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Lockout!!!

NUMBERICA said:
Let's say last year you can just cut Arenas, Lewis, AK, Brand, K-Mart, Baron Davis, Eddy Curry, Peja, Troy Murphy, Redd, Yao, and Rip. That's hovering around $180 million in savings, just right there.

Getting rid of just those guaranteed deals - as a league - could've amounted to 8% of total earnings paid out last year if my mental math/figures I'm working with ($2 billion in payouts) is correct. That's not including the whole other pile of people earning $ they have no business earning, which probably account for another 2%.
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That's lovely analysis. Now all you have to do is get the Players' Association to agree (not happening).

It would be nice, at minimum, if maybe the NBAPA agreed to paying an injured player a portion of their remaining contract in order to cut them. That portion might still be 50% or 80%. I'd be interested to know how the NFL managed to work that.

Shorter contract length (guaranteed 4 years maximum now?) seems to be more feasible--doesn't resolve an the cost of an injury (or laziness) that happens before year 4, but it's better than having to keep subeffective players for more than that. Maybe players could be allowed to sign for longer if it's a team option on years 5 or more.
 
InGameStrategy said:
That's lovely analysis. Now all you have to do is get the Players' Association to agree (not happening).
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That's a hard sell, I agree, but I've seen this $45 million hard cap number and a 35% reduction in guaranteed league salary floating around, and this is both much more profitable for the players, and a much more equitable system/easier to sell.

Either way, there will have to be some sort of amnesty clause for existing guaranteed deals where you can buy-out the remainder of the deal for most of it's worth and it won't count against the cap or something like that. There will have to be SOME digging out of the mess that owners have gotten themselves into regardless of the deal stricken.
 
NUMBERICA said:
That's a hard sell, I agree, but I've seen this $45 million hard cap number and a 35% reduction in guaranteed league salary floating around, and this is both much more profitable for the players, and a much more equitable system/easier to sell.

Either way, there will have to be some sort of amnesty clause for existing guaranteed deals where you can buy-out the remainder of the deal for most of it's worth and it won't count against the cap or something like that. There will have to be SOME digging out of the mess that owners have gotten themselves into regardless of the deal stricken.
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Sho 'nuff; here is the $45 million hard cap proposal--from nearly two months ago:
https://aol.sportingnews.com/nba/story/2011-05-16/sbj-nba-proposes-45-million-hard-salary-cap

Looks like they might have gotten past it, though, sort of, at least according to this guy:
https://www.chicagonow.com/chicago-.../nba-proposal---a-hard-cap-by-any-other-name/

Such draconian measures would seem to have to be phased in, given the exorbitant contracts still on the books (unless they've become null and void, which I don't think they have). I don't know if they've ever discussed reducing the cap by a few million per year (or the player share by a percentage point or two per year) until it reaches a target level. Without a phase-in, teams like Miami might be over the cap with their top three players alone.

It's not clear to me that a franchise tag would hurt small-markets, as some articles suggest.

What it hurts is the #2 or #3 guy necessary to make a team viable but who wouldn't be tagged and thus would get a substantially smaller salary despite not necessarily being substantially inferior in talent. If the NBPA perceives this disparity, I don't see them buying into the tag. Basketball is probably less like the NFL where the quarterback is usually far and away the most important player on the team. Many NBA teams have 2 or 3 top-tier, nearly-All-Star players.

So my amended solution is this: a phased-in drop in players' share (maybe dropping 1% per year, starting with 56% next year, down to 52%, resulting in a 53% average for 10 years) plus revenue sharing (that also possibly starts with a high value for the visiting team, maybe up to 40%, then dropping 5% per year down to 25% or 20%).

The players would likely go for the player share part, but I don't see the Lakers giving up 40% of their precious gate receipts in exchange for the paltry revenue produced from the small-market teams. Yet it would save the season, make all teams financially viable, and give both sides (including the existing contracts) a few years to fully adjust to the new, more epicurean economy.

If the revenue sharing thing is a no-go, then I still think that lowering the player share might be enough. With each drop in revenue share, the cutoff for the luxury tax cutoff, also, thus redistributing more revenue from those over the cap to those under it. I don't see how they can get a hard cap to work.
 
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Ax guarantee salaries. Teams might still load up like the Heat. But when guys like Deron, Howard, Paul, and later on Wall, Griffin and others become free agents, teams who've been smart with their money and have axed contract cancers like Kirilenko can sign a superstar. In recent times, it seems there are usually so few teams that have cap room to sign a stud (barring the Lebron sweepstakes year) that the player just re-ups with their own team. Perhaps I'm wrong here but that's what it seems. Having the ability to cut the Rashard Lewis' of the world though would create more fluidity in the free agent market and with trades. Perhaps I'm way off here but it's what my gut instinct tells me.

