Why would you hope for that? So the billionaire owners can gain even more?
NBA Statement: NBAPA will not agree to smoothing the salary cap
- Thread starter vegas
- Start date
Why would you hope for that? So the billionaire owners can gain even more?
NAOS
Well-Known Member
Not all classes of players are equally impacted by this. In other words, the distribution of talent will be registered differently amongst "superstars", "all-stars", "above RPM players", "role players", etc. Think of the Trevor Bookers of the world. Would he still have come to Utah if he had an equal offer from a big market team that was suddenly flush with cash? Probably not. And, like it or not, Booker has been an important part of our team this year.
Also, free agency, by definition, makes it harder to keep teams together. A small market team simply can't afford to pay the premium for all of their players just in order to keep them. That doesn't happen in the real world.
Plus, you know the superstars and all-stars will form a couple of superteams. That's fate. It just takes one or two of those to put a glass ceiling on the hopes of a small market team like the Jazz. That's all. Easing would have helped limit the formation of superteams.
This is all bad news for the jazz.
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Coach Ellis
Well-Known Member
2016 is when the Cap Increase is expected to spike. . .
Gordon Hayward and Derrick Favors will both be UFA, but the Jazz have their Bird Rights and can offer them more money than anyone else. . . I'm expecting a 4 or 5 year extension for both of them.
Rudy Gobert will likely command a 4 or 5 year max deal in 2017.
Dante Exum will likely command one in 2018.
The Jazz will still have their rookies from this year under cheap contracts, as well as any European players (Tomic/Pliess/Neto) that they might bring over this offseason. Guys who will come cheaper on their first contract with the Jazz than they would if they were operating as UFA on the open market (especially Tomic).
And no matter how much money gets thrown around over the next two years, there will always be super teams. The simple fact is that when the market stabilizes, the stars will command a larger percentage of the cap and there's only so much money to go around for one team. There might be a small window for teams to either stockpile players or hoard cap space to draw stars in FA down the road. . . but counting on that is not as easy as I think some people believe it will be.
Winning teams have an advantage, no matter what the market.
NAOS
Well-Known Member
I understand what you're saying, and I'm sympathetic to many of your points. But you yourself admit that the ripple effect this has will take time to stabilize. I've been implying that that period of stabilization will directly correspond to the high-point of productivity for certain players. Those could be our players' windows. For the players, teams, and fans who are kept out of the glory land because of this instability: do you think they'll care if the market will eventually stabilize?
vegas
Well-Known Member
Hayward has a player option that he will opt out of in 17-18. Favors is not a free agent until 18-19.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/contracts/UTA.html
Stifle Tower
Punch Bowl Re-Filler
Who is the major player in negotiations? Lebron. Michele Roberts wants a completely free market with NO cap and players able to just go to the highest bidder. She's polishing LBJ's...well, you get the picture. Whatever the big name players WANT, they'll get from her. And many have positioned themselves to become FA's in 2016 for precisely this reason. There was never ANY chance the union was going to accept smoothing.
freakazoid
Well-Known Member
Had smoothing happened, the value of Utah's current contracts drop. All our players would have gotten automatic raises, instead of having to wait for their next contracts. This will put us in a great situation for making trades. It's true that it puts us at a bigger disadvantage FA wise, but I consider it to be negligible, as Utah needs to win to have any chance of attracting FAs, anyway. If Utah is as good as we all hope next year, we could still have a chance of luring a player looking to contend.
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Otherwise, there's no doubt that our FO has been operating in anticipation of this exact situation, so no need to worry that this is going to hurt Utah. I believe the pros in this outweigh the cons for Utah. It may/may not hinder our ability to sign FAs for the next few years, but the trade value of our contracts increase, and in the long run, Utah may find opportunities to acquire assets due to other team's mistakes, which should be plentiful. I'm sure that some small market teams will be hurt by this, but I don't believe Utah will be one of them.
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Finally, for anyone who's still skeptical as to the importance of building through the draft for a team like Utah, hopefully this helps put things in perspective a little. The draft is easily the single best tool Utah has to build with.
Coach Ellis
Well-Known Member
Thanks. I was trying to do it off of memory instead of just looking it up.
I think you make some good points. There will probably be some deals that will be made that wouldn't have happened otherwise if not for the sudden increase in the salary cap. I just don't think the overall impact will be that severe. Right now they are estimating that the salary cap will jump from around $63 million this year to $88-92 in 2016. No doubt that is a huge jump and some teams that are well over the salary cap now will suddenly have some money to spend. The problem for those teams is that everyone will have that money to spend. Teams that are over the cap now will have some money to spend. Teams that are under or close to the current cap will have a ton of money spend. Clearly, the large market teams will have their advantages as they always do, but the teams with Bird rights still hold that 4th year option which is going to be worth even more with the increasingly inflated salaries.
I think you can argue that the inflated salaries actually benefit a team like the Jazz. The bigger these contracts get, the more money these players have to leave on the table if they bolt to a bigger market team. Human nature would dictate that unless they are a superstar and really want to move, they will take the money where they can get it. Sign and trade has almost become a thing of the past at this point. The Jazz are in the good position of having cap space to spend and (likely) players that won't want to leave that much money on the table just to get out of Utah.
On the plus side, the advantage that you've been talking about could definitely cause the larger market teams to put themselves in a worse position. If a team like the Lakers were to go out and try to attract one or two big stars with their new found cap space, they could end up causing big problems for themselves. As I mentioned before, the salary cap is just a number. All salaries get bigger when the cap goes up. If they quickly fill up that cap space with huge contracts, they could quickly end up more hamstrung than they are now. They could end up being hard pressed to sign their up and coming players and lock themselves out of future free agent deals. I can totally see this happening with at least the Lakers and the Knicks that seem to have more money than sense these days.
I do think there will be a ripple, but I think that ripple only lasts for this one signing period. Every team will again have to get up to 90% of the salary cap and then it's back to business as usual.
vegas
Well-Known Member
I think you are missing a few things here. I am still trying to wrap my head around all of the implications, but this has already impacted signings imo.
- I think it played a big part in Hayward getting matched/maxed.
- Now that teams know that the jump will take place, there will be more players overpaid this summer
- Teams will be willing to pay the tax for a year that wouldn't have otherwise
- Expiring contracts will have way less value
- Players under contract will have way more value
- Teams will end up out of cash again after the jump and won't be able to resign some FAs under old contracts that will be due pay raise ala Harden/OKC. (esp old rookie contracts)
Agreed, players like Knight, Dragic, Leonard, Butler and all will most certainly get maxed out because "hey, that 15 o 16m per year contract looks expensive now, but in 2016 or 17 it will look like a bargain, so let's overpay upfront to get the discount later". This means that FAs already this summer will benefit hugely from it.
vegas
Well-Known Member
Yeah, but the players and certainly the agents are not that stupid. Some will want the security of a long term guaranteed deal, but will likely go for players options in the post jump years. Like I said still wrapping my head around it.