re: NBA With a Hard Cap, No Max Salaries, and No Draft

You would end up hating it and then argue against it on this board.

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Hope you aren't a fan of a small market, struggling team. The deck just got even more stacked against you.

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How so? I don't see it.

This would make European Basketball leagues way more attractive.

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Say Golden State has $2mil under the cap but Minnesota has $12mil, you think a rookie is going to leave $10mil on the table to go to a winner?

Remember, the better teams will have better players which likely means a higher salary closer to the hard cap.

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You cannot just throw arguments out like this as generalities. Take David West going to SAS and what he left on the table, yes it is not $10 mil, but the point still remains guys especially later in their career, and especially specialists will take less money.

My ideas are this, no max contracts, but keep the current luxury tax system in place, for a lot of truly "small market teams" the money this has made has been the difference between P&L. Make the NBADL truly 30 and 30, meaning there is a greater farm system, and the NBA draft rules you can enter straight out of HS or prep school but if you attend college must stay at least 2 years. Also make there no limit whether by age or reason to when foreign players can come over and enter the draft. Make NBA rosters 14 and spread out the calendar year of games.

Basketball is so hard because obviously with fewer players on a physical playing surface regardless of sport, the superstars have more leverage and they truly decide teams fates. This is why as most know, you have real tanking every year teams are angling for only 2-3 stars that may come out of a given year. Do away with the lottery and make it strictly record based, this creates it to where you have fewer teams "tanking", the teams in the 6-14 range will want to win more. Also an idea I have always had was allowing for compensation sort of like the MLB does for teams at either the end of "lottery" or first round for teams that lose stars in free agency.

While no league is perfect, the NBA feels more and more every year where its players playing against each other than teams in the playoffs. While yes it is a smaller sport by total number of teams, you look at those years it was the 96 Bulls not Jordan and the Bulls. For most it will be Lebron and the Cavs, etc..

Just my two cents, nothing is ever perfect

There's a sizable difference in max salaries as it is. Durant would leave ~$30M guaranteed on the table if he left the Thunder this year. That number would balloon to over $50M if he defers his free agency to next offseason. That's a huge deal for guys around that age when you never really know when your game might start to decline. Even more so for Durant who's already suffered one major injury. The current setup almost guarantees that teams can keep their first round picks for at least seven years; five at the very least. I don't see any real need to change anything.

I find it interesting that message board posters and such tend to talk up parity considering the NBA has always been most popular when there is a dominant team or two.

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My stolen idea basically completely eliminates intentional tanking as it would be useless.

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Sorry my man honestly just saw the first couple posts and responded, but since Day 1 of the lottery do not think you or I came up with this idea

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Well sure there are examples of this, but generally speaking the better players certainly make more money.

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okay.....

But having rookies "sign" out of college or hs is just stupid and in no way would either group the players, or the owners ever go for it.

You are serious?

Come on man

Obviously there is a precedent with every pro sport, especially in the infancy of many leagues, but the main issue with signing rookies and no draft is simple, there would be absolutely not parody. Even with a hard cap, lets just say for a minute they both hypothetically go for it, a guy like Simmons hates Philly that much (Granted no draft, and current system, they would not be tanking this way) you would have rookies singing one year deals left and right with the best teams.

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I still think that only works to an extent.

Again, assuming the best players gravitate to the same established bigger markets, these teams will likely generally operate maxed out on the cap, with little or in some cases, no room at all to even offer a rookie a deal.

Contrast that with a younger team building and on the rise that may have $10 or $20 mil or even more for those sure thing type rookies, I think there's a breaking point on just how much of a payout they'd take.

Look at Simmons, the stuff I've read has his annual offer around the $10mil mark, right? What if, under my stolen idea, the Lakers can only offer him $1mil/year but an up and coming team like Minnesota can offer him $15mil/year. That's doubling his salary. Most guys aren't turning down that extra money IMO.

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The main sticking point to me comes down to this:

While the FA advantage big market, winning organizations have over other markets will remain, you are now extending that advantage to the draft.

Take LA. They just opened up salary after the Kobe era is done. Under your scenario Simmons, who already wanted to go to LA, just signs with them. They need some more pieces so maybe they look to add Hield. Boston is cap rich and Ingram is right there. They want some big man help so they sign Bender to go along with him. NY and Brooklyn both look to fast forward their rebuilds and they snag Murray, Dunn and Brown between them. SA likes international guys so they entice Luwawu to sign with them.

The small markets or poorly regarded teams are left to pick up the scraps. Instead of Simmons Philly is throwing money at Denzel Valentine or something. New Orleans is taking a flier on Furkan Korkmaz or something.

The draft, as flawed as it is, is really a necessary tool to level the playing field with the big markets that have an ingrained advantage in FA and to a lesser extent trades.