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Simmons fix for players salaries

green

green

Well-Known Member
He has a really good idea for salaries. It includes criteria for all-star players, franchise players, mid level players, incentives for players to stay with their original teams, and penalties for Crymelo's forcing their way out of a city. I think it's a great idea, but I'm sure some will find fault (namely the root of all our problems, lawyers). That being said, I don't see a downside, but would be interested in hearing them.

https://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6749669/if-ruled-nba-world

It's halfway down, issue #4. There is big boy language, so if you still have elementary ears, be warned.
 
Problem with that is a team could all of a sudden be on the hook for several millions more in dollars that could be the difference in making money and losing money.

Also wouldn't change spending models that much.
 
Bill Simmons likes the dominance of the great markets teams and is not ashamed of admitting it. What a shock.
 
Darkwing Duck said:
Problem with that is a team could all of a sudden be on the hook for several millions more in dollars that could be the difference in making money and losing money.

Also wouldn't change spending models that much.
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Yeah, they could be on the hook for several more million dollars, but that doesn't mean that they are losing money. Owner's make money hand over fist in playoff games. They make money selling jerseys, player's images, etc. Do you honestly think that if OKC was suddenly on the hook for 2 million dollars because Westbrook became an all-star, helped them get a higher seed (with home court in one or two rounds of the playoffs), and OKC ended up playing 5-8 more home games in the playoffs, the owners wouldn't gladly toss two million his way to reap those benefits?

Spending models might not change too much, but you are also forgetting that there is a HARD cap in his proposal. It is 52 million per year, but allows you to go up to 56-58 million in the case of your team gaining a Westbrook. The hard cap, especially one at 52 million, would be very restrictive to owner's spending.
 
zbone said:
Bill Simmons likes the dominance of the great markets teams and is not ashamed of admitting it. What a shock.
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That is why he has a HARD cap in his proposal? Yeah, he is all for contraction, but aren't you? Do you really like playing the Timberwolves and Clippers every year, knowing that if you lose it is because the Jazz didn't try? Do you really like to have completely meaningless games on the schedule? I would much rather have Utah play talented teams every night. The fact that any team can legitimately win/lose every night is what makes it exciting.

Who cares if Charlotte or NO is contracted? Do you? Are you going to miss those teams? Instead of having D-League players on the end of our bench, we will have legitimate NBA players. There is nothing wrong with that.
 
He is for incentive based salaries, he takes away the power of owners to give AK 17 million a year. It would be impossible for Miller to do that in his system. Here is his incentive based system:

Bill Simmons said:
Going forward, we define an 'All-Star' as someone who's played four consecutive years with one team and made two All-Star teams OR an All-NBA team during that time. Any 'All-Star' automatically gets a $12 million cap figure, but his original team can pay him up to 25 percent more than the cap figure (max: $60 million for four years). A new team can only pay him that cap figure (max: $48 million for four years).
"3. We define a 'Franchise Player' as someone who's played at least four consecutive years with one team and made three All-Star teams OR two first or second All-NBA teams during that time. Any 'Franchise Player' automatically gets a $17 million cap figure, but can be paid $500,000 per years of service beyond that number without it counting on the cap. For instance, if Dwight Howard wants to sign with the Lakers next summer, they could offer only his franchise cap number ($68 million over four years). Orlando gets the benefit of that $500k bump — eight Howard/Orlando seasons multiplied by $500,000 — so they can offer him a four-year deal worth $87 million.13 The longer he stays in Orlando and keeps playing at a 'Franchise' level, the more money Howard can earn.
"4. Anyone who graduates from 'All-Star' to 'Franchise Player' during his four-year deal gets an automatic salary bump to 'Franchise' status. For instance, Russell Westbrook's second-team All-NBA would make him eligible for an "All-Star" extension right now ($15 million per year for four years, but with a $12 million per year cap figure). Let's say he makes second-team All-NBA again this season. Boom! He jumps to "Franchise" status; his cap figure bumps to $17 million, along with the corresponding $500k bumps for each year in Oklahoma City.14 In other words, he's incentivized to keep kicking *** even after he gets paid.
"5. If you can't maintain 'All-Star' or 'Franchise' status during your deal, you lose those privileges for the next deal.15
"6. Any All-Star who gets traded keeps his salary/cap figure disparity for his new team. Franchise players can veto any trade — if they accept the deal, they lose their accumulated $500k bumps and revert back to the $17 million cap figure.
"7. Nobody else can sign for more than $10 million per year unless he made an All-NBA team OR two All-Star teams within the past three years, giving him a 33 percent bump (and enabling him a deal or extension for $13.3 million per year, with the salary doubling as the cap number). Yes, we're calling this the Zach Randolph Exception.
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Miller couldn't pay AK max money if he wanted to. Heck, under Simmon's system, Deron wouldn't have qualified for All-Star money. We would have been able to resign Deron for up to four years and UNDER 10 million per year. And when Deron met the qualifications, he could have received his salary. Boozer would not have gotten his "raise, regardless."

