It doesn't seem like the NBA is actually very interested in competitive balance, though.
I think they pay lip service to it, because there's a contingent of owners from small markets they need to placate.
But at the end of the day the league wants to be popular, and they're never so popular as when there are super teams in big markets and speculation about which star is going to end up where eats up the sports news cycle year round.
Well, it's not like its something they can just change on the fly. They have a collective bargaining agreement in place.
It's also not their fault that some of their high profile talent are trying to gravitate towards the larger markets. That's on the players. The league can't exactly control an individual's desire to play somewhere.
The league has tried to mitigate this with the supermax as well as having a soft salary cap. If neither of those were in place, I might be able to buy your notion more that the league isn't that interested in competitive balance.