One place to start would be to try to establish what the goals of a CBA are. To my mind, an ideal CBA would:
-Guarantee players a considerable portion of league revenue. They are the ones who play the games, their the ones I like to watch.
-Encourage some form of competitive balance, as no fan base should never have no hope in sight.
-Allow teams that are well constructed to stay together, to reward good roster construction. Personally, I think, to a certain extent, dynasties are good. Super fun if the dynastic team is YOUR team, but if not, it gives the league an "evil empire" to hate, and huge feeling of success if the dynasty is vanquished. It also gives the sport something to talk about in terms of historicity; frankly, no current NFL team could hold a candle in all time discussions with pre-1995 teams. I don't want the same for basketball, necessarily. And finally, I don't want the NBA title to be "cheapened." I feel like one superbowl victory is not even that great an indicator of success anymore. Just get a hot streak in the 2nd half of the season, luck out with injuries, and you are suddenly "the best" team. You have to win 2 within 5 years with some continuity to be a truly great team, or be in a few superbowls/conference championships in a row then win a superbowl to be a great team anymore in my opinion.
-In a similar vein, make sure that no hometown hero has to leave the team simply because of no capspace.
-Reward Owners for doing good independent work marketing their own franchises to fans
-Not reward owners who were "brilliant" enough to make their billions, but suddenly are utter morons running a sports team (my personal take: it's a lot more luck and circumstances that go into earning those billions than it is actual skill. My evidence? How owners run sports teams with logic and practices that would bankrupt many companies).
-Not over-penalize teams for signing players who then get injured or are total dead weight.
-But not let teams just start over from scratch for free every year that they make terrible mistakes.
So here are my ideas:
1. Keep player salaries as a percentage of league profits, with escrow, etc. This prevents trying to make a fixed figure, then having players be quite relatively underpaid or damagingly overpaid for league revenue, and prevents the major headache of renegotiating the CBA every time a tv contract is up.
2. Lower the Percentage, but just a little. On the one hand, players, as a percentage, make about the same as other sports leagues. On the other hand, because the absolute dollar amount is lower than MLB and NFL, there are less total dollars available to expand the league. Second, there are fewer players in the NBA, so a smaller percentage would still get individual players a share of profits comparable to other sports. I'd drop it to 52% for the next CBA, and assess in 5 years.
3. As a tradeoff to the above, books need to be open. Player salaries are on the record, so exec and personnel salaries should be too. This will help determine who is running a smart team vs. owners hiding money, etc.
4. Some amount, maybe 1-2% of the above savings, goes to the league as a whole for the advertising/expanding the fanbase department, to help the league as a whole grow.
5. There will be a minimum cap, set at, say, 75% of the general cap, to ensure there are few owners just sucking off the others.
6. Increased revenue sharing: equal split of national TV money, and a sort of "luxury tax" to the league (I don't know how much would make sense) on gates and local tv deals as well as merchandise. Basically, you want a system where it is always better for team X to sell more shirts, more tickets, and get better local tv deals, but that those deals help other teams too.
7. To discourage leech owners, after 6 years in the league a 2/3 majority of owners can vote out a crappy owner, having the league purchase the team at some pre-agreed upon price (110% of purchase cost or something) to resell the team to a more capable owner. I would guess that no owners would vote out another one for just putting out a bad team, but if an owner was always making stupid business decisions, paying the minimum salary each yaer but still profiting, they'd be out.
8. Flex cap at some level related to the BRI (as currently). Something like 52% x BRI divided by 30 minus 7 million. That would have made the cap 59,000,000 this past season. Then set the minimum at around 45,000,000, but team cannot be under 50,000,000 three years in a row or something.
9. Exceptions: any amount over the cap results in luxury tax. Profitable teams can feel free to exceed the cap if they like, knowing they will cut into their profit margin. However, it is harder to go above the cap now. You may only exceed the cap in order to: sign drafted rookies; use a franchise tag; sign your own free agents; vet minimum deals. No more MLE.
10: Rookies: similar to now: 2 guaranteed years, 2 team options, RFA w/ QO, UFA. However, the amount of year to year raises is significantly lower, such that Derrick Rose as the #1 pick would only make about 5.5 in his 4th year with a qo of 7 instead of the 7 and 9 it is now.
11. Franchise tag: When a player completes a full contract (either reaches UFA after 5 years of rookie deal or completes a regular contract/extension), the player's team may lock him up for 1 additional year at the max and force the player to stay. However, this may only be used once by a team on a player, but a team may use this as many times a year as they wish.
12. No BYC nonsense. Your salary is your salary.
13. Contracts: Max limit is lowered slightly in proportion to the 52%. Max length is 5 for current team, 4 for another team. All contracts are 25% guaranteed on both sides. This means that a team can buy out a player for 25% of the cost remaining on their contract, and the player becomes a UFA. That money is then wiped off their cap (but will still count toward luxury tax and is on the books as a conscious loss), and it can be payed out in the year the player is cut or spread out over the length of what the contract would have been, with a little interest. Likewise, a player may, at any time, pay the team 25% of his remaining contract (in lump sum or spread out over length of contract) and become a UFA with the salary wiped from the cap amount. Note: if a team buys out a player they cannot then franchise him, but the team MAY franchise a player who buys his contract out. Buyouts do not apply to rookie deals. And a franchised player cannot buy out his contract.
Examples:
A. Team signs Player X to 5 yr 75 million dollar deal. Hate it after year 1, and they are exactly at the cap of 60 million. So, they buy out player X. There are 4 years, 60 million remaining, so they buy him out for 15 million, either in a 1 year sum or 3.75, 4.0, 4.25, 4.5 (16.5, a little interest). now they are at 45 million dollar pay roll, so they can add 15 million of free agents. However, if adding free agents would put their total player expenditures above the flex cap, so they'd pay tax to the league. so if they went for the 4 year spread out route, they could add 15 million free agents this year and be taxed on 3.75 million, or they could just add 11 million in free agents and pay no tax.
B. Player signs a 5 year 20 million dollar deal off his rookie deal. Suddenly he finds out he's underpaid. So he has 4 years 16 million remaining. he may pay the team 4 million dollars to walk away from the contract, and the contract is null and void, no more cap ramifications. However, the team may franchise him once if they would like, and the player would have to stay for 1 year; maybe the team could negotiate a better deal in that time frame.
14. Contracts can be renegotiated as seen fit by player and team. If one side doesn't like it, they can walk away and either buy out the contract or risk being bought out.
I may realize some things i wanted to include, but that's my rough sketch for now.