That said, teams should not just be able to purge any time they want. There should be a limit to how often a team can ax a player. Orlando should not have been able to (hypothetically) ax Lewis, and then ax Arenas four weeks later once they realized they compounded their problem by taking on a worse contract. Maybe I'm wrong here and there shouldn't be a limit to how often a team can ax a player but I think if every team is given the chance to do so, then there will be an even greater disparity between the large and small markets. Imagine if Orlando had had the chance to cut Lewis 12 months ago. Perhaps cut another player or two too. Just gut the team. Free agents would have been lined up to sign there. Why? Because it's Orlando and they have Dwight Howard.

To me, having a limitless ability to cut players and purge the team of awful salaries will make the rich richer. Not monetarily speaking but competitively. New York, Miami, L.A., maybe even L.A. 2.0, Chicago, Orlando, Boston. These teams would literally always have studs because they're big markets with big exposure and big nightlifes. They'd sign the studs. They'd cut those "studs" who didn't work out one or two years after their signing and then sign some other stud. Vets would flock there ala Bibby to Miami to go for a ring. It would be disgusting.

I don't know. It's almost 1am here. Maybe I'm wrong. It's just what I foresee happening. But I'm with virtually everyone in that I hate guaranteed contracts so I don't know what to do.
 
SalmonHobo said:
Ax guarantee salaries. Teams might still load up like the Heat. But when guys like Deron, Howard, Paul, and later on Wall, Griffin and others become free agents, teams who've been smart with their money and have axed contract cancers like Kirilenko can sign a superstar. In recent times, it seems there are usually so few teams that have cap room to sign a stud (barring the Lebron sweepstakes year) that the player just re-ups with their own team. Perhaps I'm wrong here but that's what it seems. Having the ability to cut the Rashard Lewis' of the world though would create more fluidity in the free agent market and with trades. Perhaps I'm way off here but it's what my gut instinct tells me.

That said, teams should not just be able to purge any time they want. There should be a limit to how often a team can ax a player. Orlando should not have been able to (hypothetically) ax Lewis, and then ax Arenas four weeks later once they realized they compounded their problem by taking on a worse contract. Maybe I'm wrong here and there shouldn't be a limit to how often a team can ax a player but I think if every team is given the chance to do so, then there will be an even greater disparity between the large and small markets. Imagine if Orlando had had the chance to cut Lewis 12 months ago. Perhaps cut another player or two too. Just gut the team. Free agents would have been lined up to sign there. Why? Because it's Orlando and they have Dwight Howard.

To me, having a limitless ability to cut players and purge the team of awful salaries will make the rich richer. Not monetarily speaking but competitively. New York, Miami, L.A., maybe even L.A. 2.0, Chicago, Orlando, Boston. These teams would literally always have studs because they're big markets with big exposure and big nightlifes. They'd sign the studs. They'd cut those "studs" who didn't work out one or two years after their signing and then sign some other stud. Vets would flock there ala Bibby to Miami to go for a ring. It would be disgusting.

I don't know. It's almost 1am here. Maybe I'm wrong. It's just what I foresee happening. But I'm with virtually everyone in that I hate guaranteed contracts so I don't know what to do.
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Unfortunately there are about 330 people who love guaranteed contracts--the NBA players. They won't go for it. I'd be surprised if they went for it even for injured players or even on a limited basis (one cut per year, perhaps?). The best improvement that owners have is to cut guaranteed contract length to four years. That'll make a modest difference.
 
NUMBERICA said:
The problem isn't that players make 57%. It's that owners have been irresponsible with the remaining 43% and have no way to get out from under their own mistakes.
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My understanding is that this is just the opposite. The ONLY real problem is that the players make 57%. How have the owners been irresponsible with the 57%? No matter if they sign Eddie Curry to a $10 Billion dollar deal or LeBron James to the league minimum, players are still taking 57% of the revenue. Can they use that 57% more wisely? Sure. But it doesn't change the fact that at 57%, the league is losing money.

The league holds back 9% of players checks to ensure that players only get 57% of the revenue, so bad contracts have nothing to do with the hundreds of millions of dollars the NBA is losing each year. The bad contracts will certainly have a negative affect on an individual team's income statement, but it won't budge the NBA's one penny.

In addition, if players are guaranteed 57% of the revenue, teams have less incentive to find additional sources of revenue (like advertising on jerseys, advertising on center court, etc) because $.57 of every dollar they earn goes right into the players checks. In addition to the extra costs to sell these things (commissions to salespeople, salaries, etc), oftentimes the league will just lose money on it. I can't imagine how frustrating this must be for owners. If it costs them $.50 to make $1, the team loses $.07.

Financially, the only thing that matters is the percentage of BRI. All the other stuff like hard-cap, guaranteed deals, deal length, games per season, etc. are all about competitive balance.
 
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