Four year contracts, a hard cap, a way for players to get paid earlier if they perform, they lose their salary "status" if they do not peform, they are penalized if they force their way out of a city (and not a small penalty, in his example, Howard could lose up to 19 MILLION if he forced his way out of Orlando), and so on.

So far, I haven't heard a good argument against his proposal. Listen to the man, Stern. Listen to the man.
 
Green, I still don't see how this will prevent from big-three redux happening again and again on big markets. They already make enough from endorsements deals to not take max salaries. These 2-4 millions a year they may lose for them is just peanuts money.
Also I'm not quite sure how exactly trades are going to work under his system and how much other players gonna make.
To sum up: big market teams win, big name players win, small markets teams stay where they are, majority of players lose. Yes, that a step towards season to start.
 
green said:
Miller couldn't pay AK max money if he wanted to. Heck, under Simmon's system, Deron wouldn't have qualified for All-Star money. We would have been able to resign Deron for up to four years and UNDER 10 million per year. And when Deron met the qualifications, he could have received his salary. Boozer would not have gotten his "raise, regardless."

Four year contracts, a hard cap, a way for players to get paid earlier if they perform, they lose their salary "status" if they do not peform, they are penalized if they force their way out of a city (and not a small penalty, in his example, Howard could lose up to 19 MILLION if he forced his way out of Orlando), and so on.

So far, I haven't heard a good argument against his proposal. Listen to the man, Stern. Listen to the man.
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Deron was named to the 2nd All NBA team twice. Once in 2008 and also in 2009. He would have qualified for more money because of the Franchise clause. He would be at 17 million a year.
 
Using all star appearances which are a huge joke. As a basis for a salary system is a huge problem. Seriously get the fans out of the all star voting let it be done by coaches or media and mabe he has a basis for a start. I or other could punch other holes in this but to me that is the biggest problem.
 
gregbroncs said:
Using all star appearances which are a huge joke. As a basis for a salary system is a huge problem.
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+1. Why use a broken system to try to fix this? An incentive based system is a fine idea in principle, but this would be horrendous. No players would want to sign with the Jazz (or other small market teams), because they know Jazz players have a very difficult time being voted to the all star team under the current system.
 
He posted a late footnote about the All-Star selection:

Late Addition: In the 90 minutes after we posted the column, multiple readers pointed out that, for this All-Star/Franchise Player idea to work, we'd probably have to dump the All-Star voting system and come up with a smarter way to pick starting teams. I couldn't be more fine with this. Popularity contests fall into Adam Carolla's "more harm than good" realm, anyway. If you don't agree with me, you will when China makes Yi Jianlian an All-Star next season. Or whenever we have a season.
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I really enjoyed his ideas, I think that idea would need a little more tweaking but I really like his "Entertaining as Hell Tournament".

