Ok, now that the Commissioner's office is weighing in on the Doc/Kg trade I think one thing is clear:
The current CBA has gotten far too complicated and needs to be scrapped in favor of something simpler.
As far as I can tell the issue right now is that the CBA bars the Celtics and Clippers from conducting two technically separate transactions that might actually be tied together.
I get the motive from Stern et al., in the narrow sense. Under the current CBA there are situations in which two teams could concoct pairs of pseudo-trades that would circumvent the CBA.
But all this illustrates to me is that the CBA has gotten too convoluted. Absent these weird rules, teams would just be free to make trades they thought were in their own best interests, involving any players (or coaches) they wanted to include, without worrying about all the CBA red tape.
Now what we are left with is far worse to me in two ways. First, a central authority (Stern) has to evaluate whether individual trades are "fair." Well, who is he to know for sure? In a simpler environment the commissioner's office would not need to interject its own subjective evaluation into things that really should be free-market transactions.
And more generally, and this is my real rant here, it seems like the CBA is having a huge and often counter-productive effect on nearly every transaction made in the NBA right now.
Teams are now organizing their entire personnel strategies around "cap management" and "tax management," and "the apron" etc...whatever happened to just trying to get the best players you were willing to pay/trade for? Heck, we signed these guys from China mid-year and signed them to "multi-year" but non-guaranteed contracts. Why? Well, because such contracts are valuable as matching salaries in trades, because teams can cut the non-guaranteed portion right after the trade.
With Pierce, we have this $5m waive option that makes him extremely attractive to some other teams. Why? Not because of anything to do with his abilities, but solely because a team can trade for him them cut him to save salary cap room. (But only before the arbitrary date of 6/30). So it's highly possible that he gets traded, then cut, then signs a minimum/MLE contract having nothing to do with his productivity/value as a player to the team who signs him. All because of these convoluted rules.
All of this has distorted so many transactions, and will continue to do so. Think about how many deals and contracts over the last few years have been structured, or pursued, or abandoned, almost completely for CBA-related reasons, often highly technical ones, and not basketball reasons.
And for what? Do we have any more parity now than 30 years ago? What have we gained? Who's better off except the lawyers who know a lot about the CBA?
I think something's gotta give. I don't enjoy following a sport in which a majority of player and team decisions are driven by obscure rules that serve no real purpose to the overall quality of the game.
Topic: The CBA is too complicated (Read 1374 times)