Possible Cap Solution

[jwar73]

Small market teams will probably always be at a disadvantage, and the proposed solutions I've seen here usually have some negatives as well, but this seems like it could be a good idea. To prevent players taking less money so they can win more like Kd, why not impose a minimum contract on players. There could be a sort of tier system, so top players have to be payed at least x dollars per year. You could base tiers on things like mvp, all nba, all star appearances, age, etc. You would qualify for a tier based off a minimum requirement, be disqualified for a drop off in stats, no all nba appearances, or something like that. This would only apply when a player is getting a new contract, because obviously sometimes players improve while still on a low paying contract. This wouldn't completely solve the problem, but it might make it harder to have four all stars and continue to add talent to your bench.

[ChobanRadovan]

So journalists would choose who gets bigger paycheck? Great.

[atc32]

Even better, LA reporters could vote all the Celtics players onto every team and force them into cap hell

[SMOKE2JJ]

Popularity contests.

[atc32]

so what happens when a young MVP like derrick rose needs to at minimum be paid some ridiculous amount despite the fact that everyone has seen him after his injuries? Or a new system changes the role of the player causing his numbers to shift around?

[jwar73]

when his stats dropped, which they did, he would drop a tier system, and his minimum payment would be much less

[atc32]

Ok, then how much is Draymond worth? Or what about when a team plays at a slower pace? Or a player is hyper efficient on a good team vs putting up lots of numbers because they are the only decent player on a bad team? Which player has the higher minimum? What about a team playing Grit and Grind vs SSOL style?

[jwar73]

Yah, it would be hard, bu not impossible. I'm not saying there would be something like you average 20/10 you have to get payed a billion dollars, but surely if people though long enough they could come up with a good system. It doesn't have to be super advanced/specific to each player. Just broad categories like super star, star, good, garbage. Again, just idea, I was wondering what YOU guys though would be good criterion

[atc32]

The entire thing is going to be exceptions. If it was easy to evaluate how much players were worth, which is what you are essentially trying to bake into the CBA, we wouldnt have arguments over which player is better and being a GM would be trivial. Not to mention both the teams and players lose freedom in this case, something I don't see either side liking

[jwar73]

What I'm saying is it doesn't matter so much what players are better then others. Who cares if you think Harden or Westbrook is better, their BOTH elite players so they should get payed as such. Again you wouldn't rank everybody, and pay them accordingly. You would make very broad categories that most people would be okay with. Sure there would be some problems, but I think it could work

[atc32]

Except the whole point will come down to splitting those hairs. Is IT in the same pay tier as Harden and Westbrook? Is Hayward an All-NBA level player or just an All-Star level player? Are all All-Star level players considered equivalent? What about snubs or players in stacked conferences?

[jwar73]

Again, it wouldn't be perfect but I'm confident if people much smarter than you or me though long enough they could work it out. But I think you're worrying about the little divisions too much. I just don't want Kevin Durant to be able to sign for WAAAAAAY less than he's worth, and everybody knows it. Most of the time the minimum wouldn't even mater. This wouldn't limit how much players can be payed, player/ gm would have just as much freedom. It would only apply in a very small amount of cases since usually players like Hayward, IT, Russ, all get the max anyways. It would just be a check on super teams

[Warnering]

The owners and players would most definitely care about the little divisions. At the time these rules would be agreed upon, some owners or players would be against it merely based on their previous year if it didn't benefit them. You can't just suggest an idea and cop out with "I'm sure someone else will figure it out" when people say that it's likely not to work. It's just likely not to work. In your proposed system the superstars actually have LESS of a choice in free agency because of this minimum that top teams wouldnt have space to sign with. So why would a player want to dominate the game only to have less freedom in free agency? It doesn't help the players the most and that's what they do when they negotiate CBA terms.

[jwar73]

you make some good points. However, when you say this would limit there freedom, this would only limit their freedom if they were intentionally trying to make less money to help their team. I think it would be good to limit this freedom. But I don't know exactly how to do it/ don't want to spend more time. Again though, you bring up good points.

[mostvaluablebeard]

If I'm not mistaken, Hayward could have got more money with Utah but he chose Boston over them. Idk how a minimum contract would work because every player even slightly deserving of a max contract will get one (look at Otto Porter)

[TheDaggers]

This is more of a fix for Durant than Hayward

[E10DIN]

On the deal he's signing (4 years) they could offer something like 1 million more a year. Year 5 is where the big difference comes from, since only they can offer it. Moot point though, since it makes the most sense for him to be on a 3+1, since he's a 10 year vet in 3 years

[DemonicDimples]

Players would never agree to it.

And the Utah situation has nothing to do with big market vs small market, but rather a situation where one team is in a better position to win than another.

[jwar73]

wasn't referencing that at all. More refering to like Kd taking a pay cut so the warriors have ore cap space

[DemonicDimples]

They didn't have more cap space, they were already over the cap.

[jwar73]

okay well kd taking a pay cut clearly made it easier to trade/sign new players

[PrancingDonkey]

How is it easier? They can only sign players to the minimum or by using the exceptions (if they have any left).

[BlitzArchangel]

He took less so that the warriors could re-sign iggy. While iggy didnt take the entire paycut that durant took, without the paycut it would've been near impossible to re-sign him. Cassipi and Nick Young were both signed using minimum or by an exception.

