshman/19 year old and you get the current 4 years (2 years + 2 team options), sophomore/20 year old you get 3 years (2 years + team option), juniors and seniors/21+ you get 2 years. this way players have the freedom to declare whenever (as they should have), they don't have to worry about declaring early and "starting the clock" to their big contract because everyone has the same clock and for GM's drafting a younger player isn't necessarily any disadvantage versus drafting an older player. most players are either at or are very near their eventual peak by the time they are 22 or 23 and this schedule would essentially force you to pay market prices at this time. if a team can't properly evaluate a junior or senior in 2 years then they deserve whatever they get.

while i don't know why there really should be so many advantages for a team when it comes to signing their own players (though i do like bird rights for not breaking teams up purposes), this is one of the better solutions i've heard. every other solution seems to essentially try to punish the player for daring to leave his team by forcing him to take less. instead, this allows for a paper advantage to the team instead of a monetary punishment to the player.