Let's say we cut down the regular season to 78 games, lock down the top seven seeds in each conference, then stage a week-long, single elimination, 16-team tournament between the nonplayoff teams for the 8-seeds. (No conferences, just no. 15 through no. 30 seeded in order.) The higher seeds would host the first two rounds (eight games in all) from Sunday through Wednesday; the last two rounds (The Final FourGotten) would rotate every year in New York or Los Angeles on Friday night and Sunday afternoon, becoming something of a Fun Sports Weekend along the lines of All-Star Weekend. Friday night's winners would clinch playoff berths. Sunday's winner gets two carrots: the chance to pick their playoff conference (you can go East or West), as well as the no. 10 pick in the upcoming draft (that's a supplemental pick; they'd get their own first-rounder as well).
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Chad Feldheimer said:
Are fans all the sudden going to say "Eff the AllStar game, I didn't get to vote for those guys. Im not watching."
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Seriously.

And motive takes first place. Someone from China is always going to have a chance to START an ASG, and anyone from a major market automatically has a huge leg up on anyone else.

I just want my NBA season.
 
Bill Simmons apparently forgot that guys like Shaq and Ming used to get voted to the all star games irrespective of whether they even played that season or not.
As if the all star voting is'nt skewed enough already, now you want to throw in the salary factor as well and make it even more messy.
 
A few thoughts:

An interesting exercise for someone to do would be to project what each team's salary structure would look like under the proposal. I suspect this would have some unintended consequences that Simmons hasn't thought through.

For example: The Miami Heat:

Lebron: $17 million (Franchise bracket)
Wade: $17 million (Franchise bracket) - This is just the cap figure, his real number would be something like $21.5 million.
Bosh: $17 million (Franchise bracket)

That's $51 million right there. With Simmons' proposed $52 milllion hard cap the Miami Big Three functionally have to be liquidated because you can't get 9 more players for $1 million. Given that Simmons has previously written that "The Decison" was good for interest in the league I'm not certain this is something he actually wants to do.

Another issue is that this probably magnifies the advantages of teams in tax free states like Florida and Texas in attracting players when they will get the same amount of money no matter what team they play for.

To pick some more nits: This makes which team drafts you significantly more important which may lead to more players trying to game the draft to get to a specific location or more Steve Francis/Kobe Bryant team picking situations.

Finally, in combination with his loyalty bonus program this section is a really bad idea:

Franchise players can veto any trade — if they accept the deal, they lose their accumulated $500k bumps and revert back to the $17 million cap figure.
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You have now made any "problem" Franchise player untradeable. An example: Latrell Spreewell. Spree made the 1994, 1995, and 1997 All-Star teams. He would be a franchise player for the 1997-1998 season under the rubric. In December of that season he chokes PJ Carlesimo. If GS trades him, Spree loses $2.5 million in "loyalty bonuses" for the season, $3 million in bonuses the next year etc. Three years on his contract remaining we're talking $9 million in loyalty pay for Spree, this equates to more than half a season's worth of his Franchise player pay. He has the right to refuse any trades. Golden State is now stuck with Spree after he choked his coach.

This has also given every player who wants to leave his team the ultimate negotiating leverage in terms of trade terms. There is no way that the Nuggets would have gotten as much as they got for Carmelo if the Nets aren't even allowed to enter the bidding due to the no trade clause. No automatic NTCs; make them individually negotiated.
 
green said:
Wouldn't there have to be fans watching the AS game before they could stop watching the AS game.
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https://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/bk/bkn/7439902.html

The NBA All-Star Game had a 5.2 Nielsen rating, up from 3.8 in 2010, with an average audience of 9.1 million viewers, up from 6.8 million last year.

The All-Star Saturday show was the most-watched in the event's history, registering a 4.4 rating and an average audience of 8.1 million viewers, up from 3.9 and 5.4 million in 2010.
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