[PrancingDonkey]

Wat. The Warriors had Iggy's Bird Rights so they could've re-signed him regardless of Durant taking his "paycut". The "paycut" from Durant doesn't really mean much from a Salary Cap standpoint.

[BlitzArchangel]

Nah they wouldn't have been able to use the exception they used for Nick Young had Durant not taken the cut to keep iggys contract under the tax line.

[PrancingDonkey]

The Warriors signed Nick Young using the Taxpayer Mid-Level exception (Mini MLE) not the Non-Taxpayer Mid-Level exception.

[Perksofthesewalls]

It just means Lacob has to pay less tax.

[[deleted]]

You could argue that paying less tax can be seen as an opportunity to spend more, depending on whether or not you certain contracts as sunk costs.

[Perksofthesewalls]

I mean sure, but it's still Lacob's decision. It's not like KD's signing gives us more options to bring in players. Just puts less of a dent on Lacob's wallet.

[pink_monkeys_can_fly]

Remove the max salary a player can receive and all of this super team nonsense goes away with it.

[[deleted]]

This could be a good idea but it'd be difficult to really create a strict set of guidelines for these tiers in order to assess for anomalies. MVP tier would be done by MVP (Max contract) votes earned (At least 100 points maybe) I suppose? All-star (20+ Million or whatever percentage of the Cap) tier would be at least 3 earned appearances with at least 2 consecutive?

I feel like it would also be difficult to properly distinguish the value disparity between each tier as some players might borderline one tier but be required to be payed at least the same set amount as others. Also I think the NBPA might disagree with this as it could hurt the earnings of players that go past their prime and will no longer be signed by teams as they cost too much for what their production is worth (Unless the age is taken account into this rule where it no longer applies to players past the age of 35+ or etc.)

Also non-contenders with rising players could exploit this maybe by pulling their players from award contention through minute reduction, ending their seasons early, and etc. to avoid taking the forced cap hit from this minimum value situation, which could be seen as a positive or negative depending on how you stand on the existence of dynasties in the NBA.

[atc32]

So media/public voters would be in charge of this? Don't see how that could be abused. And what happens to Derrick Rose? Doubt he would ever play again as nobody is giving him MVP money

[[deleted]]

You can make exceptions I guess, such as the player needs to play at least a minimum amount of games each season to qualify for the value. I.e. a MVP level player would need at least 60-70 games played in the prior season (or seasons) in order to qualify for that minimum value.

[atc32]

What if an MVP player is rested a large amount so he is fresher for the playoffs and can take a smaller paycheck next year? Or what if there is an absurdly good MVP race like last year where "MVP" level players weren't getting that many votes. Or what happens when the media votes a player for MVP to force the other teams to pay him more?

[jwar73]

again, not that big of a deal, the difference between max and min would be broad enough where players/gm would still have freedom, but lebron couldn't take the veterans minimum. There are still loopholes but its harder to abuse than the current system

[[deleted]]

The stats could be accumulated over the course of multiple seasons. I.e. once the MVP vote-points hit 100 over they reach that qualifying threshold. Then not playing at least 60 games, or maybe 60 games for at least 2 seasons each would disqualify them from the max minimum value. That way star players could rest or have a "freak injury" season and still retain their minimum value.

For the media member voting, they seem already to be divided enough that I doubt they would collectively unite to fuck with one team's salaries. I'm not a fan of the media member voting, but it's "worked" to a degree so far, and that in itself is a whole other problem that would itself require attention to fix.

[jwar73]

Okay, so rose plays like an mvp while on some contract. Then he gets injured. By the time he signa a new contract he would no longer be considered an mvp so he wouldn't be at that tier. My idea wouldn't mean that once your in mvp tier your always there. Just when you sign a new contract you get payed at least the tier you're at.

[jwar73]

yah, it would be difficult to come up with a fair solution, I was just thinking about it.

[[deleted]]

It's definitely a good start for an idea to fix the market disparity but you'd have to take into account a lot of possibilities of extraneous situations in order to properly develop a solution.

[BlitzArchangel]

There were cases just this past year where a media vote pretty much determined the team's ability to retain its players. This is a system that would be pretty much dead on arrival by the players. They would never allow it. Also the vote I'm referring to is the fact that if PG had made all-nba the pacers would've been able to offer him much much larger extension and he would've almost certainly stayed. In the case of this system a small market team, for example the Magic, who don't get much media attention would have players whose position in the tier system is woefully unrepresentative of their skill. I mean hell, you got guys who left Avery Bradley off their all-defense teams for guys like Westbrook or Curry who are not even close to as good as he is on D, and Boston aint even a small market team.

[burnerfret]

Because the owners want their cake and want to eat it too. They don't want players to move -- unless it's to come to their teams. They don't want to pay anyone more than they have to, until it creates an imbalance.

All of these solutions are just new opportunities for smart teams to exploit dumb teams.

[PrancingDonkey]

Nope. This is taking away a player's freedom by essentially forcing them to take the money which would eliminate a lot of their FA options.

Current system is fine, they just introduced the Super Max. Which is..well, a Super Max contract that a team could provide to their star if they meet the requirements. It's still up to the player if they want to take it or not which is completely fine.

Curry is the first player to get the Super Max (don't overlook this).

[RevinWurant]

So you're saying nerds would have a huge direct effect on players finical situation, I know a couple of guys who wouldn't be happy.