Will Stern and owners bring down the "Franchise Tag" hammer in the next CBA?

because two superstars and one all star decided to play together. there are other superstars in the league, this is an overreaction.

 

I think people are thinking that this is the way the NBA is headed. Chris Paul is already demanding a trade to a contender with two years left on his contract...

 

Another big difference in the NFL is that the Franchise tag only effects potentially one out of fifty-three players on a team. In a game where players play only on defense or offense. This makes it a much more difficult choice on who to franchise tag in comparison to the NBA where you only have 15 players who play bigger individual roles. The franchise tag in the NBA would be a pretty obvious choice for every team other than the current Miami heat roster.

 

No, I haven't looked in the direction of the NFL since the Oilers left town. But, Artis gave me a little tutorial now. It sounds like an onerous lever in the NFL, and I can't imagine it'd be more palatable in the NBA where guaranteed multi-year contracts are the norm. As it is, I think restricted free agency is unfair and should be dispensed with. I think more restrictions on free agency would be a step in the wrong direction.

I agree with pgabriel on this one -- this is an overreaction to a single episode that hasn't yet been shown to upset competition. There have been other times in the past where players tried to take less money to make a super team, and competition wasn't adversely affected. They will have a chance to see how this season starts to go before they need to finalize the CBA anyway.

 

this happens all the time. hakeem wanted to be traded in 1991

 

But the paycut was small (less than 2mil per year) because their original teams could only offer the artificial max we have atm. If Toronto could offer Bosh 20mil per year, or Cleveland 40mil per year it would give them a much better chance. Look at how badly Bosh wanted that 6th year - money still matters.

 

No need to restrict FA. What you can do is a Batman-Robin pay scale.

You only allow a team to pay no more than two players above a certain level, say 10M, and only one of those players can be paid above a highest level, say 20M. (These numbers can be adjusted annually according to factors like revenues, market conditions, etc.) And you can pay as much as you want for the highest paid guy. Harden the cap a little so no team can have a substantially higher payroll than other teams.

That'll eliminate superstar collusion in their prime unless some of them are willing to play for role player salaries.

 

If you could pay ANY amount then that would hurt the small market teams, not help them. The larger markets could afford to pay more and it would be like baseball with the Yankees. Besides the owners are claiming they are losing hundreds of millions of dollars, so whether that is accurate or not, the last thing they will want is a policy that has the potential to increase that spending.

 

I like it.

 

Exactly

 

Every team not named the Lakers, Celtics, Heats, and Knicks should support that Franchise tag. Your looking at Lakers and Boston alone? Over 20 something championships off of this broken system. Almost half of all Championships are won by two teams in the NBA. I think its safe to say the other teams have a reason to believe they have no chance and their fanbases. Becasue they havent. You add in Chicagos 6 Championships and thats alot of Championships other teams havent won with just Chicago Boston and LA.

 

Is this a joke?

 

I like this solution. That would level the playing field immediately. Making $125M in 5 years is probably enough money to feed your kids.

 

A couple of points:

You are correct that the NFL Franchise tag can't be placed on a player for three consecutive seasons.

The NFL has another designation of "Transition Player". You only have to offer Transistion Players the average of the top 10 players at their position (as opposed to top 5 for Franchise Players). Transition players are allowed to receive contract offers from other teams ("Exclusive" Franchise players cannot but "non-exclusive" Franchis players can) but the players prior team has the right to match.

Franchise and Transistion tags can be used on any player.

There are many examples of Franchise tags being used to keep a player from going elsewhere. Likewise there are many cases of players ending a holdout in return for the team guarenteeing that they won't be franchised again. Albert Haynesworth had negotiated the "No Franchise Tag" clause in his deal and that is what allowed him to leave Tennesee as a free agent.

The primary differece between a NFL franchise tag and an NBA franchise tag is the fact that the NFL doesn't have a max contract and that the NFL is a hard cap.

Here's an example: Let's say you have an all-pro QB who is going to be a FA and wants to play elsewhere. You can Franchise him for two consecutive seasons and then Transition tag him and match any offer that he receives. If you're willing to pay the money then he can't go anywhere for the rest of his career. The problem in the NFL is that you have a few ridiculously high contracts at each position (see Peyton Manning) and you can't exceed the cap for any reason. Sure you can continue to pay the guy $16M/season but you don't have much money or any cap flexibility (remember no exceptions in the NFL) to acquire other players. Anything more than a season or two becomes cost prohibitive. That was the case with Carolina, they couldn't go on paying Julius Peppers $20M/season so they didn't tag him and let him walk.

In the NBA there's a max contract so the average of the top 5 isn't too big of a deal since a stud player is going to get that anyway. Additionally, with the NBA's soft cap there are exceptions so you can exceed the cap and still be able to spend more money.